Sound: Andreas Horvath
Producer: Andreas Horvath
Source:
Andreas Horvath
Schwarzenberg Promenade 60
5026 Salzburg
AUSTRIA
Phone: +43 662 623162
Fax: +43 662 623162
muskala.horvath@utanet.a
www.andreas-horvath.com
"The civilians? We told the whole world we were gonna do it ¦
They should have got out of the way."
Up close, aggressive, mind-numbing, and divisive, THIS AIN'T NO HEARTLAND
is a howling cry against the U.S. invasion of Iraq, from the director
of THE SILENCE OF GREEN (shown in competition last year). As the invasion
raged, Andreas Horvath traveled from his home in Austria to the American
"heartland" - specifically an area a little west of us here
in Chicago. He had many questions about the invasion, including about
American unilateralism and arrogance. Would he find satisfying answers
in the reputedly peaceful heartland?
No. As the film progresses, this friendly and serene Heartland - the
true America? - gradually turns into a vast and remote hinterland in
which the quest for discussion becomes a futile odyssey. The people
here see their idyll endangered by foreigners (one admits calling the
police on the filmmaker out of paranoia that Horvath was a terrorist)
and by the filmmaker's desperate attempts to communicate, to find answers,
and to find compassion. Again and again, Horvath's questions are greeted
by evasiveness, obfuscation, drunkenness, or, perhaps most pointedly,
blind faith. A comparison evolves between blind religious faith and
Horvath's interlocutors' unwillingness to address deeply the reasons
their government is invading a foreign country. The real war in Iraq
is more distant than the vague but nevertheless popular projections
of war in Demolition Derbies and Civil War Reenactments.
Bound to provoke outrage, THIS AIN'T NO HEARTLAND is a profoundly powerful
work. Whether you are outraged by the filmmaker or the people he films
will say a lot about you. Andreas Horvath (born in 1968, in Salzburg,
Austria) is a photographer and filmmaker. He makes short experimental
films and documentaries. In 1993, he published a black and white photo
book on the American Midwest, the so-called "Heartland." His
book on Yacutia, Siberia was published in 2003.
Filmography as Director
THIS AIN'T NO HEARTLAND (2003)
THE SILENCE OF GREEN (2002, screened in this festival)
POROEROTUS (1999)
CLEARANCE (1998)
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