VERDICT: Super 8 footage of an idyllic holiday destination provides the serene surface for Wilbirg Brainin-Donnenberg’s probe into the darker elements of history both political and personal.
When Wilbirg Brainin-Donnenberg’s narration begins over glimmering celluloid images of Lake Grundlsee in Austria, the impression given is that of someone sharing their holiday photos. She recounts her husband’s desire to return to this picturesque vacation spot every year and her own love of swimming in the chilly water. While the physical depths of the lake retain their innocence, it is in delving below the metaphorical surface of this quaint locale and its various connotations that Dirndlschuld reveals itself to be something significantly more complex.
Time is fluid as stories are recounted of various moments throughout the family history taking in parents, great aunts, and the filmmaker’s daughter Anna who appears in some of the footage. Through these disparate tales, Brainin-Donnenberg first engages with the association of traditional Austrian symbols – from the scenery itself to lederhosen and the titular dirndl dress – with nationalist sentiment and then comes to draw in the region’s entanglement with National Socialism during Austria’s annexation by Nazi Germany.
Drawing on notions like psychogeography and hauntology, the film begins to ponder whether the history of a place can somehow be remembered or grafted into the landscape even as the local narratives shift and change over time. Similar questions arise through memories of family members in positions adjacent to, and even within, the Nazi Party. There is not a presumption that such knotty questions can be easily answered as much as a desire to acknowledge them. For every line of narration that discusses Nazi officials being hidden by local people after the war, there is Super 8 footage of Anna reclaiming the dirndl dress as an item of personal and national identity. Ultimately, Dirndlschuld is about the way the stories we tell about ourselves shape and reshape our identities. By its conclusion, the act of recognising the demons of our histories has perhaps helped to offer a way forward.
Director, screenplay, producer, editor cinematography: Wilbirg Brainin-Donnenberg
Cast:Anna Brainin
Sound: Atanas Tcholakov
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Berlinale Shorts)
In German
15 minutes
