AT 1991, D Ursula Pürrer, Dietmar Schipek, Ashley Hans Scheirl, Cast Susanna Heilmayr, Ursula Pürrer, Ashley Hans Scheirl, Margarete Neumann, Gabriele Szekatsch, P Loop TV-Video Film Produktion, Print colour, DCP from Super-8, 84 min, german OV with engl. SUB, sixpackfilm
Angela [Ashley, editor's note] Ursula Pürrer and Dietmar Schipek are the names of the team behind this film, veteran Super 8 and video pirates, ritual deconstructers of cinematic forms. FLAMING EARS, which took them two years to make, employs a rough plot as a framework to be adorned with the artists’ nightmarish designs, painted sets and surreal objects. A pyromaniac named Volley strolls through the night, wantonly setting objects and dwellings ablaze. Spy, a comic book artist and one of Volley’s victims, becomes a violent loner while plotting to exact her revenge. And sinister Nun, Volley’s lover and an enthusiastic consumer of reptiles, is impending red-leather-clad betrayal for her fire-friendly companion, as she morphs into Spy’s accomplice. [...] Lovely stops along the way: apocalyptic depravity, audio tracks full of pulsing synthetic noise, the absolute physical commitment of the performers and stop-motion animation effects. (Stefan Grissemann, Die Presse published 20.03.1992)
| Acronyms | |
|---|---|
| amer. | American English |
| b/w | Black and white |
| OV | Original version |
| SUB | Subtitles |
| +SUB | electronic live subtitling (below the image) |
| INT | Intertitles |
| Countries | |
|---|---|
| AT | Austria |
| FRG | Federal Republic of Germany (historic) |
| BLR | Belarus |
| DE | Germany |
| CAN | Canada |
| GDR | German Democratic Republic (historic) |
| EGY | Egypt |
| FR | France |
| GB | Great Britain |
| URY | Uruguay |
| BRA | Brasil |
| SWE | Sweden |
| UKR | Ukraine |
| PL | Poland |
| IDN | Indonesia |
| PRT | Portugal |
| HRV | Croatia |
| ECU | Ecuador |
| HUN | Hungary |
| AUS | Australia |
| IT | Italy |
| MEX | Mexico |
| IND | India |
Followed by a conversation with the directors Ashley Hans Scheirl, Ursula Pürrer, Host: Katja Wiederspahn
*1956 in Salzburg. Studied at Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna from 1975-80. In the early 1980s she worked for the weekly evening of performance „Wednesdays at A’s“. 1987 Scheirl starts to live and work in London and among an international scene of queer and transgender artists. In the mid 90s she/he adopts the transgender identity of „Hans“. Graduation as Master of Arts at Central Saint Martins College London in 2003. Beneficiary of the Austrian governmental scholarship in 2006. Chair of „Kontextuelle Malerei“ (contextual painting) at Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna since 2006. Won the city of Vienna’s award for visual arts in 2012. Annual DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) scholarship in Berlin in 2018/19. In 2019: Austrian Art Award for Visual Art and attendance of Biennale Lyon together with Jakob Lena Knebl. Also with Knebl, Scheirl will represent Austria at the Venice Biennale in 2022.
Born in Vienna. Studied Visual Media Design at Universität der Angewandten Kunst in Vienna under Prof. Peter Weibel. Studied Elektroacoustics and Composition at Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna under Prof. Dieter Kaufmann Mag.art. (with honor). Lives in Berlin since 1995, works as film editor since 1996. Directed by (i.a.): GERECHT IST, WAS FALSCH IST (2019, screenplay), BLUEPRINT (2001, experimental feature, 66 min), FLAMING EARS (1992 with Ashley Scheirl+ Dietmar Schipek, 84 min), THE DRIFT OF JUICY (1989, Video, 10 min). Edited by (i.a.): DEMOKRATIE UNTER DRUCK (2019, 92 min, arte, directed by Inga Turczyn+Manuel Gogos), CARTE BLANCHE FÜR PIA MARAIS CARI COMPAGNI (2018, 22 min, arte, directed by Pia Marais), HITLERS HOLLYWOOD (2017, 106 min, arte + Kino, directed by Rüdiger Suchsland).
Katja Wiederspahn studied philosophy and film studies in Frankfurt am Main and gender studies in Berkeley, California. After many years of working with the independent dance theater company Laokoon Dance Group, she was drawn to cinema in the early 1990s and has been passionately addicted to it ever since. Cinema is her passion, hobby, livelihood, cruising spot, teaching and theory workshop - and much more besides. From her dance theater work, on the other hand, she has retained her love of dancing, although she pursues it far too little, she says. As a translator - especially as a member of the queer_feminist translation collective gender et alia and together with Dagmar Fink - she loves and celebrates the work on the term and the collective examination of language, and as a film festival worker together with Dagmar Fink, among others, simply everything that the cinema has to offer as a public, shared, even collective space for experience and discussion. (Source: queertactics.at)
