Spotlights
Storytelling in Documentaries
Storytelling in Documentaries
“To tell a documentary story means programmatically chasing after one’s own staging and constantly being overtaken by reality. One sets guardrails, builds milestones that one intends to pass, but unlike in a feature film, the story remains a construction site. Best until the end.
Coming Soon: HEAD OF MOUNTAINS. CHASING THE ELEMENTAL (2026)
HEAD OF MOUNTAINS is an attempt to trace the sudden and the unpredictable—the unexpected that awaits us within the elemental. It is a cinematic counterpoint to a world increasingly devoted to total availability and control. A search for meaning in which the mountains are not reduced to a backdrop, but encountered as a presence in their own right: a counterpart, a space of resonance, and a source of dialogue.
Protagonists: Bernd Arnold, Thomas Andreas Beck, Holger Birkholz, Bodo Hell, Thomas Hrovat, Peter Gasser, Mich Kemeter, Rose Klaus, Kerstin Kowarik, Laura Maiss, Helga Peskoller, Hans Reschreiter, Siegfried Tscholl
Roadmap: 2026 Cinema and Festivals. 2027 Broadcasting at ORFIII.
WILD IN THE MOUNTAINS. MEDITATIONS ON HUNTING (2023)
Hunting is one of those things. Only insiders or outsiders seem to know about it. Accordingly, it is usually romanticized (in the media) or dismissed as murderous. And so, for centuries, ideology has obscured the view of the essential: The mysterious bond that connects the hunter with nature and is torn apart again and again by the shot. WILD IN THE MOUNTAINS is a quiet and sensitive meditation on killing and our relationship with nature, which follows the heels of the hunter as an exemplary figure. A film about the “sweat” of the hunter and the sweat/blood of the game. A search for traces off the beaten track and positions. A film that wants to seduce to see and to hear. Winner at NEW YORK INDEPENDENT CINEMA AWARDS (2023), HONGKONG INDIE FILM FESTIVAL (2024) and NATURE WITHOUT BORDER FESTIVAL (2024), Semifinalist in ROTTERDAM, SAN JOSE, SACRAMENTO and CHICAGO. More Nominations at GRAZ MOUNTAINFILM FESTIVAL (2023) and SALZBURG BERGFILMFESTIVAL (2023).
EVERYMAN ON JOURNEY. THE WORLD SURVEY OF A HOMELESS (2021) was such a film. It does not understand itself as a historical approach to the legendary theater maker, but as a positioning of the Syrian author, which repeatedly ignites itself at the person of Max Reinhardt and his castle – this spectacularly artificial and artistic place. The detour through the other marks a search for traces that repeatedly throw the author back onto what constitutes his identity and externally imposed fixations. Max Reinhardt, the absent and always foreigner, thus becomes part of a puzzle in which ever new perspectives are revealed and even some passages from JEDERMANN can be re-read as a biographical commentary on the upstart Reinhardt. Winner at NEW YORK INDEPENDENT CINEMA AWARDS (2022) and TORONTO FILM AND SCRIPT AWARDS (2022), Semifinalist at SAN JOSE INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL (2022). More Nominations in MONTREAL und BARCELONA.
SHADOWS OF LIGHT. THE OTHERWORLDS OF BARTHOLOMÄUS RESCH (2020) was also such a film. And yet quite different, because I was only brought into the film project late. At a point where everything had already been filmed. Walter Fanninger created images of great quality – about a unique heavy metal festival in the mountains of Austria and its opaque master of ceremonies, Bartholomäus Resch. What was missing was a narrative gravitational field that holds the images together even without a voice-over. By discovering the underlying plot lines and a new working title, everything comes together magically and without meta-explanation. The rest of the editing process is playful and surprisingly reveals a secret structure. The awards in Paris as BEST EUROPEAN INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARY 2020 and in AUSTIN/TEXAS at the ARTHOUSE FESTIVAL were a wonderful addition.
Here are the trailers for the films.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlHhwhiUB5k WILD IN THE MOUNTAINS / MEDITATIONS ON HUNTING (2023) Trailer https://vimeo.com/775097919 JEDERMANN AUF REISEN. DIE WELTVERMESSUNG EINES HEIMATLOSEN / Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGv3P4slJAA SHADOWS OF LIGHT. DIE ANDERSWELTEN DES BARTHOLOMÄUS RESCH / Trailer
mehr »
Portraits
Portraits
Portrait painting has always been a special mirror of its time. It experienced its heyday in the Italian early Renaissance through painters such as Piero della Francesca, Giovanni Bellini, or Botticelli.
What appeals to me about portraits is the verticality that opens up in each person – as an anchor in the world. And of course, the dialogue. The listening. The moment when people push open the door and enter the narrative space. Whether it’s artists like Franz Welser-Möst, world-improvers like Monica Culen, business people like Siemens CEO Wolfgang Hesoun, adventurers like Hans Wallinger, or boundary-crossers like Bartholomäus Resch (pictured) – and whether it’s as text or as film or both – when their eyes sparkle, my heart sparkles too.
"The occult worlds of Bartholomäus Resch are defying any attempt of categorization since years. Even the most benevolent people from the valley agree that there is something odd going on up there. But they say it with a complicit smile and with the conviction that in the face of this event conventional attributioins along right and left are being crushed like the helpless log in the furious dance of fire."
Business Case Movies
Business Case Movies
Unser Stil ist semi-dokumentarisch, wenn es darum geht, Projekte, Referenzen und Lösungen ins rechte Licht zu rücken. Die Formate, die dabei entstehen, sind nicht nur solche der Re-Präsentation, sondern auch solche der Recherche, mit denen wir oft noch unerschlossenes, informelles Wissen freilegen.
Wir arbeiten in kleinen, beweglichen Teams, damit der Aufwand überschaubar und leistbar bleibt. Klassische Imagevideos sind uns zu glatt. Stattdessen versuchen wir den Spirit einzufangen, von dem jedes gelungene Projekt getragen wird. Die Bilder, die dabei entstehen, benötigen wenig Make-up. Sie sprechen für sich.
Für Kunden wie Microsoft, Discovery Channel und UC4 waren wir in Europa und in den USA unterwegs.
Hier eine kleine Auswahl:
mehr »
Media projects
Media projects
Since the 1990s, media projects have been a driving force and springboard for various visions. As SUPERVISOR. MEDIUM FOR NETWORKED COMMUNICATION (from 1993 in cooperation with Computerwelt) it was groundbreaking for the upcoming IT revolutions, as BUSINESS READY PLATFORM together with Microsoft for a new approach to technology (in the 2000s), or as a new GAIT as a regional development platform for Tennengau between 2013 and 2018. Most recently, an award-winning magazine for ZURCHER KANTONALBANK Austria (2021), which wanted to reinvent itself for its 10th anniversary.
The exciting thing about such media projects is that not only the result counts, but the process itself – also its effect inwardly. For me, such projects are an absolute stroke of luck because I can demonstrate my agility in them – constantly switching between conception, creation and moderation.
"To tell authentic stories, you need people who can listen, but also provoke, ask questions, pause, circle back, encourage, persist, and keep going at the right moments. Thank you!"
Books
Books
Wolfgang Tonninger: White-Out. Am Nullpunkt der Geschichten, in: Tonninger, Chlopczyk Chlopczyk and BST Partners (Hrsg): Endings & Beginnings. Almblitz Verlag 2022
Wolfgang Tonninger: Ein Raum aus Fragen. Dialog und Narration als Innovationstreiber, in: Christine Erlach und Prof. Dr. Michael Müller (Hrsg.): Narrative Organisationsentwicklung. Ein Arbeitsbuch in Fallbeispielen, Springer Verlag 2022
Wolfgang Tonninger: Going down the rabbit hole. Pathways to imagination, in: Tonninger, Chlopczyk and BST Partners (Hrsg): Power of Story. Stories of Power. A Conference Reader. Almblitz Verlag 2020
Wolfgang Tonninger: The Sun Is Still In My Eyes. Reflecting on the constructiveness of life, in: Jacques Chlopczyk und Christine Erlach (Hrsg.): Transforming Organizations. Narrative and Story-based Approaches, Springer Verlag 2019
Wolfgang Tonninger (Hrsg.): Auf dem Weg zu einer neuen Gangart. Lesebuch für die stille Zeit. Almblitz-Verlag 2018
Wolfgang Tonninger und Jacques Chlopczyk (Hrsg.): Re-Authoring Futures. CON-TEXTS. A Conference Reader. Almblitz Verlag 2018.
Wolfgang Tonninger: Identität, Diskurs und Unternehmenskultur. Wie wir mit unseren Geschichten Realitäten schaffen und verändern, in: Jacques Chlopczyk (Hrsg.): Beyond Storytelling, Springer Verlag 2017
Wolfgang Tonninger/Udo Bräu: Wegmarken im Möglichkeitenland. Wie der narrative Zugang Menschen und Unternehmen beweglicher macht. Heidelberg: Carl Auer Verlag 2016
Blog
ZENARIO – a blog beyond storytelling
ZENARIO – a blog beyond storytelling
The social buzz at the beginning of the 21st century was unmistakable. Blogs were popping up everywhere, and never before had collaboration, dialogue, sharing, and flat hierarchies been so widely discussed on a global scale. Suddenly, peer-to-peer was no longer just a formal-technical description of a communication practice, but a cultural challenge that questioned traditional loyalties, as people began to exchange and network beyond the boundaries of companies.
Don Tapscott, one of the pioneers of this new sharing economy, summed up this paradigm shift as follows: “Losers create websites. Winners build vibrant communities. Losers build walled gardens. Winners create public spaces. Losers hoard their data. Winners share it with everyone.” This precisely describes the co-creative environment in which advertising and branding now operate, because brands are the stories that other people tell about you.
We should not forget this, especially at a time when social media is in danger of becoming a large equalizing machine. Against this backdrop, blogging means grounding. Nothing more, nothing less.
"We tell stories to children so that they fall asleep - to adults so that they wake up."
