“Universum: Gesäuse – Wildes Wasser, blanker Fels“ Der Nationalpark Gesäuse” (beyond competition)

Rita und Michael Schlamberger 50 min

The „Xeis“ as the local people call their region “Gesaeuse”, is a world of wild waters between steep rock faces, scaring huge limestone walls and bizarre rock figures. Nowhere else in the Alps are water, forests and rocks located so steep above each other, do the vertical rock faces emerge so high from the soil, and is the sound of the roaring cataracts refracted in a louder echo than here. For generations of mountaineers, these peaks have been a challenge. The attempts to conquer the northern faces was often paid with lives. Nevertheless, it wasn’t the courageous alpinists, but the monks of the Benedictine monastery Admont who, 150 years ago, were the first to conquer these mountains. Those scientists wearing their “habits and nailed shoes” explored the - at that time unknown - summit regions with its fauna and flora. Hidden behind the walls of the monastery is a jewel of baroque architecture – the greatest monastery library in the world. For centuries, the old occidental knowledge has been stored and administrated here. Many old books and documents have only recently been re-discovered. They make history come alive and offer new unexpected insights into a world which seemed almost forgotten. With breath-taking pictures, the UNIVERSUM film maker Michael Schlamberger who has already been awarded numerous prizes, tells the extraordinary story of a landscape and its dramatic changes from the former energy provider for the iron industry at the beginning of the 16th century to the most recently opened national park in Austria.