Meshes of the Afternoon, 1943, Maya Deren

Ceija Stojka, 1999, Karin Berger. Postkarte zur Bewerbung des Films an Peter Konlechner

Deposit

Navigator Film

In 2021, the Austrian film production company Navigator Film deposited its collection of analog films at the Austrian Film Museum.

Founded in 1992 by Johannes Holzhausen, Johannes Rosenberger, and Constantin Wulff, the company's goal is to produce documentaries and international co-productions, in addition to promoting fundamental artistic visions in the documentary tradition. Since its founding, Navigator Film has produced over 60 feature-length and short films for cinemas and television, and sees itself as devoted to auteurist cinema – and thereby the directors.

A wide array of materials for 40 titles are now deposited at the Film Museum: from composite prints to camera negatives of short and feature-length documentaries, produced by or in collaboration with Navigator Film. The range of films produced by Navigator Film is wide, as is their subject matter.

The elements for Johannes Holzhausen's film Auf allen Meeren (2001) are particularly extensive. The film recounts the history of the Soviet warship "Kiev" and its crew. The Film Museum now stores the Super 16mm camera negative, the 35mm interpositive, internegative, and a composite print.

Diverse elements from Martina Kudláček's In the Mirror of Maya Deren (2001), a portrait of the myth surrounding the prominent avant-garde filmmaker, are also part of the deposit, including a composite print, the internegative, and a negative of the film's trailer.

A recurring subject of films produced by Navigator is the re-examination of Austrian's problematic (Nazi) past. Examples include Karin Berger's Ceija Stojka (2001), Berger's portrait of the eponymous artist and writer, who belonged to the Lovari Romani and survived three concentration camps. This set of themes also belongs to Karin Steger's Verräumt (1999), which deals with the past and present of a pair of siblings, who were brought to Austria under Hitler as foreign workers and stayed.

In addition to producing films, Navigator Film is also involved in other activities related to film culture, such as retrospectives and lectures, some of which have been in collaboration with the Film Museum. This includes the presentation of works by major international documentary filmmakers as well as its initiation of the re-discovery of the films of Alfred Kaiser and Wilhelm Gaube in the early 1990s.

Wilhelm Gaube

The collection of films by Wilhelm Gaube (1925–2012) in the deposit is especially notable. According to his own statements, in three decades, Gaube shot over 200 films, nearly all of which are about (visual) artists. At Vienna's Art Club in the 1950s, Gaube had already met some of the artists he would later portray. He first became the librarian and later acting director of the Museum of the 20th Century (today's Belvedere 21). In this role, between 1970 and 1980, not only did he organize over 100 exhibitions, he also invested in 16mm film equipment for the museum, which allowed him to make his films and produce with these documents an archive of memories for future generations.

Der Bildhauer Mathias Hietz, 1995, Wilhelm Gaube

His (short) documentaries primarily follow the same pattern: "A person (Gaube) encounters/films a person (the artist) in a location." Although Gaube himself, who often took on many or nearly all filming duties, is never seen or heard, viewers can still feel his special closeness to the artists: Gaube had long-term friendships with many of them.

Those portrayed – artistic greats of Austrian post-war generation and influential artists from the 1960s and 1970s, such as Martha Jungwirth, Carry Hauser, and Franz Ringel – talk about their practices, works, and art in general. However, he also made portraits of lesser-known artists, such as the undervalued and overlooked sculptor Johannes Koller. For Gaube, there was no difference: "All art is equally holy to him." (Paul Kruntorad)

The simplicity of Gaube's works – characterized by their refusal of tracking shots, pans, and even "filmic staging" – can be seen as a valuable quality: His films are "photographic" in and of themselves and this, in combination with his personal closeness to the portrayed artists, leads to a particular truthfulness. Some of Gaube's films were shown in festivals or cinemas, however they remained unknown to wider audiences. That was never Gaube's intention: "He was unswerving in his intention not to show his films," wrote filmmaker and cameraman Joerg Burger, who had a 17 year friendship and working collaboration with Gaube. (Magdalena Steffan / Translation: Ted Fendt)

Sources
Joerg Burger, "Filme machen für sich selbst und den Künstler. Über meine Zeit mit Wilhelm Gaube". In Österreich real : Dokumentarfilm 1981-2021, Alejandro Bachmann, Michelle Koch (ed.), Vienna: filmarchiv austria, 2022.

Dok.at, "Wilhelm Gaube"

Paul Kruntorad, "Wilhelm Gaubes Künstlerfilme". In Wilhelm Gaube. Filmportraits österreichischer Künstler, Navigator Film (ed.), 1993, p. 16-20.

Navigator Film, "Profil"

Navigator Film, "Der Filmemacher als Einzelgänger". In Wilhelm Gaube. Filmportraits österreichischer Künstler, Navigator Film (ed). 1993, p. 4-5.

Wolfgang Schreiner, "Bildende Kunst in Film, Fernsehen und Video: die Künstlerportraits von Wilhelm Gaube," 2002.

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