Kaiserschnitt - eine Operette

After his exposure of the Third Reich through the arranged confrontation of documentary sound footage the lonely filmmaker Alfred Kaiser swung back to another camera-throw: Kaiserschnitt, an old Austrian documentary-operetta on the last days of mankind, is a yearly amount of work, an activity of collecting picture- and sound-material from the time of 1895 to 1915. In spooky parentheses connections are being made from the babbling sovereign´s word to Wildgans, from Lehar to Mahler. An operetta song sending an amorous heart on its journey, sobbing that "one is like the other" - convincingly taken at the picture of dead bodies of soldiers embeded side by side.

(Roebret Weixlbaumer, 1994)


Kaiserschnitt (Cesarean Section/Imperial Cut), a documentary operetta from the Austrian monarchy that deals with the last days of mankind, the subtle result of a year’s worth of collecting visual and acoustic material from 1895 to 1915. What the sound and image counterpoint is at the same time elaborately composed manipulation and de-manipulation: because the emotional inferno the originals were intended to foist upon the public at the time leads back to the truth not freely discussed.

(Arbeiterzeitung, 1977)