Discoveries from Austria World Cinema

On July 15th 1934, an illegal gathering of socialists took place in the Vienna Woods. When the fascist police discovered them, they opened fire and killed 2 young men. 90 years later, the traces left by the incident have almost disappeared. A group of people return to recall the past. The trees and the wind can bear witness to history.

Lois Weinberger (1947 -2021) was one of the most important Austrian artists in recent years. He placed ruderal spaces at the center of his work. As early as the late 1980s, he began incorporating plants into his artistic practice, making him one of the pioneers of a movement that offered a new, non-romanticized perspective on the relationship between humans and nature. The film captures moments of inspiration and grace, portraying the artist’s work and legacy. Through intriguing collaborations, the film explains Weinberger’s works and specific projects while simultaneously capturing his essence.

CONCRETE WHISPER is rooted in the 1920 surrealist game "Exquisite Corpse", adapted into a modernized chat group format. The legend of the Basilisk is a thematic thread in the film as it playfully delves into the creation of urban myths. The narrative unfolds as stories evolve freely and unpredictably through retellings from person to person.

They wanted a heavenly vacation, but instead found themselves in a Transylvanian hell.

Some background and promotional scenes shot for Vita-Film Studios at the Rosenhügel studios in the early 1920s.

Ancient Accident is a Collaborative experimental documentary film from the Artists Alessandro Albrecht and Lily Zlotover.

A sound comedy where the action of the performers is directed by strange sounds.

Die Vertreibung aus dem Paradies is not a conventional portrait of an artist, but rather, documents the creation of the eponymous painting by Franz Ringel. The creative process is not depicted as isolated from the painter’s everyday life, instead, the film asks what drives the artist.

In Grey Star 2, Maschek have constructed a hilarious and incisive political satire using found footage of anonymous and various forms of male bonding, juxtaposed with a voice-over in a thick Austrian dialect. Images of army training and vacations in the picturesque countryside warp into cheerful accounts of experiences had during and after service in the German army. Exuberant Nazi nostalgia with an unsettling basis in reality!

Silhouette animation prepared to be shown during a scene change of the Fritz Kreisler operetta "Sissi".

At the age of 19 Andreas got diagnosed with Testicular cancer. Since his first chemotherapy he had to deal with surgeries, chemotherapy, metastasis and another outbreak of his disease. Today he is 26 and has been cancer free for 2.5 years now. But he will always have to live with the fact that he cannot produce testosterone himself or father children on his own.

Double 8 focuses on the encounter with Linda Christanell, artist of the feminist avant-garde of the 1970s [...] In the gesture of mutual filming, images are created in the eyes of the others. The gazes into the camera create a visual loop between the two women while at same time pointing at the beholder. These images constitute the two women as self-determined subjects saying: I see you seeing me - instead of being looked at as an object. (Christiana Perschon)

Sternfeld is sent by a lawyer's office to Taipei to investigate a Compact Disc pirating operation and to document the sales of said CDs on video. He fails to make contact with his informant and ends up wandering aimlessly through the city. His repeated visits to a prostitute do nothing to reduce his feelings of alienation. Only when he meets Chang do his perceptions begin to change.

A 1994 independent film.

This film is an adaptation of an ancient Japanese No play. Four card-players and one is playing for his life. However, he is unaware that he is only a puppet, as the winner has already been chosen. In the game and in life.

A man contemplates his lifeline and discovers something strange.

They are traveling on a rickety wagon, a crier and a storyteller with their wonder box. The view is sold into the peep-box stage, and the peep-box looks back: into the laughing faces of the young audience, who follow the story of Emperor Kanga Mussa on his golden pilgrimage with wide eyes. Accompanied by Gheorghe Zamfir's enchanting music and Attila Hörbiger's concise voice, a mixture of fairy tales and travel pictures unfolds, taking the audience to foreign and mystical places such as Timbuktu or Djenné, where the large mosque by architect Hagmüller is prominently featured.

In the Gruen Effect, an architect's life, work and critical humor become a means to make sense of the cities we live in today. The Viennese architect Victor Gruen is considered the father of the shopping mall and the pedestrian zone. His ideas about urban planning, both influential and abused, have led to cities that serve the new gods of consumption. By tracing Victor Gruen’s path from prewar Vienna to fifties America and back to Europe in 1968, the documentary explores the themes and translation errors that have come to define urban life.

Frau Maria is the last employee of Stastny Fabrics, a shop in the former textile district in the heart of Vienna. While she prepares bales of fabric for the clearance sale in premises that have gone unchanged for decades, she tells of better times, when business flourished and work was a pleasure. She removes the company nameplate and locks the shop for the last time: With it a part of Vienna’s Jewish history disappears.

A non-access nitrate print is held by Filmarchiv Austria.

A woman travels through Egypt. Ludwig Wüst`s first film, based on a piece by author Ingeborg Bachmann.

Anton Webern's "Langsamer Satz" for string quartet was performed as part of the "My GAIA" concert during the Festival's 2012 edition. Composed in 1905, "Langsamer Satz" is in traditional sonata form and in the key of C Major; it would be another twenty years before Webern turned to twelve-tone technique. "Langsamer Satz" premiered in 1962, seventeen years after Webern's death, and has the longest playing time of any piece in his body of work.

The resurrection of a closed-down wood workshop through performative interventions: In pantomime, dance-like choreographies, machines are put back in operation. Working processes are reproduced in their specific rhythms of movement. A mythical invocation of the past and an artistic reflection on femaleness in capitalist society.

Teenage girl Jana wants to be photographed as a femme fatale, in the hopes of seducing Tom – a man many years her senior. Her friend, Andy, agrees to help her out with his analog camera. Surrounded by the constricting solitude of life in the countryside, they arrange to meet in a room at the local inn. While Jana struggles with being fatale, Andy finds himself longing to be closer to her. Slowly, Jana begins to sense that what she’s been looking for all along might very well be nearer than she thought.

A short directed by Christian Genzel.

Family music comedy with fantasy elements that portrays the life of an unusual Roma family seen through the eyes of a ten year-old Manusha.

How can it be that, despite the corruption scandals he has been associated with, Jörg Haider is portrayed as a hero after his accidental death? Nathalie Borgers goes to investigate in Carinthia. Her discoveries range from the comically bizarre to the strangely vexing.

This innovative and spectacular 3-part series shows how examples from nature can make human beings and their machines faster, smarter and more efficiently. Whether in ice deserts, under thousands of meters of water, or on the highest mountains in Order to survive, animals need the conceivable best, toughest and most sophisticated equipment. Over the past three and a half billion years of evolution always had it develop new, more crafty plans and recipes. When we observe people's nature, therefore we find many of our own toughest technical problems already solved. We just have to look closely.

A photographer has a studio in which he asks women to pose in the nude or in daring clothes. Then he receives his all-male clientele, to show them (and the camera, via inserts) the results of his art. But a previous model who refused to take off her clothes, accusing him of harassment, returns with the police in tow.

"Stranger Than Paradise," vaguely associatively linked to Jim Jarmusch's wintery Eighties road movie, is a genuinely film-choreographed work: a hybrid, subtly futuristic chamber play for eight people and an investigative camera. Set in sunken moods and deceptive images, this dance film is an elegy that marks the transition from one species to the next. "Stranger Than Paradise" is a reflection of the systematic expansion of the human and animalistic into the mechanical and sometimes their hybrid existence. The body is obsolescent: it is still needed but the preparations for its abolition are in progress.

It’s not what happened first. It’s what happened next.

The twins Oskar and Leo are a lively pair of brothers aged four. But Oskar has been deaf since birth. The film follows the boys' family over a long period of time and touchesingly shows the everyday challenges that come with living in sign language. Martin Nguyen built a close personal relationship with the family during filming, which gives him a really intimate and emotional take on deafness.

Touches are journeys – A film poem about the multi-faceted journey of interpersonal, intercultural encounters. How are we connected with each other? Based on a poetic text collage by Marion Steinfellner, which brings together Indian, Japanese, German, and Austrian texts by Yuko Kaseki, Savita Rani, Mersolis Schöne, and Marion Steinfellner.

A dream. A woman is sitting in a forest clearing. Did something horrible happen? Children are dead or gone. Anonymous authorities, allies, and a professor scurry around the accused, who is treated like a witness, victim, and suspect all at the same time.

A conflict between two sisters turns out in a dramatic finish

The authentic story of Maria Zechmeister who lived in an Upper Austrian village and was convicted of the murder of her husband. There was no evidence and no confession. Only rumors. Maria and the witnesses re-enact the trial before the camera. They tell about the marriage, the time the husband was a prisoner of war and his return from captivity. If he really had been poisoned or if she was a victim of injustice remains open. Maria Zechmeister was pardoned after serving 17 years in prison and lives in an isolated house at the outskirts of the village.

Weibel stages a documentation of the public as an exhibit themselves.

Two cameras are connected via a switch and the recordings are blended into a picture on the monitor. Layers of various body parts are made in order to form analogies of body-scapes, an anagrammatic of the body: ear instead of nose, vulva instead of mouth...

During bombings in Kharkiv, many citizens are forced to find shelter in the subway stations. This is the story of different figures - a young medical student, who is the only person around with some medical knowledge, a teacher who gives hope to children and a pregnant couple, who believes in a better future, recollecting their memories and thinking about their future.

What would happen if we had no paper for a day? Dr. Pfauenthaler will demonstrate it to us.

A single mother, caught up in the responsibilities of everyday life, feels a desire to express herself and prepares for a casting.

How to survive the end of the world professionally - A film crew accompanies a group of "survivors" as they prepare for the approaching end of the world on December 21, 2012. In doing so, they themselves find themselves caught up in a dangerous whirlwind of events.

After more than 20 years of not acting, a former child actor ventures deep into the forest in the middle of the night with the power of his faith and body to try to overcome collective war trauma and finally feel fearless. But is it even possible to heal after so many dead bodies in similar settings and the blurry VHS footage of executions we grew up watching on the news?