Discoveries from Austria World Cinema

"Turn, turn, turn" was a motto of psychedelic culture. This became "evolve - revolve - evolve" in Barbara Doser's film, which has a psychotropic effect equal to those of hallucinatory experiments made 40 years ago.

Documentation about the 30th edition of the Vienna "Donauinselfest".

Almost everybody is astonished by the fact that the famous writer Carlo Cantuccio, who in the previews years has always been delighted about his birthday cake, would on his 45th birthday suddenly panic at the sight of the dessert. The only person who has an explanation for Carlo's behaviour is Boris Biscottino: a dream Carlo had a year earlier.

Antonia is stuck in her everyday life. She oversleeps, procrastinates and searches the internet for a happy life. Spontaneously, she decides to give structure to her existence and asks her fling for a steady relationship.

In a small village, Shaul sings while Ivan dances happily around a table with other villagers. A moment of joy they will not forget anytime soon. – Based on a story of the collected ‘Tales of the Hasidim’ by Martin Buber.

A day in the life of factory worker Rudolf S. Trapped in a routine existence, he takes refuge in dreams, visions, hallucinations... and the South Seas.

The main themes of this film are WAR - FLIGHT - FAMINE - DISEASE from the viewpoint of children. Refugees from Afghanistan, Palestine, Nicaragua and Cambodia. Military training of Persian and Cambodian (refugee) children in camps. The soundtrack accompanying these frames consists of poems which prisoners scratched on the walls of their cells before they were executed.

Two friends, Martin and Anthony, meet after 15 years, share memories and reflect on their present lives. During their encounter, they go deep in the past of Martin's childhood to reveal a traumatic experience.

This film includes shots from Silberarsch (Silver Arse; the 16th material action by Otto Muehl, 1965), Bimmel-Bammel (Ding-Dong; MuehlŽ s 17th material action, 1965). Gehirnoperation (Brain Operation; MuehlŽ s 22nd material action, 1965, with Günter Brus) as well as Aus der Mappe der Hundigkeit (Out of the Folder of Dogginess) by Valie Export and Peter Weibl. Valie takes Weibel, who crawls on all fours, on a walk along the Kärntnerstraße in Vienna (February 1968), the film also includes a few cuts out of diverse amateur films, among others a film by Walter Funda on dog breeding. Wild montage, destruction through painting-over of the film.

"The film as a mirror and, as a further consequence, the phenomenon of identification primarily inherent in feature films, condense to a type of essence of film's potential. This film reports on cinema and the processes within it. In doing so, it doesn't reveal any secrets, but instead, attempts to transfer – in the sense of seeing what we see – what we do in the cinema and what also can be relevant outside of film into a visually stimulating and captivating event." (Siegfried A. Fruhauf)

A portrait of the first year of peace in Bosnia. This is a human story played out before a background of a war which still makes itself felt, a story of a possible life together, which has on the other hand become impossible in many cases. Rajko, the Serbian mechanic and his family must leave their home for the second time. Nermin, the actor, lost both legs in the war and might have the chance to learn a new role. Halid, a shepherd from the Muslim-controlled region, risks his life to visit friends on the western (Croatian) side of Mostar.

Man & Woman & Animal shows a woman finding pleasure in herself, the whole film is a kind of assertion and affirmation of female sexuality and its independence from male values and pleasures... (Joana Kiernan)

A Saturn film directed by Johann Schwarzer.

Follow Conchita Wurst from winning Eurovision to the media circus back in Austria.

Questions how we as individuals are psychologically relying on our inhabit spaces and how we as society are influencing and being influenced by our surroundings.

In the beginning was the image of a refrigerator which had been left on the staircase of a tenement building. I needed an additional incentive to lure the tenants out of their apartments. An everyday object, ordinary like a refrigerator. Milkbottles.

This film follows a climbing tour in the Alps, one of the most difficult tours in the world, in a stark and detailed manner.

“I don't want to paint a picture of life,” says H. C. Artmann at one point in this film, which his daughter Emily Artmann and his niece Katharina Copony shot in his apartment in Vienna in the fall of 2000. A few weeks before his death, we can listen to the great poet and writer in this deeply empathetic final portrait as he reflects on art and his understanding of literary work in a small, sparsely furnished room. “At the beginning of writing there is absolute silence.”

Two young men meet, gradually growing ever more intimate, a crackling erotic tension is in the air. They do not come across as inexperienced or shy, and they both seem thoroughly aware of their mutual desire. Despite their self-assuredness, their first advances take the form of lightly tender caresses and penetrating gazes, a cautious courtship and teasing. Their inquisitively sensuous lips briefly find each other before moving on to discover their bodies, the coveted other that Theo and Martin are just beginning to explore. They let their encounter take its own time as they fall into talking, dancing, and laughing. Their eyes dance, at times flirting mischievously, at others erotically gleaming. Their gazes draw them together, tenderly gliding over one another's bodies. The two men are having fun with and through each other as they slowly begin to merge.

Over billions of years, evolution has created many ways for living beings to move from one place to another. Explore the many different types of locomotion–all the specific squirms, squiggles, wiggles, and slides in the animal kingdom.

Othello Schwarz, head of a large, successful company, learns via email from his assistant Iara that his wife is allegedly having an affair.

Tommi wants to practice shooting. But his younger brother Simon is also fascinated with their father's gun and insists on coming with him into the woods. Soon, their naive play-fights take a serious turn.

Jowan Safadi, born as Palestinian in the State of Israel, is a famous musician and a true free spirit. With his band Fish Samak he delivers songs ranging from the political and social to the emotional and philosophical and gathered a huge fan-community in the Arabic world. Jowan is unafraid to speak his mind or tackle taboo subjects, and his lyrics, at once penetrating and witty, have also courted controversy on several occasions: Previously investigated by Israeli police for "inciting terrorism", his last tour to Jordan ended with his arrest and an overnight stay in a Jordanian prison cell. But this is just the beginning: standing for co-resistance instead of co-existence and criticizing the stare society he lives in, Jowan struggles for his ideals - at any price.

A man named Gabriel Winter wakes up in a dimly lit, otherwise very dark room. Not knowing where he is, he sets out to explore and encounters a mysterious doorman who directs him to a portal. Behind the portal, however, Gabriel finds only an endless labyrinth of corridors with doors and makes some inexplicable discoveries that slowly drive him mad...

Almost entirely shot in still shots and revealing the corners of a house floor by floor, this is the filmmaker's second meditation (and a perfect continuation to "Tower House") about a particular architecture, as specific as it is captivating.

Isolated from the rest of the action, this time the pram from Eisenstein’s Odessa Steps sequence in Battleship Potemkin really crashes to the bottom.

A middle-aged man bare chest and wearing trousers, clears a shallow trench in the sand while a young woman draped in a long, flimsy veil looks on. The man leaves, but stays in the nearby wood at a watching distance, glancing at the girl divesting of her robe, sitting in the trench as if to sunbathe. She shifts positions a couple of times, but then the man returns, and starts covering her with sand. Unhappy, the girl gets up, picks a flask of lotion from the trench, and leaves with the man.

Summer in Vienna. Fifteen-year-old Matthias spends his time roaming the city with his best friend Leo until late at night. But life can sting a young person, too: an undefined gravity hangs over their shared time, triggered by loss.

In Horse Girl, Natalia del Mar Kašik shows just how much her filmmaking is on the point, by simply having a woman impersonate a horse for four minutes.

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.

What is the human body able to sustain when subjected to devices that record sounds and images? And what can be done with the human body when it tends to evade the representational codes of these devices? MAZY (meaning “labyrinthine”), based on the choreography by Willi Dorner, offers three answers formulated with the dispositives of video, film and computer: videographic marionette, expressive filmic being and computerized trace of movement.

A group of high school students attempt to steal the results of their final exams.

While trying to sneak his way into the Austrian film academy, Peskador is caught by two watchmen who start questioning him. Fortunately for him, he carries with him a magic keyboard: he takes a stance and starts to play. Singers, musicians, parents, nuns, filmmakers and sailors come to his aid in answering some interesting questions.

Every season a young mole visits his blind grandfather, who lives deep underground in a comfortably decorated burrow. As the two grow older their relationship becomes more intense and important questions arise.

Musical TV movie, Schubert's Forellen-Quintett played on Schubert's original piano by the Boskovsky-Quintett, conducted by Willi Boskovsky

The mentally unstable switchman Kramer, a devoted servant of the fatherland, is waiting for a train.

A young woman between two men who fight for her in an unusual way.

An essay film or an ethnographic documentary, contemplating the finite lot of individuals as part of a continuum of human experience in the natural world. Himmel und Erde, translatable as Heaven and Earth, was recorded between 1979 and 1982. The documentary invites the viewer to contemplate the disruptive effects of technology on economic and social ties through circumscribed vignettes of village life, which are often repeated either as recycled footage or variations on a theme.

A family reunites in a holiday home in Styria during the run-up to Christmas for the first time in years. The gathering gradually spirals out of control, old conflicts resurface, new tensions arise, and a parcel – which under no circumstances should be opened – finally throws the evening into complete disarray.

As renowned science journalist Kurt Langbein is diagnosed with ‘terminal cancer’, a professional topic becomes an existential question: how do we die – and what does it actually mean to die? In his deeply personal documentary film, Langbein embarks on a journey to the boundary between life and death.

The short documentary "Arm geboren" (Narrow Circumstances) tells the story of Gilbert Aichelburg (age 82) and his struggles with poverty, with the promises of the Nazi regime and his efforts to build a stable life after the war.

Saida moves between the roles of teacher, daughter, translator and fixer like a train on its tracks. As her boss looms closer, she must decide whether to continue supporting the system or vanish into a world of her own making.

Martin Arnold's remake of the shower scene from Psycho. Made as a spot for the Viennale.