Discoveries from Austria World Cinema

Schort documentary on the atomic bomb.

Neonazis, women´s groups, sects, skinheads, punks, the Pope and different groups of the society produce an apocalyptic szenario in a disastrous football match.

A special unit of the American President sets out to Finland to free mankind from Santa Claus.

A BAFTA award nominated documentary studying Hungarian refugee problems after the October 1956 revolution. Shot on the Austro-Hungarian frontier and in the refugee camp at Traiskirchen.

A young mother wants to pass on the Carinthian-Slovenian minority language to her daughter in Graz, Austria. Over twenty years ago, a father failed precisely to do that, hence language plays a role in the relationship with his son. A rapper with Carinthian and American roots shows how he overcomes minority identities, whereas a theater professional calls on politicians to finally give space to the Slovene language, culture & identity in Austria. Still Koroška is a short documentary about the many ways of being Carinthian-Slovenian, about the loss of language and the desire not to lose it amongst linguistic minorities.

Staging macho "bromances" between men like Vladimir Poutine and Xin Junping, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, using G-udit and $chwanger's superimposed faces as they rap in their melancholy style.

For her newly commissioned video "Night 4 Day," Wardill has used the fake relationship between a mother and a son to think about what would happen if a communist revolutionary gave birth to a techno utopian, if gender as performitivity was thought through the lens of women making the political decision to live clandestinely in Portugal for a larger part of the 20th century and if the "Last Woman" were the fem bot from "The Tales of Hoffman."

“Personal Statement” stages photographical treatments of the original medical document. The images unfold vertically while feminine hands (Katerina Thomadaki) try to stroke this mutant body. The off-screen voice (Maria Klonaris) talks to the photographed subject.

This documentary is about the life and works of the Austrian composer Anton Bruckner, a world-famous organist, a beloved teacher, and a controversial composer who in some ways serves as a biographical puzzle piece linking Wagner and Mahler (among many many others). It contains many musical excerpts (two of them from performances not published in any other form), numerous portrait photographs, drawings, silhouettes, written materials, quotes from Bruckner's and others' diaries and other media.

A road movie in reverse across Europe: Jola Wieczorek traces her family’s past from Poland to the idyllic Salzkammergut. The documentary The Days Yet Unknown is a moving portrait of origin, displacement, and the question of what home truly means.

Time as a fundamental element of film is used to alter the interplay between image and space through changing speeds and perspectives.

In the depths of winter, Jack, the mad bounty hunter, is on the trail of the notorious stagecoach robber John Parker - better known as Johnny Boy Parker.

Melanie Ludwig follows the footsteps of her grandparents, who traveled from Linz, Austria to Spain in 1953. During her research, she visits the hometown of the Spanish tour guide of her grandparents. In this village she meets his nephew, who tells her the life story of his uncle.

A colorful and comedic staging of the classic opera buffa by the Vienna State Opera.

Vergence, a term from the field of optics, refers to the convergence or divergence of light rays. It also designates slow involuntary movements made by the eyes to center an image on the retina. Convergence and divergence determine the stability and definition with which an object is perceived. Such dictionary definitions provide the point of departure for the rhythmic optical game of deception that Tina Frank and Florian Hecker initiate in their collaborative work entitled Vergence. The ratio of audio and video components are neither convergent nor divergent; expressed simply they overlap, move apart, then back together, accelerate each other, and so on. This sort of interlocking of sound and image repeats within both components, and as a result they remain autonomous to a great extent.

Initially produced as looped 16mm miniatures presented on custom projectors, Philipp Fleischmann’s dazzling Film Sculptures are a suite of formal experiments exploring queer sensibilities and different states of visibility.

Between birth and death, is the power to love and live. Political rules, religious orders, social norms and cultural taboos control who we love and how we love. The right to love, is controlled and regulated by how we live. But the erotic has the power to emancipate. With spoken word and archive sources, love is unboxed from categories in queer expression and a celebration of eros as the power to change our attitudes to life and to allow others to live their lives without judgment or prejudice.

Experimental short examining the self in deep ways.

Billy Wilder, probably the most successful and famous director in the world, always said that there are only two types of films that have their own name – Hollywood films and Wörthersee films. The only difference: the Wörthersee films always had a happy ending!

The rising city of Shanghai is a place of contradictions. In the heat of the battle for being the most progressive city of the world, many are left behind. No construction without deconstruction. The movie shows the social, economic and visual antagonisms of this vibrant city in a rhythmic and playful way. Shanghai is the engine that drives this experimental and musical documentary to a visual collision course.

A social experiment-turned-baroque musical in a Vienna exhibition space, where the boundaries between body and world dissolve in a delirious and darkly funny mirror image of civilisation itself.

Set in motion at the start is a game comprising fields and markings, present and past, visibility and invisibility. Fences—and ribbons, bleachers, a bit of forest, already divided into territories—refer to the inside and outside of the field, as does every image. The objects in the image and the use of the images blend once again when the members of a military history club appear to restage a battle of the red army against the Wehrmacht.

This film is a cut together of DV-tapes, bought at an online auction whose content apparently has never been deleted. Special Award of the Film Academy Vienna, VIENNA SHORTS 2012.

In a Western theme park near Vienna, a handful of "residents" (the people who work there) are living on the small line between reality and fiction. Yearning to live "outside of the fence", they chased their dreams and hoped to catch an individualistic freedom, a life between fiction and reality. Together the inhabitants of "No Name City" try desperately to keep the five year old city, their dream, alive, despite the constantly changing owners and lack of visitor income.

A man gazes into the camera, breaths, speaks, and blinks. In playfully formal austerity, Thomas Renoldner explores the borders of the cinematic genre. Real film becomes stop-motion, language a hammering noise staccato. The film draws comical and intellectual potential from the transformation of organic movements and sounds into mechanical ones, from the dissolution of the world into abstraction and rhythm.

Found material: film images which show Tito in diverse contexts, at public affairs, with the Partisans, in "private" while shaving, etc. Place of discovery: a destroyed cinema in Mostar, Bosnia in 1996. The film construction, created at the optical printer, is of course also a counter concept to the more narrative models: the marks of war are not primarily made visible on the representational level, but more through the damage done to the film material itself from rubble and dampness, but also through the film´s editing.

In this film, Mattuschka works exclusively with animation. The cheerful cartoon characters Mimi and Max have a bit of a childlike-bisexuality to them, even when the subject seems to be the desire for and the differences from the other sex: "Look at what I´ve got here," says Mimi when she lifts up her skirt, the reply she gets being, "Is that real...?".

Curitiba, the capital of the state of Paraná and metropolis of south-eastern Brazil, is considered to be an outstanding example of sustainable urban planning and living. In order to overcome its huge urban problems, the city planners of Curitiba have, for the past 40 years, come up with creative, cost-efficient and sustainable solutions. These solutions have bestowed a very high quality of life for its citizens.

The Bora is one of the strongest winds in the world, a force of nature. She forms landscapes and sets elements in motion. It determines everyday life and permeates the minds of the people who live in its sphere of influence.

George Marinescu was the principal news anchor of Romania’s national television for twenty years under the communist dictatorship. In 1989, just hours after broadcasting the regime’s threats against the demonstrators, he becomes a spokesperson for the revolutionary group that has occupied the television station. He later goes on to pursue a career as a journalist in the democratic era.

The ‘joule’ is a unit of energy, work or heat. The term is adapted here as a sort of prayer, an exercise in devotion and the act of letting go. In the sequential frames of Joule, a daily practice manifests itself in the form of worship, of liturgy; an expression of tensions straddling the realms of the political and the sacred.

Documentary film about the Romans in Upper Pannonia.

After a revitalizing experience on his way to work , Charlie is driven to reconnect with his past.

Experimental short film, creating distortion through digital artifacts.

Short film about two vagrants, their encounter, an argument, and their parting ways.

A young painter loses his lover and rich patron in a mysterious car accident. He searches the scene for clues, finds a gateway and disappears into it before his friend's eyes. What awaits him is a kind of otherworld where, in addition to a host of macabre spirits, his former lover appears. Like all this place's other occupants, she too attempts to eat the only obviously living being around.

Why does Fred look like Charly who looks like Gernot who looks like Udo who looks like Erwin who looks like Leopold who resembles Ferdinand?

Do you believe in ghosts? An incantation becomes a refrain in this two-channel projection of sequences from an old film, recaptured on a Lomo lens. It’s all in her* hands shaping his form, her* labour questioning his authority.

The film "The Happiness of Others," is engaged in the happy hunting of man in the mental state of happiness. Be happy - and every second of their lives - is the goal of human existence. Welch various ways are there of her, this "feeling of indescribable joy" for a few brief moments by capturing and feel it to be able to show this film. Using a variety of colorful portraits and interviews with successful people, he takes the phenomenon of "Happiness" critical eye.

Photage of people at Praterstern square in Vienna, Austria.

A couple hoping to have children escapes the rain into a shop when a phone app beeps: “The fertile phase is ending soon!” They attempt conception in a fitting room, but things go wrong: curious glances, position crises, sex talk, and other libido killers.

Apfelesser Guter Küsser is a film project that delves into an Austrian childhood myth: Can you tell if someone is a good kisser based on how they eat an apple? A group of men pose for the 16mm camera, each eating an apple in their own unique way. The focus lies on the intimate, almost symbolic gesture of eating, which can be interpreted as both mundane and sensual. The project explores the subtle differences in behavior and implicitly asks whether the way someone eats an apple can reveal anything about their kissing abilities - playful yet profound reflection on physical expression and personal experience. A key visual element is the uniform clothing of the men, all dressed in the same shade of red, which acts as a literal and metaphorical thread throughout the film. The uniform creates an intriguing dialogue between tradition and modernity and balances intimacy and anonymity. -US

The short film Zeitsprung is a cinematic meditation on time and memory, starting with the encounter between a young woman and an older man on a park bench.

A short film to protest against the probable upcoming right-wing chancellor of Austria.

What can you do if you’re as unhappy as the man with white makeup who finds no solace in the streets of the big city? In Simon Spitzer’s music video, dancer Žiga Jereb knows exactly what to do: his performance grows increasingly intense until his legs carry him to a place where he can finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Miki and Benji, two good friends and neighbors, live in the quiet rural region of the Mühlviertel. However, the seemingly peaceful lives of the two friends are shaken when their mutual friend Victor dies under mysterious circumstances. At first, it is suspected that Victor may have taken his own life, but doubts about this theory quickly begin to grow...

The short film is about a young woman who, at first plagued by boredom, is looking for distraction in her monotonous existence. She finds what she is looking for, allows herself to be completely captured by the new influences and immerses herself to the point of ecstasy.