Maria Hofstätter and the Salonists

Weilling Land and People — A Farmer's Novel by Max Maetz

ABOUT THE CONTENT
In Upper Austria during the 1970s, there was no cable television yet. The people in the countryside sat in front of their houses and talked with passing neighbors, sharing gossip with each other. Who bought which tractor, who drove the tractor where, who got caught under the tractor. The most spectacular live events were watching fires and accidents. People would drive to the neighboring village when a farmhouse burned down after being struck by lightning and would only head home once the fire department had extinguished the last smoldering beams. In Max Maetz's story, the farmers walk to the blekboint, a dangerous downhill highway curve, during work and wait for the next accident...

ABOUT THE MUSIC
Since the novel is set in the so-called "Brucknerland" around St. Florian, the musical accompaniment is performed in the historical ensemble of the so-called "Linz Violinists" (2 violins & double bass). It is historically documented that Anton Bruckner played as a second violinist with friends for dances in this very ensemble during his first job as a teaching assistant in Windhaag near Freistadt. Some of these folk dances have been rescued from oblivion and will be presented that evening. The spectrum of music is expanded by folk music-related sequences from Anton Bruckner's major works, arranged by the ensemble. As the proponent of this evening, idea contributor Peter Gillmayr was able to enlist actress Maria Hofstätter, who also hails from Upper Austria, to dramaturgically adapt this text.

MARIA HOFSTÄTTER
Maria Hofstätter (* March 30, 1964, in Linz) is an Austrian film and theater actress. Since 1983, Maria Hofstätter has been performing as an actress on various Austrian and German stages and has appeared in numerous films and cabaret programs. Since 1995, she has co-directed the Project Theater Vorarlberg in Feldkirch with Dietmar Nigsch. She first appeared as a film actress in Paul Harather's tragicomedy "Indien." Her breakthrough came in 2001 as the hitchhiker Anna in Ulrich Seidl's "Hundstage." For this role, she received the Special Jury Prize at the International Film Festival in Gijón. She continued her collaboration with Ulrich Seidl in "Import Export" and the films of the Paradise Trilogy. In "Paradise: Faith," she took on the lead female role as the fanatical Catholic Anna Maria. Hofstätter was one of the five protagonists of the weekly ORF satire radio show "Welt Ahoi!," which aired on Ö1 from November 2009 to December 2010. She regularly performs with productions from the Project Theater Vorarlberg at the biennial cultural festival Walserherbst in the Grosses Walsertal. In 2020, she took on the role of the resolute prison teacher Elisabeth Berger alongside Aleksandar Petrović in the feature film drama "Fuchs im Bau" by Arman T. Riahi. For her performance, she was awarded the German Acting Award 2021 in the category of Actress in a Leading Role.