Discoveries from Austria World Cinema

Franz West (1909-85) remembers his youth in Vienna: the variety of the Jewish population of the so called Matzah-Island, his commitment to the worker’s movement of the Red Vienna and the rise of Austro-fascism and National Socialism. West’s masterly narration combined with impressing archive footage illustrate and elucidate the complex Austrian history between WW1 and WW2.

Ten episodes tell the stories of ten encounters involving a male hooker, an actor, a cleaning lady, a female theater director, a male kindergarten teacher, a poetess, a publisher, a woman, who is a lawyer, a male puppeteer and a female make-up artist. The whole circle is triggered by the off-chance meeting of the poetess and the puppeteer on an overnight bus to Vienna, where the puppeteer succeeds in persuading the poetess to stay for a day in Vienna. All the encounters take place in one day and after 24 hours they meet again, but their lives have changed.

A woman is caught in an endless dream in which she has to cross the five rivers of Hades.

A documentary triptych about a group of homeless kids, who have survived their drug-addicted childhood, grew up and started to live an adult life. It’s a story about a boy facing the surreal, degenerated society of his native village full of hate and sadistic anger while searching for his mother. It’s a story about a pregnant girl who wants to give birth to her child whose childhood will probably be even worse than hers. But her own sisters are forcing her to have an abortion.

The film deals with the topic of identity.

Five people in their everyday surroundings tell stories that they have never experienced personally. They recount tales of people involved in trafficking in women. They tell of exploitation , violence and force. They tell of realities which have happened and which might have happened in the places shown.

Mia and Laurenz spend the night together. In bed they create a world full of intimacy. A world where nothing is certain and anything is possible, where time and space become blurred. A made-up world, that feels more real than reality itself. Yet this world is as fragile and fleeting as the night.

The hypnotist Svengali makes an artist's model sing, but cannot force her love.

It's the summer of 1980, and Jana's parents are getting divorced. Jana, her mother and her sister are moving from Vienna to the countryside, where they are living with her grandmother. Big changes for the 13 year-old girl, who's not only homesick, but also wants to become a server at Catholic mass and has a growing interest in Florian, one of the boys from the village...

A man and a woman who have not seen each other for 50 years are filled with hate when they meet at their grandchildren's wedding. Layer by layer, the old couple uncovers their baneful past...

A story about a group of Austria-Hungarian soldiers in the 1st World War. They hold an artillery post in the mountains on the southern front to Italy. The group is cut off from their own troops and under heavy artillery fire from the Italian. When the post receives a fatal direct hit from a shell, killing the comrades, private Jacob Lindner and the seriously injured captain Jan Kopetzky are the only survivors of the post. Jakob has to suffer the madness of this hellish war in all its human atrocities. Without care, help from the command, food and water, to survive becomes an existential challenge. The young soldier tries desperately with humanity and dignity to save his and the injured captains life.

When a father and child go riding on vacation, the boy’s horse begins to gallop, and he falls. The father insists that he get back on, but the child remains on the ground. The Growing Edge blurs the boundaries between choreography and storytelling, exploring the theatrical and staged, the fictional and dreamlike within autobiography. It reflects on the portrayal of lived queer and trans experiences as both personal and political narratives. Set to an eerie soundtrack by music producer rRoxymore, The Growing Edge unfolds as a tender and empathetic dialogue — a dance between past and present memories, timelines, and experiences.

Documentation on the life and work of Johann Nestroy from 1801 to 1862.

An enlightened response to Austria's breathless cinema, a cinematic ricochet with trance flavour enhancers. Cinema which evidently appears to come from a completely different world precisely because its manner of dealing with this world is so uncompromising.

Brigitte Weich’s Hana, dul, sed … dives into a completely alien culture to tell the relatable story of four great young female soccer players on the world-class team from North Korea. Sabine Marte’s FINALE is a martial-arts workout of a unique kind.

The young American heiress Alice—a spoiled, capricious millionaire’s daughter—is sent abroad by her exasperated father to live with her uncle, who promptly grows so weary of her whims that he throws her out. Determined to escape her family’s meddling, Alice devises a morbid plan: she will marry a man who is already gravely ill and sure to die within two weeks, leaving her a carefree widow.

Engaged to the daughter of an aging baron, an ambitious advertising executive wishes to renovate the baron’s crumbling castle into a holiday getaway for the social elite. In his zeal to seal the deal, he manages to alienate his friends, lose his fiancee, and end up with nothing.

Japan, early twentieth century. U.S. Navy Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton inspects the house he has leased from a marriage broker. The broker, Goro, has procured him three servants and a geisha wife, Cio-Cio-San, known as Madama Butterfly. He is enchanted with the fragile Cio-Cio-San. Cio-Cio-San is heard in the distance joyously singing of her wedding. In a quiet moment, Cio-Cio-San shows her bridegroom her few earthly treasures and tells him of her intention to embrace his Christian faith. The Imperial Commissioner performs the wedding ceremony, and the guests toast the couple. The celebration is interrupted by Cio-Cio-San's uncle, a Buddhist priest, who bursts in, cursing the girl for having renounced her ancestors' religion. Alone with Cio-Cio-San in the moonlit garden, her husband dries her tears, and she joins him in singing of their love.

A new member of the Vienna Boys Choir shoulders the blame for a theft.

Organic mountain farmer Christian Bachler and "Oberbobo" Florian Klenk, editor-in-chief of the Viennese magazine "falter", argue in front of 100,000 viewers on Facebook about the responsibility of farmers for their cattle. This creates a friendship. When the bank wants to auction the farm, Bobo starts a fundraiser. 13,000 people follow the call and donate 420,000 euros, the farm is debt-free. A modern fairy tale that changes both of them: Bobo and the farmer are now fighting together for sustainable agriculture.

While on vacation, the young, Benedictine monk Markus runs into temptation in the form of his childhood sweetheart, Linda. Linda, the daughter of Baron Danning, is about to marry the rich manufacturer’s son, Walter Bertram, to save the Danning family estate from the Baron’s debtors. But her encounter with Markus is creating doubts about the sincerity of her love for Walter. So she keeps pushing back their wedding, using as a pretext the demand, that she’ll only marry when the now-silent church organ in the village once more plays. But the organ builder Franz is in a dispute with his twin brother Joseph and has no time to fix the disused organ.

Philippe (Many Pe) and Filippo (Many Pa) make windows. A letter and a package are dropped off. The one man is a glazier and the other works with steel and neon. Scissors/stone/paper - who wins?

A film about a couple on a wellness trip, where one partner disappears and the other isn't sure whether he's looking for her or himself. Within the bizarre world of the alpine wellness resort, Aron begins a new chapter in his life.

Light fiction writer Robert David has completed a novel. He is pleased with his first ambitious work - until one day the main character steps out of the book and disrupts his life.

The first twenty years of Adelheid Dworak's life (1869 to 1889) are traced in a mixture of biographical feature and historical documentary.

Titania, a clumsy adolescent, sits in the tub, on the top of the plug-hole, the entrance to a murky world full of filth, bugs and hazards, which connects her to all the ass-holes in the world. Elements of this world now hover like Ghosts on the surrounding tiles, while Mimi Minus ruminates on the impossibility of love.

9 persons tell their background stories while walking at some place in the California desert.

In I AM HERE!, Wüst gave 16mm and its limitations on shooting a try, resulting in one of his most beautiful and intense works. Little happens outside childhood friends Monika and Martin talking while walking through a forest towards a barren field and a car. Their talk is simultaneously incessant and halting as they circle a history of hurt from their younger days.

It is autumn. An area of villas in the outkirts of the city. A dilapidated villa in an overgrown garden. The three Schwarz sisters live there. They make life miserable for themselves by constantly harassing each other. They can't live together but they can't get away from each other. Their father has been dead for a long time, but his spirit is omnipresent. One day a letter arrives and the uneventful lives of the sisters are thrown into confusion.

A trip through Vienna on a tram.

As an aquarium, the TV set signifies the identity of a real and reproduced event. Its images transform the TV set into an aquarium, a still-life, an object of meditation. But the water gradually runs out of the TV cabinet. The gurgling noise grows louder, the movements of the fish become more hectic, finally they are wriggling for their lives on the waterless floor of the cabinet. A warning sinusoidal tone begins to sound – censorship has saved the fish from their doom. I would have filmed the fish until they stopped flapping about, in order to produce the impression of a real death in a real TV set in a real apartment. This deliberate illusion would have shocked the audience, confronted them with real death as opposed to the pictures of death shown on the news, which now seem nothing more than illusion. (Peter Weibel)

A chain of household accidents, provoked by panic over a basically harmless cut.

Writing against oblivion: The film captures the names of the 66000 Austrian victims of the Shoa written by hand on the Prater Hauptallee in Vienna.

Rest in Peace is all about corpses. About decay and degeneration. About death as an ecological problem, about the dead as human spare parts. About the radical, ultimate end - and the question of whether any part of us remains.

Mysterious murders on the border. Always the same crime scene. The perpetrator lurks on a hill, protected by tall grass. He hunts families. But on this day things are different. A child survives. Traumatized. Months later, an attempt is made to return the child to the crime scene as part of confrontation therapy and the story takes its course.

This documentary film without commentary examines and describes the confrontation of (white) tourists with the still "undiscovered" North Camaroon. A combination of documentation, acting by lay people, interviews and self-portrayals are used. It is shown above all from the viewpoint of black Africans and narrated by four natives. The chief of an untouched village high in the Mandara mountains represents the "original" Africa; Christophe Colombe plays the guide in his native village, Rhumsiki; an African who has visited Europe and has got to know white people; and finally, the famous poet, René Philombé, recites poems.

Driven by specters of his past, the chemist David Endresz works on developing a new drug called NatAct, which is supposed to heal a variety of psychological disorders. Gradually his doubts concerning the drug’s effectivness increase, but his boss, Viktor Kanzler, wants to redeem his father’s business by launching the product before approval. Journalists Miriam Seifert and Stella Wagner plan to expose the scandal about the drug and try to thwart Viktor Kanzler’s questionable intentions. Nevertheless a more and more torn David tests the drug on an unknown experimentee in front of investors and the press. Suddenly forces stronger than any individual’s intention take over and show how fate has connected everyone in the past.

Athletes secretly rehearse a water show in the pool at night to prevent the pool from being demolished and to get more people interested in swimming.

"Hysterical Sisters" is an artistic and abstract poem about the chronic menstrual illnesses Adenomyosis and Endometriosis, that visualises the daily struggles of affected people. Adenomyosis is often described as the "evil sister" of Endometriosis - and vice versa. Two personified illnesses, that cause immense suffering and debilitating pain. Since loneliness, shame and a lack of understanding shape the lives of many affected people, the short film aims to raise awareness, break taboos and ultimately show sufferers they're not alone.

After a one-night stand, Yves believes he has found the love of his life. But when his feelings go unreciprocated, he crosses a line to invade the privacy of the woman he adores.

36 refers to both aesthetic traditions of abstract painting and the structural approaches of early geometric films (such as those of Walther Ruttmann and Hans Richter). At the same time, other associations arise, such as early video games and their restricted movement, which was limited to the main axes. When watching 36, an unbelievable tension and concentration develops for the viewer, caused not least by the clarity of the concept and the reduction of the means. (Gerald weber)

Animated short Film about best friends inspired by childhood stories.

For the 65 time Live traditional New Year's concert from the beautiful Musikverein in Vienna. The concert, broadcast in 90 countries and reaching an audience of over 40 million people, features, as usual, polkas, waltzes and overtures from the Strauss clan and their contemporaries. For the third time, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra is led by the conductor Franz Welser-Möst and the Vienna Children's Choir also participates. Swedish commentator: Camilla Lundberg.

There is a bewitched park in Austria where people hear voices, see strange things or disappear without a trace. According to ancient folklore, you can meet the devil in this forest at night. This is where four young filmmakers find themselves, as part of a reality show, ”Director’s Cut”. As they embark together on an excursion to an occult stronghold in the forest, they start to doubt their own perceptions, their shadows shrouding their desires, fuelling dark fantasies, amidst the poetry of disappearance.

In the year 2700, a comic book artist encounters a mysterious alien while seeking revenge against the pyromaniac who burned down her printing presses.

Aldie grew up with farmer Point and matured into manhood under Grandmaster Sense Hattori Hans. Unloved because of his German dialect, he is drawn into the turmoil of the Tyrolean freedom struggle. Alldie mutates into a freedom hero in a foreign land.

The long road to freedom. For Jacob Wainwright and the nameless ‘Boy’, it is 1,000 miles on foot, then 4,000 across the ocean. From besieged Africa all the way to London. A dead man is their ticket: David Livingstone, the famous British explorer.

REVOLUTION is a film about changing the world, going for it, taking a stand, and fighting for something. A true-life adventure following Director, Rob Stewart (SHARKWATER) over four years and 15 countries discovering there is a lot more than sharks at risk of becoming extinct. Climate change, environmental degradation, species loss, ocean acidification, pollution, and food/water scarcity are reducing the earth's ability to house humans and we need to start doing something about it now!

Stefan is a passionate family man and photographer. Together with his wife Marion, a graphic designer, he manages life with their three children in the big city.

Based on material that emerged during the occupation of the arena in the summer of 1976, the film shows the organization of collective work, the negotiations with the city and community and finally the demolition of the buildings.