Johanna Tschautscher is an Austrian cinema documentarist and writer. She studied philosophy and dramatics at Vienna University, enrolling at the same time in a private drama school in Vienna, from which she obtained a diploma in 1992.
She worked for several years as actress, assistant director, lighting assistant, production assistant and author. She wrote a number of plays, several novels, radio plays and articels for newspapers. In 2000 she took part in courses on script writing and on the planning and realization of cinema documentaries; the latter, entitled “Sources 2”. In 2001 she started research in Sicily on the topics of identity and organized crime. She realized her first documentary “Nobody mingled with nothingness” 2004. Since then Tschautscher has realized several cinema documentaries, such as “Beni Altmüller”, “Franco Accursio Gulino” and “How many subjects you are?” She did research for five years on the topic of irregular migration from Africa to Europe. Two large-scale projects were realized in 2007, “Europe beyond the dream” and, in 2009, “If you want to help Africa”. Several shorter films such as “March of the hospital beds” and “Idyll according to Stifter” and a book, “Forgive us Lords” were realized inbetween and afterwards. In 2010 she raised the question, How does peace work?. She realized a film about the work of the international community in Kosovo under the title “Wie geht Friede”. How do the EU, OSCE, NATO, NGO’s, the Kosovo Parliament and EULEX work together in order to find a solution for peace in an European Country. In the same year she published a novel, “Jeanne d’Arc ends the holy war” with Albatros Verlag. In 2011 she completed a film in Austrian dialect, “Is eh ois do” – “We got enough, and to spare”, about realized and positively connotated projects in the field of renewable energy in Austria. This film was received very favourably by the media and proved a great success, with audiences appreciating especially the down-to-earth, comprehensive reportage. In 2012 she realized another documentary, “Hans in Luck”. It is the portrait of a highly successful Austrian company producing custom designed hi-tec equipment for industry and a multiple prize-winning hi-tec e-bike, whose battery has won a number of prizes in its own right. Between 2011 and 2014 she produced and directed “Too BIG To Tell” about the worlds finance system. She raised the very much discussed question: How is money created? Without conspiracy theorys she realised a film, which has been on the Top 10 List of the Robert Junker Bibliothek in Salzburg. The “Zentrum für Politische Bildung” in Bonn, Germany, produced 5000 dvd’s of the film, to offer it schools and universitys all over Germany. 2017 she produced a poetic docuemtary about “The myth of redemptive violence” following the books of the famous american theology “Walter Wink”, who was engaged in the peace-movement in America and South Africa for all his life.
Johanna Tschautscher’s work is squarely based on research. She takes stock of facts and pictures and explores them, looking for the subtext of the topic and how they relate to the well-being of the human soul. Organized crime; irregular migration; peace in Kosovo; renewable energy; burn-out as a condition that results from the “maximization of profit instead of the maximization of the development of the personal human nature”, peace and non-violence are key themes in Johanna Tschautscher’s work. In 2009, her hometown, the city of Linz awarded her a medal for her courage and dedication.