Glawogger-Thaler

Abstract

I have always been irritated by the general acceptance that documentary film is somewhat of a subordinate genre in terms of cinematography. With analysing the documentary body of work of the Austrian director/cinematographer duo Glawogger/Thaler I want to prove that documentary film cinematography is as worthy as fiction film cinematography. By investigating the visual aspects of their work which are also used as tools in fiction films I hope to bring a closer view on the importance of observance, constructive contextualisation of the images, visual narrative techniques and the cinematographer’s approach to different documentary topics. The main objective of the thesis is to analyse various visual components in the films: Megacities (Glawogger, M., 1998), Workingman’s Death (Glawogger, M., 2005) and Whore’s Glory (Glawogger, M., 2011) with the intention to point out how the cinematographer successfully advocated outright imagery without having the same apparatus for controlling the visuals as one would have in fiction films.