Series Site
Michael Glawogger’s 2014 death, from malaria, at age 54 cut off one of the most singular and accomplished voices in world documentary cinema at the height of its powers. Glawogger categorized his filmmaking as “the opposite of direct cinema,” roundly rejecting the idea that any sort of objective reality could be captured under the observation of a camera. Instead, working closely with cinematographer Wolfgang Thaler and editor Monika Willi, he reenacted and staged events with his subjects, creating an elevated reality in a unique cinematic language that anticipated the work of later filmmakers like Joshua Oppenheimer.
A protege of fellow Austrian Ulrich Seidl, Glawogger was occasionally painted with the brush of “provocateur,” but his deep empathy, humor, and relentless curiosity guides his films even through the most challenging subject matter. His “Globalization Trilogy” is a triptych of documentaries loosely dealing with the effects of shifting economic markets and modernization on some of the world’s most disenfranchised workers — though Glawogger disliked the “Globalization” framing, eschewing academic detachment to emphasize his audience and subjects’ shared humanity. In each of these films, Glawogger avoids ethnographic trappings by placing his protagonists center stage, never trivializing or overtly romanticizing them even as they experience some of the harshest conditions imaginable.
Glawogger contracted his fatal illness in Liberia, where he was shooting what would be his final film. He kept a production diary, in which, three days before his untimely death, he wrote what would turn out to be a fitting eulogy:
“When he was still a child, he used to think: But the world is so big. – He could not imagine how, for example, a wanted criminal should not be able to hide anywhere where he could not be found. … It was not for he himself had committed a crime nor did he intend to. But the possibility of disappearing was alluring and comforting in its abstractness. Then he would lead his life somewhere else, with a different routine, different trouble, and a different sense of time. With some venturous pain and lots of unimagined luck.”