Filmography
'A BRIEF GLIMPSE IN TIME' (1 min 39 sec, 2016)
'Motel-A – Or How I Crashed My Plane On Isla Sorna and Fell in Love With Sandra' (Super 8, 16mm, 90 min)
An Erotic Dinosaur Drama.
'HOTEL SLEAZE' (Super 8, Hi-8 and DV, 30 min, 2001)
Rosie With Ant, from 'Hotel Sleaze', 2001 from Johannes Gerhart on Vimeo.
A project that went through a lot of phases and never was finished to my satisfaction. I rewrote the script a gazillion times. After two years the money from the grant was long spent, and I had gotten over time and over budget. At last, my star, at the same time my girlfriend, got fed up and left the project to marry a friend of mine. It took me ten million years to get over this. That's why I look like ten-million now, not forty-two. I like a friend of mine's humorous comment on this story: "So now you're broke and homosexual." The scene here gives but a small impression of what the film could have been. I still love it. The ant is actually a plush cricket that vibrates if you wind it up and gives you a weird feeling if you try to hold it. Like ants.
'Stranger than Italy' (Super 8, 1999, 7 min)
Stranger Than Italy, 1999 from Johannes Gerhart on Vimeo.
A diary, shot from 1998-1999 in Gorizia, Triest and Grado, when I was living in Italy. Starring my friends Georg Wasner, Alina Viola Grumiller, Kerstin Cmelka, Thomas Korschil and me.
'Memphis & the Bitter End' (Super 8, 67 min, 1998) – my first feature film
Renault 4 - Memphis & the Bitter End from Johannes Gerhart on Vimeo.
My next ambitious project, which I started after spending time abroad in Amsterdam in 1994, was a feature film called 'Memphis & the Bitter End', (67 min., 1995-1997, released in 1998), which is a Super-8 road movie with double band live sync-sound – something unusual in the realm of Super-8. It's a musical docu-rama, a portrait of three young men in a car, their youth, the difficulties of growing up, a portrait of Vienna, airplanes in a summer sky and the poster ad for the Austrian cigarette brand 'Memphis'.
Raising Money
I tried to raise money to copy this, my sweet baby, from Super-8 to 35mm, or at least 16mm, so I could send it off to festivals, but the government wouldn't give me any. The whole film had been financed, directed, filmed and edited by myself up to then, but copying film is a costly process – too costly for one person alone. At last the government agreed to give me a tiny fraction of the money I had originally asked for, so that I could copy my movie to BetaCam video. I used that money to rent a computer system to edit a snazzy trailer to raise more money for my film.
Digital Editing Nightmare
The digital editing took ten days and proved to be a pain-in-the-neck-galore. Little did I know about the intricacies and quicksand of digital editing (back in Y2K), but of course it was an experience. So far, I had edited everything on my analogue Super-8 editing table. I planned to re-edit the film and asked Sandra Bullock and Steve Buscemi to do cameos, but Sandra passed on the project. Steve's agents were at least kind of interested, but I didn't pursue it any longer.
A Gorgeous Trailer
The 'Memphis'-Trailer turned out great. It couldn't get me any sponsors, but it won me a first prize at the Gorizia film festival in Italy in the year 2000. It also got a friend of mine interested in my girlfriend, who starred in the trailer and was supposed to play the lead in my next movie. They are married now, and, much to my chagrin, she quit my next super project, a feature film entitled 'Motel'.
'Real Short Cuts' (1994)
Real Short Cuts, 1994 from Johannes Gerhart on Vimeo.
A 16-minute self-portrait entitled "Real Short Cuts" followed. It featured only me, shot in sequential takes of three to five seconds over a period of four months. Actually, I shot the self-portrait throughout the entire year 1994, but I only took a third of it to the 'Viennale' film festival in 1995. For this film I used a variety of Super-8 stock, ranging from AGFACHROME, Kodachrome, Ektachrome, Russian black-and-white (SWEMA), ORWO CHROM, Foma black-and-white. Super-8 looks wonderful on a big screen in a big theatre, I have to say. Especially when you star in it.
'Cigarette' (1993)
Next I shot a small film on 16mm called "Cigarette". It's about a man smoking a cigarette, who gets chased away by a miniature dinosaur. The man was played by my good friend Michael Hütter.
'Dave (Sunday Morning)' (Super 8, 7 min, 1993)
Dave - Sunday Morning (2) 1993 from Johannes Gerhart on Vimeo.
Another Super 8 short film, about a busker in a subway station. The man who played the busker was my roommate and friend Dave Powers, who now works as a sound engineer in N.Y.. The production time of this film was significantly shorter, but I still had to re-shoot certain scenes weeks after the initial shooting, because the camera I had used ran on low speed. I had to get the entire crew, which consisted of seven people, back together on the same day, all of them unpaid. As usual, though we shot on a Sunday morning with almost no people around in the subway station, some people showed up and told me I wasn't allowed to shoot there. Luckily, they could be convinced to let us do our thing - we left soon enough.
'Far East' (Super 8, 7min, 1993)
Far East, 1993 from Johannes Gerhart on Vimeo.
This was a short murder story entitled "Far East", with no dialogue. It starred my friend Thomas again and Michael Hütter.
'Athmosphere' (1991)
Atmosphere, 1991 from Johannes Gerhart on Vimeo.
After shooting a few test films on Super-8 I started what I had envisioned as a two-and-a-half-hour feature film in black-and-white, entitled "Atmosphere". It starred my friend Thomas Juranitsch. After a very ambitious opening sequence, no definite script, and only twelve (quite good, I have to say) minutes of edited film I had to admit to myself I had not got the slightest idea of how to continue with this film financially. It seemed way too long and exhausting for a first time, self-produced movie. So I embarked on a new project, something that could be shot in one week and possibly edited in three.
Shockingly to myself, the shooting, re-casting, re-shooting, processing (which I did myself), directing, editing (on an editing table) and synchronising (100 hours) of my seven-minute Super-8 short took me no less than 14 months.
of Director
