Competition

THIS AIN'T NO HEARTLAND



Country of production: Austria
Year: 2003
Language: English
Mins: 105

Director: Andreas Horvath
Cinematography: Andreas Horvath
Editing: Andreas Horvath
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)

Director Andreas Horvath in person!