Discoveries from Austria World Cinema

Through the eyes of cosmic cartographers, MappaMundi takes viewers on an accelerated journey through the 950 million years required for the Earth's development, the 150,000 years of human travel and the 15,000 years of human cartography.

The inhabitants of Vienna line the streets to salute the soldiers who go to the war. The butcher and widower Franz Xaver Wamperl succeeds to enroll himself in the army, and so does his son Ferdl, who becomes a platoon leader. Ferdl is a womanizer, who at the same time has three fiancées in Vienna: Franzi, Resl and Poldi. All three girls remain faithful to him, when he's away at the front, and all of them send passionate love-letters to him. On May Day both Ferdl and his father Franz are back in Vienna on a short leave. They are sitting in an open-air café with another soldier, when suddenly Poldi and Franzi turn up at the same time. When the two women find out that Ferdl has a romance with both of them, they start to weep and quarrel. Ferdl tries to escape, but land in a fight between Franzi and Resl.

To this day, Gustav Klimt's private life is largely unknown. Klimt was considered an introverted and publicity-shy person. Only a few friends knew the knocking code that authorized entry to his studio. Eisenschenk approaches the artist and his mysterious world in a cautious manner.

The story of Alfred Schreyer, the only surviving pre-WWII Jewish resident in this Western Ukraine town. In the 1930s, he was a student of Bruno Schulz. During the Nazi occupation he survived forced labor and concentration camps. After the war he became a singer and violinist in a local Cinema Lobby Orchestra. Today, Alfred Schreyer is a living history.

Chased by Static.

The sailor's daughter Senta takes pity on the centuries-old legendary figure of the Flying Dutchman. He was condemned by Satan to sail the world's oceans until a woman frees him from this curse through her loyalty. One day, when Senta's father returns home from a long voyage with a mysterious man, Senta is the only one who recognizes the Flying Dutchman in the sinister foreign captain. At the cost of self-destruction, she decides to redeem him. Director Christine Mielitz and her set designer Stefan Mayer see Daland's and the Dutchman's ships as an image of the entire world, of life itself, in which we all have to find our way around.

Film by Ernst Schmidt Jr.

Guiseppe Verdi's Lusia Miller returns to the Wiener Staatsoper after an absence of 36 years. This production is conducted by Michele Mariotti and stars Nadine Sierra and Freddie DeTommaso. Stage direction by Philipp Grigorian.

March 2020: João, an HIV-positive Brazilian living in Vienna, has no one to spend lockdown with. Isolated in his one-room apartment, he looks down at the strangely empty streets. While his boyfriend Tom only sporadically checks in from somewhere far away and an online date contracts Covid before they can meet, João's imagination confronts him with a past he would rather not face.

whoosh yeah super very unique aesthetic riddim riddim travel time flying by love it!!! a straight up fine fruhaufattwenger affair.

"Houses for People" is a portrait of four model housing developments, the architects behind them and their philosophy: Gartenstadt Puchenau near Linz (Roland Rainer), Wohnpark Alt Erlaa in Vienna (Harry Glück), Nachbarschaftliches Wohnen Guglmugl in Linz (Fritz Matzinger), and Sargfabrik and Miss Sargfabrik in Vienna (BKK-2 / BKK-3). The four very different living environments from different decades show some surprising parallels, demonstrating that holistic housing design is not a question of typology, but of unconditional orientation towards people's needs.

Experimental short playing with video aesthetic and trash film.

Christoph Schwarz is a fictitious artist, impersonated by the intrapersonal working group ARGE Schwarz, consisting of: Daniel Bleninger (organization/public relations), Blacky Palermo (representation), Christian Schwab (production), Kiki Panini (recreation/inspiration). In Employees Meeting, these four sub-characters discuss the benefits of this company structure in a relaxed studio atmosphere - and the last time they had to be ashamed of the work of another department.

In this essay film, Marie Luise Lehner works with clips of archive material from the Film Museum. We see a circus show in which one titular trick follows the next. However, not only acrobats are involved, but also a number of animals that have long since been banned from circus rings. These images are juxtaposed with the director's questions about people, the environment and politics, allowing for a range of interpretations that are up to the viewer.

Short film by Sebastian Bobik.

It started with an autobiographical art project. Miriam Bajtala used the floor plans of the 18 apartments she had lived in until now. They served as canvases on which she used words and colors to transfer her memories of the given space as well as the disadvantageous socio-economic factors that shaped her as a woman and a foreigner. In the confrontation she had begun with her own family history, the author is now continuing the film, which is fiction, documentary and performance. Different spaces and dimensions of existence – national, class, gender – are constantly layered on top of each other and rearranged in it. The result of the act of visualization and updating becomes a spatial curriculum vitae.

The everyday life of a mistress and her furniture slave. When he suddenly disappears, they find themselves in an identity crisis.

A graffiti wall in Vienna becomes an archeological site and a sgraffito sculpture, as skrffologists activate traces of the past with stopmotion animation. But can history ever be remembered clearly in all its complexity?

Paris – picturesque and cosmopolitan, chansons and street art, Paris Recyclers portraits the cultural, social and urban fabrics of this city by means of experimental animation. The viewer is guided to urban hideouts where little creatures dwell.

Two Filipino women in Germany, their two daughters, the recording of their stories. The document of a word, its collection and circulation between families and languages.

Without any kind of warning or introduction, the Queen of the Night's aria explodes rock music of its time. The famous coloratura parts are as ecstatic as a sung orgasm. The Queen of the Night sings women's names: She is all women, she addresses them all by name. A call and an appeal. Like a hurricane, a night owl, a sexual diva, she flies toward the camera before a starry night sky with a full moon. – M.M.

A touching tribute to a beloved deceased person. The first part of the diptych silently observes the rural house where Zenleser's grandfather spent his entire life. The second part presents excerpts from 8mm films that the grandfather himself shot: a series of glorious sunsets from a distant time. Past and present interact in a magical way and make each other shine.

Sequences, splitters, fragments. In settings of body and pictureroom in space of representation and poetry is volume scanned and reproduced, expressed and restored. A Collage in hommage to Antonin Artaud.

A movie about the movie: light-shadow battle, scratchy, flawed or subtle transitions. In a storm of footage, the very existence of film is action.

Berlin - techno, cobblestones and a lot of graffiti. "Berlin Recyclers" portraits the cultural, social and urban fabrics of this city by means of experimental animation. The viewer is guided to urban hideouts where little creatures dwell. These are digitally composed with collected trash and typical local products. The clatter of the limbs of these creatures interacts with the soundscapes of Berlin.

VHS to digital. Fast forward and slowed down. A synthesis of the digital and the analog glitch. Joyride is part two of an ongoing Elvis video-cycle.

A frame-by-frame animated, drawn invitation to participate in a game of imagination. It is an attempt, to discover the blurred lines between dreaming and being awake and an approach to realities.

A drama set in the near future, it centers on Marius and his daughter Lisa, who are currently experiencing a financial crisis. In order to regain their success, Marius decides to participate in an experiment that has serious consequences for the family.

"1. 'Das Ohr'-a human ear, stuck through cardboard, is poured over with food-stuffs. 2. 'Dolorosa'-a naked female body is continuously sprayed with red paint. 3. 'Kardinal'- a face is continuously slapped with food and paint. 4. 'Michaelangelo'- three naked human bodies are wallowing continuously as they are sprinkled with paint."- Progressive Art Productions

Sitting on her bed, Kurdwin Ayub wears a babydoll and hugs a blanket in her arms. She speaks to the camera as if addressing her ex-boyfriend. How to react to his eyes staring at us?

Looking at an old photograph, a young woman believes to suddenly recognize her mother, supposedly deceased before the image was taken. As a result, she breaks into her family’s abandoned home to face her traumatic past. A tragic story unfolds piece by piece, as the main character corners herself into an unescapable situation, that reflects her long repressed childhood memories.

A funeral feast, a marriage, a final dance, and a first one. With an unmistakable cast and symbolic décor, the Starz-Borowiec duo once again creates a congenial video translation of the music of the Viennese song writer Voodoo Jürgens, who muses about love, the past, and Ludwig Hirsch’s “big black bird” in the melancholic tango “Federkleid.”

Ironically, a cowboy, the most heteronormative character in film history, serves Ezra Šimek as the embodiment of their dreamlike heroin’s journey toward a gender fluid image. Rather than fighting wild pistol duels, this cowboy unites with a witch and together they and the film bury traditional gender roles and oppressive world models.

Luis is seventeen years old and lonely. He wants to be seen and heard, to belong. On an evening with his newfound friend Jakob and the twin brothers, the extent of Luis’s demand for recognition becomes clear. Applaus is the story of a teenager, told in finely nuanced, granular, black-and-white images; between loneliness and the need for recognition, private life, and YouTube publicity.

The performances of the composer and violin star Niccolò Paganini in the first half of the 19th century must have made a deep impression. With his demonic egocentricity, Paganini became famous and very rich. He became even richer thanks to the secret contents of a wooden box that accompanied him, well concealed, inside his private carriage on his travels through Europe.

The fight of the church against the sexuality of women by criminalizing them as witches reveals the insanity of manipulation in the perverted torture and liquidation of women who are suspected to be sexually attractive.

At Praterstern, the controlled fear and adrenaline of the people on the Sausage Prater's roller coasters collides with the media-hyped fear of the Praterstern environment. Serapions Theater uses this very contradiction as the impetus for its film by bringing the two locations together; now, everyday life becomes an attraction: The Praterstern train station halls become a roller coaster ride, and its shop windows become a hall of mirrors.

What looks like a beefy sea cucumber sunk in a toaster without casing is actually a computer-controlled organ of speech. From a YouTube clip of the singing latex mouth montaged after and next to itself, Norbert Pfaffenbichler generates an unconventional collage of images.

Deep in the Atlantic new islands are forming, very slowly, alongside the ancient peaks of the Azores. Some of these emerging islands now reach to just below the surface. But how did the jungle find its way on to the inhospitable rocks, long before the arrival of humans? The answer is birds. Species from Europe and America arrived here carrying seeds. They are in some ways the founders of the islands. And the most common creatures on the Azores are spiders! Around them, following the currents, the giants of the sea congregate to enjoy the feast of microscopic plankton these islands serve them.

Lukas Marxt’s fourth film about the Salton Sea in Southern California focuses on 1944/45, when about 150 dummies, replicas of the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were dropped there for ballistic tests. “Marine Target” measures the remains of the wooden target platforms from up close and high above. The disconcerting soundtrack to this fascinating filmic study is provided by a swelling adaptation of the Nigerian hit “Atomic Bomb” by William Onyeabor.

Three generations of Austrian men find themselves, for a brief moment, living under the same roof on a small farm in this haunting portrait of aging, dignity and familial responsibility.

During a dinner with friends, Ari and Ronja test the limits of their open relationship.