Discoveries from Austria World Cinema

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.

Maria, an astounding singer in a music school , is discovered by an impresario who engages her for a concert in Nizza. A nobleman wishing to leave his gambling debts behind accepts money to fake suicide for unrequited love, for publicity's sake. He heads for Paris, not knowing that she is also going to sing there.

Voices, noise, beats, shouts—acoustic waves. Those of the sea are the starting material for Billy Roisz’s and Dieter Kovačič’s “picture track” for the composition AQUAMARINE by the group MOPCUT. Images like sounds, as great, wavelike arcs, which wind organically and proliferate, branch out and clump together—and at the same time, refer to the tools and circuits that they’re based on.

Film by Billy Roisz and Dieter Kovacic

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.

The starting point of the film is the so-called Moroccan Star, which was affixed to a rock face by the 4e Division Marocaine de Montagne in Feldkirch, Vorarlberg, at the end of the Second World War. The division was part of the French Allies, but has been marginalized by official historiography. The work revolves around the relationship and use of photography as an instrument of colonial power, but also as an element of self-representation, as evidence, as a trace.

This is the 2003 production of Thomas Bernhards play "Elisabeth II. - Keine Komödie", directed by Thomas Langhoff. It was the first time this play took place in Austria, at the famous Burgtheater Vienna.

In Krawutzi Kaputzi, characters from Austrian children's television in the 1970s and 1980s make a comeback. Johannes Glück has written a play that shows the lives of the characters in Meidling (a district of Vienna) two decades after their great television careers.

An everyday scene – a man goes to the ATM and wants to withdraw money for a gift. But the ATM refuses to operate. Mr. Henrich's savings are "on a business trip," and his money is "working," the robot-like customer service representative explains. She tries to calm him down and fob him off with empty phrases.

Egon Wendrinzky's relaxed everyday life in his allotment garden is about to come to an abrupt end. Will he succeed in defending his personal paradise against the dark forces trying to rob him of his happiness?

Director Sven-Eric Bechtolf pulls off a brilliant coup with the high aesthetics of his intrigue, a masterful parody of the "everything is possible" of our time - flanked by an ensemble of exquisite vocal talents.

A surreal montage of science fiction films about the public image oft he robot, collected for the exhibition "Robot Dreams" at the Kunsthaus Graz and the Museum Tinguely, Basel.

Part road trip, part adventure story, FOLLOWING THE NINTH is an inspirational film about Beethoven's Choral Symphony, its majestic power to liberate us, to shield us against suffering, to provide hope and resilience during dark times. Filmed on five continents and in 12 countries, FOLLOWING THE NINTH is the story of four lives that have been transformed and repaired by the music, expressed most vividly in the prophecy of the Ode to Joy: “Alle Menschen werden Brüder”(All Men Will Be Brothers).

While walking the streets of Damascus, Georges Hanet, French artist, hears a woman's screams. He rushes to the place and finds Kora tied to a whipping post and swaying from the unmerciful beating of her master. He rescues and frees her.

On 27th September 1992, 11 yards in front of a Viennese supermarket and 12 minutes before closing time, Helga, 30, is confronted with a fleeting moment of pleasure. She shrugs off the incident. The customer-friendly opening hours are more reliable.

Fantasy musical about an Austrian hippie commune.

During an ascent up the mountain Felix (17) realizes that his older brother Paul (24) is losing mobility and strength. Suppressing his doubts, Felix tries to find a way to communicate to his brother. While they walk, memories of their childhood are awakened and a deep fear about an uncertain future grows.

Documentary about Austrian city Judenburg and its art scene.

Letters from a Window is clearly structured. On the visual level it consists solely of paused film frames, hard cuts of different lengths. The stunning, rapidly changing images appear like brief impressions of a world that has been brought to its knees by a faceless power. The views of people, places, and objects constantly change. On the sound level, in counterpoint to the staccato of the dystopian flood of images, we hear a warm, calm woman’s voice, lovingly and wistfully addressing one “N.”, who might be a man or a woman, in a continuous flow of words. She refers directly to the images, as if she could see them at the cinematic window as she speaks.

In the beginning is the sea. Night over the harbour. Then a plane takes off. Dana, the friend, leaves the airport building. Dana, the milliner, leaves the millinery. Dana, the traveller, sits in the train.

Erotic adventures of a young woman who starts a new job in a hotel.

Mad dictators, trigger-happy mobs, archaic blood feuds - this pretty much sums up what Western Europeans know about Albania. But reality in this long forgotten Balkan country is much more complex and multilayered. SHQIPERIA - NOTES FROM ALBANIA offers a flow of stories from and about Albania, displaying the country in its true diversity, unspeculatively illuminating its conflicts and discovering this blank spot on the map of Europe in all its contradictions.

The film is the personal story of three generations: the (late) grandmother, the father and the daughter, who is directing the film. It focuses on the trans-generational transfer of traumatic experiences. It's a spiritual road movie through deep and diffuse layers of feelings resulting from historical transformations in north-eastern Europe.

Around the solar eclipse of March 20, 2015, Marxt and Smiljanic arrange their own turned and extraneous material into a small catalog of cosmic visions: Eclipse hunters put themselves and their vision devices in position; A space-weather fairy analyzes the recent solar storms; A radar early warning station also waits for signals from above, while the thick fog blocks the view forward.

A winter defined by feast or famine, shattered snowfall records and endless droughts, tidal waves, floods, and for many, a season that simply would not end. In a time where technology and the energy of our planet are accelerating off the charts and Mother Nature's confusion can no longer be explained away by experts. The Kootenay, Purcell, Selkirk, Monashee, Pacific Coast, Cascade, Wasatch, Uinta, Cache, Gros Ventre, Strandafjellet and Kaçkar mountain ranges were on the winning end of the spectrum, and you might guess where the Absinthe crew spent their winter. Twelve riders having a blast, redefining the limits of what is possible. Absinthe brings you the next wintry shred classic: Twel2ve.

The show legend Dagmar Koller, the disco queen of the seventies and author Penny McLean as well as the Carinthian ice hockey family Kalt lead through the Klagenfurt of their childhood and youth.

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.

For weeks now, nightly attacks on guard posts in the underground realm of Bad Vöslau have been increasing. To counter this threat, elite soldier Commander Nix is sent by Head of State Anderson to activate the Horny Heinz Cooperation. This hitman organization, led by the dimwitted Heinz Rüdiger and his mysterious administrator Lu Yeet, now sets out to take on the case. But will they succeed—and what’s really behind these attacks? Who is responsible, and what is their goal? With a mix of humor, intense action, and deep intrigue, the assassins are forced to confront a truth that pushes even their moral boundaries.

Phaethon asks to ride the sun chariot for a day. Helios tries to dissuade his son – but in vain. When the night ends, Phaethon mounts his father's precious sun chariot. The four horses race off but soon, control of the chariot is lost. Phaethon leaves the daily route between Heaven and Earth, triggering a catastrophe of universal proportions.

A man burns down a computer, trinkers around with dynamite and an alarm clock... and mails sinister letters. The man, however, is on a quest for love and understanding.

Tom is an actor and the only thing he really wants on the filmset is a still water. The big Problem is, that his colleagues are too incompetent to organise one.

Celebrating its 125th anniversary, the Viennese orchestra arrives in Trieste, Italy, to perform at the splendid Teatro Rossetti. Soloists include Michael Spyres and Tara Stafford, performing operetta arias by Johann Strauss and Franz Lehár. The Wiener Symphoniker are conducted by their new conductor Petr Popelka with pieces by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky completing the programme.

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 her first film self-portrait, VALIE EXPORT wears an attention-getting curly wig and caresses a woman´s breasts in slow motion, then lasciviously closes and opens her eyes. The carefully applied makeup and wig tell of disguise and acting, and are simultaneously beautiful and terribly stony like the anonymous woman´s head. The brevity and slow speed are reminiscent of Andy Warhol´s Screen Tests, in which every single one of the face´s movements become visible.” – Brigitta Burger-Utzer

An easy-going hussar officer successfully vies for the love of a millionaire's daughter.

Packed with intricate melodies, harmonies, and instrumentation, Johannes Vogel conducts the Synchron Stage Orchestra to perform Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 in C Major K. 551 in this elegant live concert stream. Captured in Vienna’s state-of-the-art Synchron Stage recording facility, experience the thrills and swells of a 40-piece ensemble - 30 string, 5 woodwind, 4 brass, and 1 percussion - comprised of talented musicians from renowned Viennese orchestras. Mozart completed Symphony No. 41 in C Major on 10 August 1788 – the final of three masterpieces he wrote that summer. Labelled ‘Jupiter Symphony’ by music critics, Symphony No. 41 is an example of divine perfection, brimming with the beautiful complexity, emotion, and excitement that represents the possibilities of humankind.

Pürrer and Scheirl as naughty Easter bunnies create their own visual rhyme on Easter: Catholic excess and Christ kitsch become drowned out by undulating sounds and shimmering foil. Jesus pin-up and corpse of Christ reenactment included.

A group of people in a room eating pizza, drinking, conversing, perhaps having a party.

Two neighbors jump into an unexpected friendship outside their windows.

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.

Documentary about Austrian painter Karl Stark.

Cousins Laura Fairlie and Marian Halcombe face a sinister plot when Laura is coerced into marrying the villainous Sir Percival Glyde, who seeks her fortune. With the help of the mysterious “woman in white,” Walter Hartright uncovers the truth about Laura’s twin sister Ann and Percival’s deceit, ultimately freeing Laura from her captor’s clutches.

The Tyrolean David Lama has climbed an 8a route already at the age of ten, and he has become several times Youth World Champion and European Youth Champion in bouldering and lead climbing. In 2010, at the age of 20 years, David decided to leave the indoor climbing and competition world behind him. Since then, he is focusing on Alpinism, the most difficult routes and first ascents in the Alps, but as well in India and America. This documentary portrays David Lama from his first climbing attempts as a little boy to his big adventures in present time. We see famous locations, such as the climbing paradise on Lake Garda, the notorious Sagwand Face in the Zillertal Alps, and the 7.821m high Masherbrum in the Karakorum with its still untouched north east face.

From 300 episodes of the series "A Case for Two/Ein Fall für zwei", the film reorders female death stagings. A short found footage montage about the obsession and fetishization of female murder victims, about the staging of female passivity and about a culture of romanticized femicide.

The story of Leo Bretholz, who was born to Jewish parents in Vienna in 1921 and fled Nazi Austria in 1938 at the urging of his mother. Starting with this, the documentary depicts the community of Holocaust survivors in Baltimore, one of the largest in the United States, and creates a touching portrait of the Austrian-American and the Polish emigrant Bluma Shapiro.