Jobcenter

JOBCENTER leads us into the world of flip charts, bare meeting rooms and training course routines. Trainees with nervousness written all over their faces meet trainers whose friendly expressions never change regardless of their tone. The goal of a job centre is to prepare its clients for the job market and find out how they assess their opportunities and goals within it. Their performance is then optimised. Summereder follows the mechanical rituals of these courses in emotionless images which deliberately reproduce their technocratic character. She observes at a cool distance, only occasionally allowing gentle comments to creep in, fuelling an underlying sense of scepticism at the proceedings. She also provides what the job centre itself does not, repeatedly interrupting its processes to show one-on-one conversations that look behind the scenes of gainful employment. In these scenes, it’s not just the protagonists’ tone that changes, but also the visual language of the film. The close-ups of faces are suddenly joined by emotional, metaphorical images of a lonely path or a house fallen into disrepair. The job centre and its claim to prepare people for what’s out there thus feels especially detached from real life. (Gunnar Landsgesell)

In the presence of Angela Summereder.

Angela Summereder (selection): BLUT IN DER SPUR (1979), ZECHMEISTER (1981), ABENDBROT (2008), JOBCENTER (2009), IM AUGENBLICK. DIE HISTORIE UND DAS OFFENE (2013), AUS DEM NICHTS / OUT OF THE VOID (2015), DIE TAGE WIE DAS JAHR (2018), SCHWESTERN (2020), BARTLEBY (2020)