Invisible Adversaries
Entry updated 30 September 2024. Tagged: Film.
Austrian film (1977; original title Unsichtbare Gegner). Valie Export Filmproduktions GmbH. Directed by Valie Export. Written by Valie Export and Peter Weibel. Cast includes Peter Weibel and Susanne Widl. 104 minutes. Colour.
In contemporary Vienna, photographer Anna (Widl) receives messages on her radio saying that Aliens are taking over the minds of people, without altering their hosts' appearance, with the aim of increasing human aggression. No one else hears these messages, and she is unable to convince her partner Peter (Weibel), her friends or her psychiatrist that the aliens are real. Her Paranoia seems justified in the face of increased police presence on the streets, the rise of the far right in Austria (see Politics), and on a personal level the disintegration of her relationship with Peter. We never discover whether the aliens exist or are just a figment of Anna's imagination.
This was the debut feature of the influential performance artist, photographer and filmmaker Valie Export (1940- ). The sf element is only a small but thematically crucial part of a multi-faceted and effectively paranoid portrait of a right-wing and patriarchal 1970s Vienna, and the public and private negotiations a Feminist artist has to make in order to survive, let alone flourish there. There are many surrealist touches, montages, and recreations of Anna's art, which presumably mirrors Export's own work. Some of the most memorable effects are also simple ones, such as Anna's reflection in a mirror behaving differently from her, cleverly demonstrating her isolation. [CWa]
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