Discoveries from Austria World Cinema

A window, complete with blinds, marks the beginning of the visual trip that is this experimental film – a trip taken by performance artist Billy Roisz. Inspired by the hallucinogenic experiences of the painter and writer Henri Michaux, real surroundings quickly dissolve into a succession of abstract images. Stark black and white is followed by psychedelic patterns. Can I almost see a herd of pink hippos there?

Three examples are used to critically examine what is often used in education under the banner of progress. An analysis of three attempts to bring about innovation in education and schools.

An unseen teacher becomes frustrated as they try to teach a poem to a stuffed toy.

Kurt Kren filmed pieces of feature films in the cinema without looking through the viewfinder. The missing sexual climax from the cinema was added by Kren in the form of insights and views from Otto Muehl's Libi Aktion.

About the diverse animal life in and around the stadium.

Lene and Timo have retreated to a house by the sea. Here, they are alone with only each other, however, unspoken matters cast a cloud over their time together. Utopian ideal state or dangerous projection surface? Bohemia by the Sea vividly tells of a couple’s communication difficulties—two speechless people in search of belonging.

A young amateur astronomer wants to enjoy the beautiful night sky but he crosses a hunter which has other plans…

A cinematic essay about the analytical power of utopias as depicted in early documentary films and political pamphlets, centering on excerpts of "Fabrik Poldihütte" (1916), a fragment of an early Austrian sponsored film about Karl Wittgenstein's steel factory, the British documentary and propaganda film "The Battle of the Somme" (1916), the 'reactionary modernist' nazi propaganda film "Metall des Himmels" (1935, Walter Ruttmann), and the text "Europe’s Optical Illusion" (1909) – British pacifist Norman Angell's pamphlet about the 'Great Illusion' that war and military action can help maintain the status of countries in the 'economically civilized' world.

The “gutsiest” film of this or any other year—literally so, as it was shot solely within the director’s own body during a 20-hour capsule endoscopy. With a title that pays homage to American avant-garde supremo Stan Brakhage and using a letterbox-style wide format of image, the ever-inventive Maicher (in his fifth consecutive ÖW contender) plunges us into weirdly colorful intestinal spaces, enhanced by Manfred Plessl’s enveloping sound design and score.

Short documentary scene involving various animals.

The "Mutoid Waste Company" is a group of English travellers who have created an alternative lifestyle for themselves as modern nomads. This film portrays their performance in Vienna.

After "Ringel" (1972) and "M.J.J. Ringel" (1981), this portrait of the artist is Wilhelm Gaube's third visit to the studio of Franz Ringel, the painter. We see him at work and as a great master of Viennese sentimentality.

Freyja, who is twenty-seven, comes to the capital from a provincial village. Freyja is commissioned to do research for a film about Margareta Glas-Larsson (78) and Emil Ostermann (93). The encounter with these people who were both persecuted during the National-Socialist period - Emil was able to escape, Margareta was deported to Auschwitz - causes Freyja to delve into her own past - a confrontation with life and death.

These shorts, executed between 1984 and 1986 in Vienna, exude an amazingly fresh intimacy and vitality. Referred to by the filmmakers as »home movies«, they record actionistic performances in the directors’ own living quarters, with added soundtracks of intermittent percussive sounds.

A meeting between friends in a house, a card game, who loses undresses and revelations and conflicts arise.

Moldova. One winter day, Raisa travels into the city hoping to get something that could change her life.

Bergmanesque ghosts appear at the bedside of Edward Weki, a 75-year-old Sudanese man suffering from the final stage of Parkinson’s: Alma, the nurse of Ingmar Bergman’s film Persona, and a female version of Death from his The Seventh Seal help the old man recover lost memories of his life on the island of Farö.

Johannes Gierlinger and Mira Klug approach the border region between Slovakia and Austria with precisely assembled images that make repressed history visible. Archive photos, landscape shots, and suddenly appearing human poses condense to that urgent certainty that it’s not possible to cast off the past.

27 floors, 10.000 residents: The world-famous residential park "Alterlaa" in Vienna is considered an iconic monument of social utopia. Director Bianca Gleissinger goes back to the place of her childhood, traces the young and old residents of this biotope with a great deal of humor and self-irony, and puts the architect's former promise of happiness to the test.

Zombies and Vampires wanna destroy Vienna with bad music. They didn't know that Vienna has the worst musicians on this planet. They strike back with Austro Pop and Austrian Volksmusic. Special Agent Ed Wood gets the order to save this planet and suddenly he falls in love with the beautiful Pia who is searching for her boyfriend Robert who has turned into a Zombie. It finally comes to a bloody battle.

This performance of the Richard Strauss opera Frau ohne Schatten, recorded live and in high definition, features vocalists like Stephen Gould, Anne Schwanewilms, Michaela Schuster, and Wolfgang Koch in the leading roles.

Short animated film about visualized sounds coming out of musical instruments.

In the United States, the architectural trend of tiny houses is transforming the landscapes and lives of the American desert.

Norman is living a happy life with his family when strangers kidnap him and his wife Kala and shoot one of his children dead. When he regains consciousness again, he finds himself locked in a cage.

A gigantic catastrophe has happened and is interrupted for two or three days. Three strangers find themselves stranded on an empty island, between desperation and a hopeless situation. What to do with the remaining time? But on the second day the sea delivers a silent man. The three survivors fall in love with the assumed saviour and forget about the catastrophe.

A contemplative walk leads to a bizarre climb. The camera, which has barely touched on an everyday rural landscape, attaches itself to a wooden track to follow a breakneck route over a vertical rock face. At the end: a view of the starting point of the journey - the village! It is only a few minutes of film, but hints at an eternity, far, deep under the rock face.

The story is an allegory, combining narrative aspects of comedy films, documentary films, fairy tales, and road movies. The story starts with a dying old woman, who is calling for her distant son. Her calls take solid form in the shape of a giant breadfruit, which falls from the sky right in front of her son's residence. Realizing that this is a message from his mother, the son sets out to find her and takes the fruit with him. His trek across the island involves interactions both with people who are either amused or disturbed by his abnormal fruit, and with those to whom the fruit seems to an answer to their "fantasies", "desires and dark longings".

Sinus Beta is almost a sort of teaching film about bodily behavior in different situations. The film also produces, through the heterogenic photographic materiality of the primary elements, a cross-section of the methods, used in capturing the body in a still photograph. (Mubi)

"It became easier to understand Kren's method of approaching film when he illustrated his matter-of-factness with a story: he was asked to shoot and deliver a film, for a festival, given four day's notice, which he did ('foot'-age shoot'-out'). He normally takes a long time with a film; this one he terms a "rape." He removed his name and copy-right from the piece. "Probably my last film." I asked whether he'd ever seen a print. "Yes, it's great," he replied..." (April Rapier)

Three hundred years old and as timely as ever, Handel's monumental Giulio Cesare in Egitto (Julius Caesar in Egypt) arrives at the 2025 Salzburg Festival in a new staging by the audacious, award-winning Dmitri Tcherniakov! When Caesar (Christophe Dumaux) comes to Egypt on the hunt for his enemy Pompey, he discovers that the pharaoh Ptolemy (Yuriy Mynenko) has beaten him to the punch, setting Pompey's son Sextus (Federico Fiorio) on a mission for vengeance — all while Ptolemy's sister Cleopatra (Olga Kulchynska) schemes to take the throne for herself, leading her directly into the path of Caesar… This tale of uncompromising rivalries and the corrupting thrall of political power is animated by one of Handel's finest scores, majestic in the hands of expert Baroque ensemble Le Concert d'Astrée under their celebrated founder Emmanuelle Haïm.

Experimental short by Tina Hochkogler.

Experimental short merging poetry and the words of Jesus Christ.

Director Matteo Sanders was born thirty-three years ago. Back then, his father was the same age as he is now. Over the distance of the years, they tell one another about an enraptured time. In their dialogue, 33'66° wanders through personal photo albums and searches for those people who can only be found at places of memory. Life lies between Florence and Lou Reed.

At a highway rest stop, a nameless and taciturn truck driver and her dog meet a colleague. In the middle of nowhere, a brief moment of encounter unfolds over the course of an evening. It’s about what was and what will be. The life down the road lies in leaving behind, in handing over, in the painful entrusting of a burden.

Hú Zhǎng Zū writes ancient Chinese poems with water on the ground in Fuxing Park, Shanghai. After a few minutes the characters dry out and disappear. Almost everyday she comes here and practices her handwriting with her friends and colleagues. Together they have lively discussions about the strokes and shapes—amongst each other and with the many spectators. Hú Zhǎng Zū is the only woman within the turmoil of men, and due to her high writing art she is respected and highly admired. I come back to see her often, in order to learn from her and capture these ephemeral moments.

Inge arrives at the palace. Something disturbs her. An uncanny experience has left its mark. Viktor, the assistant of the count, shows her to the countess. Inge has to tell her of the terrible incident. A little, mean picture, colored with postmodern sensations.

‘Powder Placenta’ is a fairytale that narrates the interconnectedness of seemingly separate spaces, spheres and strata, and shows how they desire to be intertwined. Once again and at long last, everything becomes one, no matter how it is normally categorized. Longing has come to an end, the celebration of life in all its glory has begun. (Olaf Möller)

A documentary recording the ceremony and procession in Split on St. Domnius’ Day, from 1911, made by an early pioneer of Croatian film, Josip Karaman.

49,000 year old Neanderthal bones have been discovered by chance in a remote, mountainous region of Northern Spain. The bones may help solve the biggest Neanderthal puzzle of all – why we are here today and Neanderthals are not. ‘The Neanderthals’ dark Secret’ revolves around ongoing investigations deep inside the forbidding subterranean cave system called El Sidrón. Here, Palaeontologist Antonio Rosas and Archaeologist Marco de la Rasilla are in their 11th year of excavation. Bones from at least 12 people and 400 stone tool fragments have been recovered. We’ll bring these people back from the past. Our haunting, hologram-like Neanderthal characters, will communicate to the scientists of today, as they unlock the secrets of El Sidrón. Many mysteries surround the site, foremost, how the bones and tools came to be here in the first place. The remains aren’t weathered nor do they show signs of scavenging from large animals.

The documentary relates how in the second half of the 20th century the agent Berthold Barluschke was first a henchman of the State Security Service of the GDR and then of the West German Federal Intelligence Service.

Short about a lesbian love affair.

Not a stage direction, but rather something very concrete is hidden behind the technical term. Something which betrays a little of the yearning for intelligent and playful dealings with the medium of short film…

To save their relationship, Marisa dives into an odyssey through the vibrant NYC nightlife, dead set on tracking down an ‘I Love New York’ shirt for Rafael at any cost. She soon discovers that in the metropolis of capitalism, even on Christmas, nothing comes for free—except, perhaps, from those who have nothing.

The Mediterranean has always played a central role in our world. It is crossed, made use of, enjoyed, feared and loved every day, every night. Stories from the Sea portrays women aboard three vessels who experience the Mediterranean Sea as a place of longing, a place of work, or a scene of human encounters. The all-encompassing waters, unceasing waves and distant horizons are elements that link the protagonists, regardless of their motivation to go out to sea.

This is the fascinating story of Venice from the late 19th century to the rise of Mussolini through the saga of one of its richest families: the Stucky family. A forgotten Venice, with incredible unreleased archives in original colour and amateur films shot in the early 1900s.

Two female performers – as ringmasters, pining lovers and autonomous artists in a personal union – live through “moments of disclosure” before an imaginary audience. With verve, wit and queer femme-ness, they unmask the performance space as a sexualized game subject to viewing conventions, contrasted through shots of the deserted Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía.