Discoveries from Austria World Cinema

The so-called "male gaze" implies a paradigm that divides the pleasure of watching into an active masculine dimension of looking and a passive feminine dimension of being looked at. In order to establish this binary logic, traditional cinema initially hides the fact of the camera's gaze. Entirely in line with the tradition of feminist filmmaking, TRANS*GAZE breaks with this convention from the start: We see backstage lighting, stage markings and accessories. The subjects speak expressively and convincingly about what Jack Halberstam describes as "queer time and space" as they look directly into the camera: trans*gaze.

The beginning of frame is similar to a drive through the city: "Let´s go for a ride," high energy. The camera pans swiftly from left to right, looking at what´s going on. The beat sets the tempo. The car´s put into gear: Take-off. The story plays out in the viewers´ head rather than in front of their eyes. [n:ja] shows nothing more than pure motion along spatial coordinates which is driven by Radian´s pulsing soundtrack. So much "reality" – in other words details, color and representation – has been removed from the original views of this ride that solely remnants and a basic structure comprise the video image. In the first "shot" we seem to recognize passers-by hurrying in different directions. The point-of-view moves in the opposite direction, following individuals until two parallel lines running from left to right enter the frame as a graphic element, seeming to set our eyes on a rail.

Nura and her family have been relocated multiple times since fleeing Syria. They are now welcomed by a social worker to their newly assigned shelter — an isolated cabin hidden in the Austrian alps. When Ali, the father, heads out to run errands in the village, Nura has to face the consequences of her resistance to accept her new reality.

A man on his quest to revenge the death of his friend discovers a dangerous mystery in the forest.

A pool in the middle of a desert landscape: a cloud passes by, an animator performs a ballet in front of a deserted pool - otherwise nothing happens here. In minimalist coloured and pencil drawings, Alexander Gratzer ponders the relationship between animation (film) and audience.

A enigmatic piece about the fate of an egg and its ultimate demise

Cleo’s quest for perfection threatens to derail plans to start a family with girlfriend Anna.

Experimental short film in three parts.

"Alles hat Grenzen, NUR DER MONDFISCH NICHT" is an environmental musical, in which nature acts and speaks in a diversity of voices. Surfacing evocatively from micro and macrocosmic layers, she resonates with water as the source of life and resounds as an exploited resource. She echoes from the trenches of an inverted world and speaks out as a human being. Reverberating through eco-cultural depths; images, sounds and associations push to light, giving shape to a vision of humanity in tune with nature.

SPARKLE, a snowboarding short film by: Clemens Millauer, Anna Gasser, Adrian Krainer, Marko Grilc, Sani Alibabic & Christian Buchacher. Filmed around their hometowns during the 2021 winter season in Austria. “Just friends, snowboarding and having a good time while doing it! It’s so special with snowboarding how easy it is to connect and make friends. Even though we all do it different or in our own way, it’s still the same excitement which gives us that smile and sparkle in our eyes.” In loving memory of our friend and snowboarding hero Marko Grilc.

Newsreel. A scene from private life.

Within the first three minutes, the arrangement of image to sound is made clear: the recorded voice of Lieselott Beschorner (born 1927) will be accompanied by a black screen, while the images of this artist at work in her studio will be rendered in silent black-and-white. Christiana Perschon continues her creative documentation of female artists (as in SHE IS THE OTHER GAZE, 2018), with a sensitivity to gesture, texture, rhythm, materials. “The line unfolds into something particular,” remarks Beschorner, and the same applies to the film’s capturing and assembling of light, movement, and sound.

A fantasy herbarium combining classical and computer animation. The roots, stems and flowers of plants from Western Europe and South Africa twinkle, tickle, intertwine and pulsate against the black background. They create symmetrical paired structures that resemble a grotesque biopanoptic with human organs.

Despite the omnipresent mood of isolation and uncertainty in April 2020, “Feiertage” portrays the seemingly harmonious city life in Graz, Austria at the time. Nonetheless a sense of ambivalence is apparent.

The short film reminds us that on a daily basis each person copes with their own problems, which are incomprehensible to others. But this does not mean they don't exist. This is illustrated by the example of a young girl who recently moved to Austria. This year, protests against the bloody regime are taking place in her homeland. Although she is trying in every possible way to distance herself from the news about this, realizing that being far away she is unable to help, the girl is tormented by obsessive thoughts.

A mysterious bolshevik named Borski stirs up the workers of a factory against their oppressors.

A village makes it through World War 2.

Trailer for Crossing Europe Film Festival 2008

Tito is a film adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play. Embedded in contemporary Mexico, it discusses the logic of revenge - an omnipresent topic since the beginning of the drug war in 2006. The protagonists of the film are not characters of the play, but tell the story as witnesses, bystanders and neighbours. They do not take part in the events of the play, but are affected by its consequences. In their reflections and commentaries on the play, the fictitious story blurs with their experiences and the present situation in Camino Verde, one of the poorest and most violent districts of Tijuana.

In a conventionalised, excessive world where people conformistly wear black, the new classmate Rosa attracts attention by bringing colour into the class. Nero fears for homogeneity and coherence, so he starts making efforts to assimilate Rosa. Rosa stands up self-confident for her identity, going on to wear coloured clothes. As Nero rans out of patience for Rosa's behavior, he plans to force Rosa to integrate against her will. When suddenly the light expires and everybody feels threatened getting lost in black, Rosa wearing colour is the needed escape. A parable about conformism and the importance of diversity in society.

The film contains quotes from more than 20 films made in Poland in 1952–1989, along with samples from film soundtracks, music tracks, and elsewhere (vintage gay porn movies, music and home video films, social media clips). Completed in Vienna during a covid-19 semi-lockdown, the film conjures my teenage affects and tells them as a blurry and fragmented autobiographical story, simultaneously reacting to the current socio-political situation in Poland, with its “LGBT free zones”, violation of democracy, police brutality, and state censorship.

Music video directed by Kilian Immervoll & Anna Sophia Rußmann for Heinrich Himalaya.

Austrian cartoon that promotes the Vienna Trade Fair.

Austrian experimental short film.

On May 11, 1960, the United States authorized the marketing of Enovid, the first contraceptive pill in history. In December 1967, the Neuwirth law authorized the sale of pills in French pharmacies. Decades later, some women are turning away, concerned about the undesirable effects of this pharmaceutical preparation. American and Indian researchers work relentlessly to develop a male contraceptive. But patriarchal attitudes got the better of the first clinical trials on male contraception.

After an alien invasion, the Albanian port city of Durrës is the starting point for the search for Lilith, the mother of all human existence. From here, an associative travel diary filmed on 16mm unfolds from fragmentary explorations of places and observations of young people to the witty and poetic science fiction film.

No other adjective fits this little and delicious essay on Alpine landscapes and tourists that rest thereabout from the year‘s commotion. Bady Minck works with disposable material — old pictures and postcards — and builds with it a monument to touristic kitsch, using all digital technology available as if it were a rejuvenating system for memories. The result is hypnotic and absurdly beautiful, at the same time as it reveals to us that towns and cities also have a soul. (Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente 04/04) This film takes us on a time-travel using images of an iconic mountain found on postcards. The historic imprint of political realities and human fates are rendered visible onto the idealized landscapes. The post cards where written by travellers who witnessed the same place at different times.

A young researcher tries desperately to find meaning in the work of author Marianne Fritz and discovers the boundaries of language and fiction.

The filmmaker’s mother recounts her life to her son—speaking directly into the camera. She lived almost as long as the 20th century itself (1900–1996). Her fourth child, Heinz Trenczak, turned this account into “a 100-year-long videotape” for his nephews...

In this film, Swiss artist Christoph Draeger layers Gus Van Sant’s “Psycho” remake and Alfred Hitchcock’s original version completely over one another.

The Alps are covered by a nearly invisible security system that’s supposed to protect humans from natural disasters. This film attentively follows the sometimes mysterious-looking activities and preparations to portray the human struggle against the forces of nature.

Rainer Kohlberger attends to “let the possibles roam free” by negotiating not noise itself, but the exchange between noise and form, multiplicity and individuation, order and chaos.

A witch fulfills a blood ritual in the woods to revive her daughter.

Everyday objects and movements are employed as cinematographic mechanisms.