SHORT SYNOPSIS

SLEEPING WITH A TIGER by Anja Salomonowitz is a poetic portrait of the Austrian painter Maria Lassnig (Birgit Minichmayr.) Gifted child, abandoned daughter, determined woman, lonely artist, explorer of inner worlds, celebrated painter - throughout her life Maria Lassnig searches for her own personal artistic expression. The search is always a struggle, as she collides with the male dominated art world  and devotes her entire being to bringing her experience and pain to the canvas. When she finds success and finally becomes a celebrated artist, she’ll do that her own way too.

SLEEPING WITH A TIGER is a biopic with its own form. The painter Maria Lassnig is embodied by one actress, Birgit Minichmayr, at every age - whether she is 6, 19, 64 or 94 years old. She moves through time as an eternally identical figure.

Birgit Minichmayr always plays Maria Lassnig; an artistic translation of the painter's mental state. It is said of Maria Lassnig that she was ageless: she was already wise as a young girl, and remained young at heart as an old woman. The film also translates the physical act of painting, "seeing and feeling the world from the inside out", into a filmic language, itself attempting to paint an inner portrait of this exceptional artist.

This film is therefore no longer really a biopic. It is an evocative, picturesque vision of how memories and feelings are not anchored in time, but able to evoke images at any time.

"My paintings, they have to shine."

NOTE BY MARIA TEUCHMANN

Maria Lassnig, in advanced age, stooped but with a strong voice and vehement demeanor, inspects the set-up of an exhibition and shakes her head. Her paintings have not been hung properly. "My paintings, they have to shine," she says, criticizing the gallery owners. It is Anja Salomonowitz who makes Maria Lassnig's works shine in her film SLEEPING WITH A TIGER.
 

THIS FILM IS FAR MORE THAN A BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAIT OF MARIA LASSNIG.

SLEEPING WITH A TIGER also tells the story of the awakening of a woman who was born in Carinthia, southern Austria,  in 1919. She grew up with her grandmother and later with her mother, who taught her that a woman can only exist alongside a man. Arnulf Rainer, 10 years her junior, became her partner and even the avant-garde cultivated male dominance in society and art. As a result, the young artist had to put up with numerous humiliations as Rainer’s epigone, "which of course really affected my heart," she says.
 

Anja Salomonowitz has created a film that is far from the typical biopic narrative, of the self-discovery of an artist, but is instead a radically feminist work. Lassnig's oeuvre stands above all for the introspective exploration of her own state of mind and the artistic expression of physical sensations. Anja Salomonowitz not only makes this visionary approach to art visible in SLEEPING WITH A TIGER, but also makes the concept of body awareness, which is essential to Lassnig's work, tangible with every grimace, every contortion or every shrug of the shoulders of the main actress Birgit Minichmayr.

Birgit Minichmayr IS Maria Lassnig. She is the child who snuggles up to her father, she is the young, still shy, undiscovered artist, she is the self-confident but constantly vulnerable woman. She is the headstrong woman who does not serve the male-dominated art market for the sake of money, but demands equal pay. She is the older painter who sees her paintings as her children, children who must not be sent to the orphanage. Minichmayr embodies Lassnig at all stages of her life - ageless, timeless, fascinating like her art.

In her directorial concept and screenplay, Anja Salomonowitz sets herself the challenging task of portraying 80 years of a woman’s life, without any masks. Minichmayr's ingenious performance, her physical expression, her voice, allow us to easily follow all the leaps through time the film takes. Like a conductor, Anja Salomonowitz orchestrates the actress's timbre through the decades. The script (screenplay: Anja Salomonowitz, dramaturgy: Roland Zag) is densely interwoven and takes us through Maria Lassnig's life and the history of art in the last century.
 

Colors and motifs from Maria Lassnig's artistic world are also repeatedly reflected in Anja Salomonowitz's film images. SLEEPING WITH A TIGER locates the biographical within the works of art themselves and creates unobtrusive, yet haunting visual quotations. The red motorcycle tells the story of an absent father, the cream-white telephone in the Parisian studio announces the imminent death of a mother.

Formative moments are told through moving images and then find their counterparts in Lassnig's colorful imagery. "Am I afraid to use the color brown because of my past?" she asks herself, after we see the powerful image of the swastika-flag draped Academy of Arts in Vienna, where she completed her studies during these dark times.

Carried by spherical sounds (sound design by Veronika Hlawatsch, music by Bernhard Fleischmann), Lassnig's world of color, images and emotions opens up scene by scene on the cinema screen.

Birgit Minichmayr | Maria Lassnig
 

JOHANNA ORSINI | MOTHER

Selected Filmography
"Light" (Barbara Albert)
"Self-criticism of a bourgeois dog" (Julian Radlmaier)
"To the death of my mother" (Jessica Krummacher)
"Sleeping with a tiger" (Anja Salomonowitz)
"Veni, Vidi , Vici (Daniel Hösl), Didi (Edoardo Winspeare)

TV
King of Stonks/Netflix (Jan Bonny)
My town is looking for a murderer (David Schalko)
The New Era (Lars Kraume)
Landkrimi Osttirol (David Wagner)

OSKAR HAAG | ARNULF RAINER
 

LUKAS WATZL | HANS WERNER POSCHAUKO

HERE IS AN EXCERPT FROM THE CREATIVE TEAM. PEOPLE WHO HAVE ACCOMPANIED ANJA SALOMONOWITZ FOR SEVERAL FILMS.
 

"A biography is always just an interpretation; my film doesn't claim to hold any truth"
INTERVIEW ON CINEUROPE 

 

"A new docudrama raises the profile of Austrian avant-garde painter Maria Lassnig (1919-2014) considered one of the most important artists of the 20th/early 21st century."

REVIEW ON FILMUFORIA

 

"It’s best to see both the biopic and the shorts to appreciate Lassnig’s uncanny talent for marrying morbidity and frolic, rigor and wantonness."

ARTICLE ABOUT LASSNIG'S SHORTFILMS ON HYPERALLERGIC


 

SLEEPING WITH A TIGER | TEASER