Tonight, the new Diagonale duo Dominik Kamalzadeh & Claudia Slanar kick off their first festival in Graz. They talk to SPOT about their curatorial signature, challenges and filmmaking in Austria today.
You form the new dual leadership of the Diagonale, Austria’s most important film festival for local productions. You are very familiar with the event, Ms. Slanar, having co-curated the Innovative Film competition for many years, Mr. Kamalzadeh, having accompanied the festival for many years as a film critic for Der Standard. You describe yourselves as „Diagonale natives“. Nevertheless, it is certainly something different to be at the helm of this event. What were your intentions when you took on the job?
Claudia Slanar: We set out with two intentions. One is to open up the Diagonale to the outside world, to bring about greater internationalization – on the one hand for the industry so that it can network more strongly, and on the other hand to bring positions or aesthetic processes and practices to Austria that we think could also be of interest to the Austrian film landscape and deal with topics that affect us all in a pan-European context. The other movement we are aiming for is an inward one. We want to make a regional impact and strengthen the Diagonale in the region outside of the festival period with various initiatives in Styria. These could be cooperations with art institutions or with cinemas. Our aim is to better anchor Austrian film in Styria as a region.
What were the biggest challenges in organizing your first Diagonale?
Dominik Kamalzadeh: In my opinion, the challenge has been several years in the making, because you can only work on the idea of developing the festival step by step. We almost have to tame ourselves a little with our ideas and wishes in the first year. There’s no point in rushing into things. In addition, Claudia and I naturally didn’t have this insider’s view yet, even though we know the Diagonale well. As a festival director duo, you get to know the structure and are expected to question it to some extent at the same time. That’s also a kind of productive overload. This year’s Diagonale is a first attempt to get involved, to translate our plans. But it will certainly take two more editions before we have become more structurally involved in the festival format.
Exchange and debate are important to you, and you talk about a festival being able to also enable „wild thinking“. What exactly do you mean by that?
Dominik Kamalzadeh: It’s a bit about thinking outside the box when doing the festival. It starts with the formats themselves, by saying that not everything has to take place in the cinema, but that we can also go outside of the cinema. For example, there is an Expanded Cinema evening in the Heimatsaal or the exhibition by Lisl Ponger in the Atelierhaus Schaumbad, which in turn is connected to her films. But there is more to come. „Die erste Schicht“, the position on labor migration, also goes in this direction, because we want to ask the question of what a national archive actually is and whether a national archive does not now have to be thought of transnationally. This historical special includes films that have not yet been included in the canon, so to speak. We embarked on a journey of discovery in which we ourselves did not yet know exactly where we would end up.
How many submissions were there and what was the process of creating the program like for you?
Claudia Slanar: There were around 550 submissions in total, divided into different genres such as documentaries, feature films, innovative cinema and animation. And on the other hand in the different formats of long, short and medium-length films. Dominik and I screened the long formats together and made the selection. To curate the short and medium-length formats, we invited a three-person committee with whom we screened together. The innovation was that we put this jury together internationally, namely with Matthias Lerf, a film critic and publicist from Switzerland, the Austrian curator Djamila Grandits and the Berlin-based filmmaker and producer Alex Gerbaulet, and that we screened across all genres in this team. It was important to us that there was as diverse a view of these productions as possible.
In the program announcement, you mentioned various focal points. Did these clusters emerge naturally?
Claudia Slanar: They really only emerged after the selection process. We didn’t go into the film screening with the idea of looking for themes such as ecology, sustainability or care. Rather, we curated the films and then realized that programmatic guidelines and common threads emerged at various points. That was a wonderful discovery. I keep noticing new facets and threads. The interesting thing about curating is when films start to communicate with each other. You discover this the more you engage with the program.
Dominik Kamalzadeh: Interestingly, this intercommunication doesn’t just take place within the competition. But unintentionally also between the positions, the special programs. Especially with regard to the aforementioned „Erste Schicht“, the question of how migration has shaped and changed society has become a kind of leitmotif for the entire festival.
What do you notice in current Austrian filmmaking?
Dominik Kamalzadeh: I can certainly only remain cursory with a spontaneous answer to this question. In any case, we were amazed by the variety of stylistic approaches across all the different genres. In short fiction films, for example, themes are taken up that are very virulent. There is no academicism here, and you don’t get the feeling for a second that the young filmmakers are only working on certain themes that are already established and therefore rancid. Both the established and the new talents are very alert and react sensitively to contemporary issues. One great example of many is the short feature film „Besser so“ by Lotta Schweikert. It’s super interesting how, on the one hand, this topic of political environmental activism, which is so obvious to young people, is taken up, but on the other hand, an astonishingly negative position is adopted. At the same time, that opens up a lot.
Are you still passionate about innovative film, Ms. Slanar?
Claudia Slanar: On the one hand, yes, because I’ve been part of the selection committee for many years; on the other hand, Dominik’s and my interests in experimental forms simply combine well with a general openness. The experimental forms run through all areas of the program. It’s interesting that we have many films that transcend genres, that question genre boundaries, whether in documentary or fiction film.
Dominik Kamalzadeh: You are often shaped, labeled, stamped with a certain cinematic form, even though you don’t want to be. When I was on the selection committee of the Duisburg Film Week, I found myself in the role of the strict formalist at some point.
You say that film festivals are more necessary today than ever. In an era of oversupply of „content“, they serve as a guide through the quality cinema on offer in a given year. Can you elaborate on that?
Dominik Kamalzadeh: Of course, that’s a bit of an idealistic formulation and follows the thinking of Martin Scorsese, who vehemently spoke out against the principle of the algorithm a few years ago. The algorithm is not a curator, the algorithm is an economic machine that leaves us in the bubble and lacks the moment of creativity. Festivals, on the other hand, are places where people make a selection and thus create offers. That is still something important.
A film festival also has to be financed. Is the Diagonale on a solid financial footing? And how difficult or easy is it to find (new) sponsoring partners?
Claudia Slanar: On the one hand, the Diagonale is based on a funding system that is very well established in Austria, but on the other hand it is also dependent on sponsors and partners. We sometimes have multi-year contracts that put us on a solid footing in a certain way. However, we should not underestimate the high inflation rates of recent years and the price increases that have affected goods and subsequently services. As far as sponsorship is concerned, we still have strong partners. But there is a noticeable tendency that as soon as times get worse and economic growth is not as high as predicted, sponsors tend to withdraw and no longer support as much art and culture.
Dominik Kamalzadeh: The unpredictability of sponsorship can also be seen in Toronto or the Berlinale. Political circumstances are also unpredictable. You can’t be too sure of anything.
Austrian cinema achieved very good figures in terms of ticket sales in 2023. „Greece“, „The Fox“, „Pulled Pork“, „New Stories from Franz“… all very commercial titles. Is commercial cinema also part of your festival concept?
Dominik Kamalzadeh: I don’t want to differentiate between serious film and entertainment because I follow an understanding of cinema that, at best, includes a lot of things. Of course we select. One of the festival directors who influenced me the most was Marco Müller, who curated the most eclectic competitions and saw Straub-Huillet alongside Paul Verhoeven and European auteur cinema. On the other hand, there are economic realities that are often used as a political issue, especially when it comes to funding discussions. Our decision to show a comprehensive retrospective of Christoph Hochhäusler’s work follows the idea of presenting an auteur who may not appeal to the masses, but nevertheless follows an understanding of cinema that always takes the popular into consideration.
When the curtain rises on the 27th Diagonale in Graz on April 4, what are you most looking forward to?
Claudia Slanar: We are particularly looking forward to the series „Die erste Schicht“. There are some great films in there that deal with the topic of labor migration in a very unusual way. And more generally, we’ll be happy if the festival is well received, if we see an audience open themselves up to experiments and new perspectives, discussing or possibly arguing – which is also okay.
Dominik Kamalzadeh: I am excited and full of curiosity about the togetherness, the encounters that make a festival so lively.
Barbara Schuster