Discoveries from Austria World Cinema

What happens in a cinema when you film it at a resolution of 10K with a 360° camera and reverse the spatial and temporal axes? "tx-reverse" shows the collision of reality and cinema in which the order of space and time is suspended.

A kidnapped group of Students must join forces with their abductors to fight a common enemy.

Herbert and Rosa Felsen meet at their lawyer's office to take possession of an inheritance. Herbert is expecting to receive the lion's share, but after greetings are sent from beyond the grave, Rosa receives the key to a safe...

In a small town, in a house, Mr. and Mrs. Pugh sit opposite one another, between them a book on the subject of the "greatest murders by poison", a source of inspiration for Mr. Pugh, and an incentive perhaps for Mrs. Pugh to bring about a change in her life.

Its summer and Yasmin spends her days at her family’s house in the countryside. Together with her boyfriend and his children, she goes on trips to the lake, life seems carefree. But it soon becomes clear that tensions are smoldering under the shimmering summer heat: what begins as an atmospherically narrated family drama, increasingly slides into the surreal.

A filmmaker from Austria experiences in a refugee camp in Serbia first hand the distress, anxiety but also hope of a group of refugees from Syria and their longing for a better life in Europe.

God and the Devil make a bet. Paracelsus, doctor and alchemist, scientist and charlatan, seeker after God and narrator of fariy tales, is allowed to come back to earth to prove that he is capable of winning the love of a woman, having wasted his whole life merely writing about her. Thus he becomes embroiled in the eternal trial between reality and speculation, libido and the rule of the intellect, aiming to swap his pen for his virility and allow his heart to rule over his head.

A housemaid is cleaning a studio. When she sees a sculpture of a nude woman in life-size, lying on a couch, she starts to compare this idealized body with her own. She takes off her clothes one by one, thus revealing her own naked body, and she compares the various parts of her body with those of the statue. The master of the house enters the studio. When he sees his housemaid naked, he tells her to go into the next room, and then goes into that room himself.

A small state in the Persian Gulf, sitting on significant natural gas deposits and bordered by the hottest sea on the planet, Qatar is one of the driest countries in the world. Its seemingly hostile landscapes, devoid of shade and water, are nevertheless home to many champions of adaptation, such as the sandfish, a small lizard, and the desert jerboa, with its disproportionately long legs. The underwater world is also attracting the attention of scientists: it is home to species of coral that are particularly resistant to heat, as well as pearl mussels. After contributing to the emirate's prosperity, these mussels could now improve the water quality of the Persian Gulf thanks to their extraordinary filtration capacity.

THE MAZE dissects the terror-attacks since Paris Bataclan in November 2015 and looks for common patterns. Why was intelligence failing? And why keep our governments pushing for more of the same? A road movie into surveillance reforms, power, money and cover-ups. A search for a way out of this maze - with a glimpse of hope on the horizon.

Everything started with a utopia. To end the antagonism between the oppressors and the oppressed, between the owners and the own-nothings. To create a society that would be truly free, equal and solidaric.

The Bergen Empire 1962. For years there has been a war... Abused for the newsreel as a mascot for war propaganda, the young nurse Elisa is sent back to her devastated hometown to boost morale. But when she is assigned to old General Roald as a housekeeper, he recognizes his young self in her and opens her eyes. Worried about her family, she agrees to a risky plan against the regime..

Filmmaker Kurdwin Ayub dances through Vienna on her own to the sounds of Go! Go! Gorillo, exploring public spaces in her black chador. She encounters amused groups of men and apathetic passersby, letting nothing disturb her calm or throw her off-beat. Dancing on her own, so to speak. The final highlight is a wonderful quote from Andrzej Żuławski in a U2 station!

It is the Friday before a long weekend; the hours of an afternoon in an unbearable hot summer. Karl, the employee, is given one last job to complete.

The celebrated writer Carlo Conti, the superstar among writers for lusty and intimate stories, only wants to sleep and enjoy his inertia. Coerced by his girlfriend and lured by his agent, he nevertheless allows himself to be persuaded to take on an assignment and now he invents erotic stories and scripts taken from everyday life on a continuous basis.

"What could I tell you about the world I live in?" Addressing her unborn child, the narrator tries to find answers partly through claustrophobic pictures interwoven with intimate notes on a pregnancy in times of a pandemic. Based on a childhood memory, the experimental short film spans from the Cold War Iron Curtain, to the so-called “refugee crisis” and the renewed closing of borders during COVID-19. Textures of walls closing in, blur with pixelated maps, creating a subjective portrait of a new reality and its digital image-world.

Unfinished early documentary by Ulrich Seidl about a foto shooting with Sonja Kirchberger and Peter Baumann at the Tunisian seaside.

A warlock risks his soul for a chance to become the concubine of the demon who lives in the eye of the hurricane.

Anna has the difficult task of accompanying her mother Eva during the slow death of her father. She wants to gather the family one last time in one room. While she seems to almost break down at this task, her mother finds one reason after another not to enter the room next to the bedside of her dying husband. But Anna doesn't give up and tries to put an end to her mother's flight from reality.

“An action is causally connected if it cannot be thought away without the specific outcome ceasing to exist,” says Eva, a young prosecutor, quoting the cold logic of law texts. How does it apply to your life? Drifting in the city from one encounter to another, Eva confronts all the images of romantic and parental love that society has established as the status quo.

The anarchist Luigi Lucheni plans to assassinate the Austrian empress Elisabeth. Upon meeting her, he senses their emotional connection. His determination starts to falter. Grateful for their encounter, Elisabeth encourages him in his actions.

The Theater in der Josefstadt has a new artistic director – actor and director Herbert Föttinger. He kicked off his tenure with the world premiere of Peter Turrini's "Mein Nestroy" (My Nestroy). Turrini, who has evolved from the enfant terrible of the 1960s and 1970s to a classic of modern Austrian literature, takes on Johann Nepomuk Nestroy for the third time, who, incidentally, made his debut at the Theater in der Josefstadt in 1829. "Mein Nestroy" sheds light on Nestroy's tense relationship with his life and stage partner Marie Weiler, which lasted over thirty years. The two leading roles are played by Karl Markovics and Sandra Cervik. The opening premiere is directed by the new director Herbert Föttinger.

The poor, out-of-town dairymaid Liesl and the wealthy landowner Martin are in love. The village community rejects Liesl. Moreover, a wealthy innkeeper's daughter has her eye on Martin.

Documentary film portraying the Austrian artist Paul Flora.

Doris embodies innocence and kindness, sacrificing herself for everyone. Day and night, she cares for their seriously ill mother, while her older sister Carmen prefers to go her own way. After their mother's death, Carmen takes her to the vaudeville theater, where she becomes a star but remains unaware of the dangers this world holds. For a small fee, her sister sells her to Fredy, who eventually abandons her while she is pregnant out of wedlock. Carmen Cartellieri and Doris Kay portray this contrasting pair of sisters. Innocence and selflessness clash with amorality and egoism: the decline of morals and its consequences are vividly depicted. (Filmarchiv Austria)

Rain on a window pane, a fire truck, a tomcat with innumerable offspring: it is an intentionally unintentional gaze that allows for chance encounters, for stories and memories - leads that Ruth Beckermann follows across Europe and the Mediterranean. Nigerian asylum seekers in Sicily, an Arab musician in Galilee, nationalists drunk on beer in Vienna, the Capitoline Wolf, and three veiled young women trying for minutes to cross a busy road in Alexandria. Threads, cloth and textiles pop up like book marks in a fabric of movement, of traveling or seeking refuge.

This recording is a rarity documentary about the EAV. The recording was released in 2006 on the DVD "100 Years EAV".

Autumn, as we all know, is when (over-)ripe things fall. Hollow political rhetoric about culture, for example, but also one-dimensional ideas about love and desire.

Nisa tells the story of two roomates whose relationship is challenged by the arrival of an unexpected visitor.

This play, which premiered in Berlin in December 1920, was considered one of the biggest theater scandals of the last century. There were tumultuous scenes during performances and later even a trial – which, in turn, led to Arthur Schnitzler banning his "Reigen" from being performed until 1982. For 30 years, however, the series of ten erotic encounters about people in very different relationship situations has held a firm place in German-speaking theater life. In the summer of 2012, the ORF Lower Austria regional studio recorded the 120-minute production by Helmut Wiesner, who discovered an original version of the play in Switzerland, at the Reichenau Festival in the Neuer Spielraum.

'It was in San Francisco at a punk festival. I was already high and the air was so thick in the rooms that you could cut it with a knife. I had a photograph camera with me; I stood in a corner of the entrance hall and took 36 pictures on slide film. At home I put the slides into a slide projector. I took out the lens and filmed the slides by filming directly from the projector - using single frames according to a certain plan.'

"If I were the second son of my mother and father I would have been my brother. Thus, I am brother, I am brother of the second son of my mother and father, although what disturbs me is the possibility that I could have been the first son of my mother and of another father. Then I would be my own stepbrother or my own stepsister..." - Peter Weibel

‘The Bridge’ follows a young woman who hears a mysterious phone ringing in the forest and follows it into a surreal world, where inspiration resides but cannot manifest. It is a meditation on the creative act as a passage between fantasy and reality; a concept I was very much in touch with throughout the process of manifesting this film.

The story of an at first unsuccessful painter whose bitter struggle within the confines of his artistic works is traced from his studio to the interior of his brain.

Short documentary about working class children in Vienna during the time of the First Austrian Republic.

A man leaves a woman, a woman leaves a man. Both meet for a short while. Great changes await them at the end of this journey.

Story of a farmer's wife waiting for her husband to return home from the war.

Klaus is one of the numerous drug addicts in Austria. His story (parents are separated and he is isolated) is made more realistic with interviews. Not only do the therapists of the drug units at Mödling and Enns, the physicians and politicians who are confronted with these social problems have their say, but also the man on the street who expresses the "voice of the people" - and many other drug addicts.

Vienna in the early eighties: After a suicide attempt, Tina, who comes from a middle-class family, is hospitalized in a psychiatric ward. There she gets to know Gerhard, an apprentice plumber, who also wanted to do away with himself. He comes from a working class family. They fall for each other. A modern love story which is set inside the real life circumstances of the closing of the alternative Youth Center "Gassergasse" in Vienna.

Made out of Found Footage 16 mm Material “Broken time” follows the tradition of Hand Made Film and layering of Film and Material. It is a cinematic process of a Collage, a layering of Picture elements to generate a cinematic complex.

Determined to create the ultimate pandemic film, Stephen (who apparently has never heard of an exquisite corpse) brings a team of filmmakers together, believing he has created a brand new genre of filmmaking, they recruit 20 of their friends to each shoot a segment of the film. A lot goes wrong! Michael convinces the team he can program an AI better than Amazon. Bob wasn't invited. Kate has regrets.

Western-found footage, manipulated to the point of being unable to convey a plot: an armed robbery is prevented through the camera, which brings one figure into a grotesque conflict. The armed confrontation gets stuck in a pounding staccato, while the public - although enbedded in the narration - remains disinformed.

In a makeshift boat, a GDR refugee escapes to West Germany. His newfound freedom is disorienting, and it is only later, with a growing nationalist movement, that he begins to feel at home.

Young couple of young people look back at the career of the "Wirtin von der Lahn", the Inn in Gießen and its stories. With excerpts from all the "Wirtinnen"-films.

The pictures are burning. A house is in flames for exactly one minute. Cinema under attack: An anonymous fragment from the early days of film is turned into a reflection on reproduction and reality as well as on destruction which takes place on two levels through Gustav Deutsch’s reworking of the material.

Liebesfilm is an ironic attack on one of the durables of the Hollywood clichés - the film kiss. A short take of mouths approaching each other is shown 522 times. But the kiss never takes place, merely the speed of the movement is continually increased. This excessive repetition of the theme destroys the "happy clarity" that inhabits "the film kiss" myth.

"Clouds Over Paradise" tells the story of Konrad, an inconspicuous little man. His life revolves around his job at a rundown bank and his only friend, a goldfish. Konrad's only means of escaping his drab life are bizarre daydreams and his subjective perceptions of an absurd world. This all changes one day when the beautiful Maria comes to the bank to close her account. The inept Konrad, who knows that his life is in need of a radical change, does everything to meet the woman of his dreams.

Documentary about the making of the 1949 film "The Third Man".

Richard Nielson, who is in Vienna as the English representative at an aviation conference, has to stand in for his boss on his wedding day. Vicky Nielson then vows revenge on her husband. She releases seven balloons into the Viennese sky, each bearing a note reading "Please report if found" and the Nielsons' address in Grinzing. From then on, numerous misunderstandings ensue.