Discoveries from Austria World Cinema

Fluctuation at the Vienna football club RSV is high. Coach Robin, who once hosted parties at the Prater sauna, sees his club as a political project, too: Players from various birth nations come together in his “dirty rotten bunch”. Athletic highlights are quite often followed by relegation, discipline and excess are cheek by jowl at RSV. Director Jasmin Baumgartner has followed Robin and his team over several years.

A lost monarchy is represented by a princess whose steadfast mission is to restore to her dynasty real political and economic responsibility in contemporary Romania. With great energy, sometimes funny slips, too, but mostly with the appropriate royalist seriousness, Princess Margareta of Romania plays her role as the subject and object of her own campaign. The performance is of the tale of new wine in old wineskins. Surrounded by her courtly entourage, Margareta travels through “her” country in the same old royal train, on the same royal route, in which her father, King Michael the First already sought contact with his subjects. It goes without saying that the red carpet as the most obvious symbol of monarchist grandeur must be immaculate even at the tiniest stop – though this isn’t always achieved perfectly.

This is a film with minimal content. Using a film pen, a line was drawn across a strip of clear leader, until it hit the edge of the frame ("cheers"), and then the line was drawn back to the other side ("cheers"), etc. This strip functioned as the film negative. The projection is the drawn out line as a white line that wanders back and forth, bringing light and darkness into the theater. Because of this one should not only watch the movie screen, but also the light that comes out of the projector and the reflections in the theater. A "light play." (E.S.jr.)

An Austrian documentary, released in 2007.

May 2012 is composed of three visual elements. In the momentary opening shot the camera spies on riverside joggers from the Donaumarina U-Bahn station. Inside a nearby care home, two elderly women are eating. One is the artist´s mother. She stares into the camera, from where a loving hand reaches out to caress her face. Finally, we see a Christmas pudding decorated and surrounded by candles, all afire. The scene is reminiscent of the flaming Christmas tree in Anger´s Fireworks but was in fact inspired by a viewing of Po zakonu (By the Law) by Kuleshov. The flames burn strongly and race out of control, causing the camera to become agitated, breaking free from its static point of observation, perhaps in panic. The film is characteristic of Friedl vom Gröller´s project to break down the separation between daily life and the making of art, being a particularly compelling example of her recent works that meditate on the process of ageing.

16mm, 4min, colour, sound Experimantal montage film from Thomas Drashchan

Sand and Blut shows the recent history of Iraq and Syria – from the perspective of those who have come to Europe in recent years. Whether it is the conquest of their own village by Syrian regime troops, the crimes perpetrated by various rebel groups or the destruction of their own parents' homes, war refugees can watch these tragedies in videos broadcast over the internet. The film consists exclusively of videos filmed by activists, fighters and civilians. The protagonists comment on the footage and speak openly about their experiences.

Across Europe hoopoes are struggling. But amidst the orchards and vineyards of the Wagram region near Vienna they are thriving. This documentary shows how the small bird with the spectacular crown feathers made a comeback in the heart of Europe and how it is dealing with its neighbours: Aesculapian snakes, foxes and falcons. But it is also the story of one man's dream that came true: Manfred Eckenfellner is the Hoopoe Whisperer, and through his passion the birds found their way back to the Wagram. Stunning photography captures the Hoopoe, which are at the top of Austria’s endangered list. This program examines the reasons for its perilous situation and the measures being put in place by one man to return the Hoopoe to a protected environment.

The record of a human intervention in nature: A static shot shows part of a landscape, a serene body of water in front of a mountain. A motorboat enters the picture from the right, obeying the directions sent by radio and forming a spiral in the water's surface. The boat then turns to the left and leaves the scene; solely its wake is visible for a time.

Documentary about a small town in Austria.

A timelapsed camerashot (24 hours timecircle compressed to 4 minutes) shows the daily life in Europe's smallest bar, the Loosbar in Vienna. The main figure is a female barkeeper screaming for a witness of love confession.

Slow-mo video art piece shot in Japan.

A car drives through Schumann street from its beginning to its end. The drive was filmed in one take, end and beginning of the film being identical with the end and the beginning of the street. The length of the street and the length of the film strip become identical by an apparent equation: space becomes time, space distance becomes time distance/duration.

2000 short by Dietmar Brehm

A middle-aged woman in rural dress and a young woman in a smarter dress are picking up herbs in a forest. The workload and the sunny day call for a halt for refreshment. The young girl disrobes, and enters the nearby river in the nude, followed by the mature woman who simply fathers her long skirts up to her waist, revealing her naked thighs and white-slip covered buttocks. The camera follows them to the right, capturing the water movement, and their splashing about. (A white sunflower stands alone in the midst of the water creeks - hinting at the Production company's logo, an 8-pointed star.) A fisherman arrives and starts throwing his hook at the fish, with no results; so, he moves to the right, and throws the hook again, this time capturing the heavy mature woman who comes from behind the curtain of willows, complaining of pain in the lower of her back. A policeman in city uniform and white casket appears, to expel both the fisherman and the woman from the place.

In this film, what we normally perceive as the horizon line is rotated by 180°, disrupting and short-circuiting the image vertically. A kind of interrogation of the 'habits' of the eye and the ear. The conceptual approach of seeing oneself see, of hearing oneself speak — an elementary projection into something else — is denied in favor of the imaginary function, in order to reexamine what seems immutable: the sense of truth and the truth of sense.

An abbot establishes a monastery on a disused airfield in the southern Romanian plains. He proves to be just as knowledgeable about strategic issues of national security as he is about ecclesiastical matters. But things don't turn out to be quite so spiritual on God's runway after all.

In a luxury Irish resort, a guilt-ridden night manager must confront her inner demons, a resentful ex-girlfriend, a hallucinating colleague, and a sinister night of terror to reclaim her sense of self.

Beneath the beauty of spring lies a brutal tragedy… The birth of roe deer fawns coincides with the mowing season in Austria’s meadows, leading to a brutal struggle between nature and modern agriculture. “For Deer Life” tells the story of the dedicated drone operators, who put their heart and soul into rescuing the lives of as many fawns as possible. The film highlights the powerful combination of innovative use of thermal drones and the unwavering commitment of volunteers, to prevent this tragic loss of life. With the aim to inspire both a local and global audience to embrace technology as a conservation means, emphasising the harmonious balance between agriculture and wildlife protection.

In the hope of getting closer, Elli and her father, who is suffering from cancer, paint his apartment together. Her father's harsh manner makes communication difficult and pushes the young woman away. In order to move forward, she has to confront the ghosts of the past and break through the layers of conflicts that have been kept hidden for too long.

The experimental documentary reinterprets the Anatolian tradition of coffee reading. This practice opens up ways of imagining the reconnection of living and non-living beings.

An experimental sci-fi documentary focusing on the question of what will remain visible and what will be left to tell if humans vanish from the world, from the image. Landscapes and architecture become mummified relics of a former human presence.

From the Tyrolean mountains to Lake Garda - director Hermann Weiskopf is back on the road: at the crisp age of 60, he wants to find out on a trip on his beloved Vespa whether his age is all about high blood pressure and dieting or whether there is more to it - and how others approach the subject of ageing.

This is the point where you stop and I start. Lactation period. It captures, records, takes care: the camera as a reader of traces of radical intimacy and as the alienation from one’s own body. The transformative experience ends with Weaning, the point where the nourishing substance hits my camera lens. – C.P.

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.

Lili and Edda lead a not-so-co-dependent friendship which is unraveled over the course of one day. Between Tiled Floors and Strawberry Fields follows newly graduated friends as they savor the end of the summer and inevitably start growing apart.

Matri Linear B takes the expressive powers of the Earth’s surface as “speaking landscapes” as its starting point, as agencies of a statement, while exploring how we can learn to see them. Central for the project’s second part, Surfacing Earth, are the cosmologies and land rights politics of indigenous Australians in Yuendumu and Tijikala in the Northern Territories. They appear as a horizon and boundary in a transmitted cosmology that is over 40,000 years old. They require a way of thinking about the relativity of space, which, according to astrophysicist Arturo Escobar, “is not to be thought about with universal concepts, but with several universes at the same time that can be interconnected…”

Matilda has been stuck in a memory loop, replaying the same moments over and over again. But this blissful act of remembering quickly turns into a compulsion, leaving only distorted images of her beloved memories. Her attempt to break out of this cycle seems successful. But the question arises, can one ever really escape nostalgia? Where do we put all these memories and versions of us that we'll never life through again but await us at the next corner we pass?

Barbara, a highly engaged senior, takes in Sabur and Zakaria. In return, the two men from Afghanistan must keep the house and garden in order and, without their consent, endure private lessons on the “Western lifestyle.” It’s a fine line between support and encroachment.

Since Bruno and Ronja moved into their new apartment, strange things have been happening. A complete stranger attacks Bruno with a spear. A religious cult stalks Ronja and their landlord showers constantly in their shower. Unfortunately for them, their fate leads them unflinchingly to the answer of these mysteries.

Spring at a Viennese Lake, but too cold to swim. Nobody there who wants to be filmed.

What is the meaning of "memory" in the digital age? For humans memory consists of subjective images of past events, for computers memory refers to an objective capacity to store information. The film compresses 10 human years in 10 megabytes of binary information and employs an aesthetics of the small file format, a counter strategy against the ever increasing resolution, bitrate and cost of digital images. The file was compressed and assembled with open-source software ffmpeg, the original Video8 tapes were left unedited.

The documentary traces the development of the phenomenon of alpinism and questions the motives of the early pioneers, who set themselves a monument with their mountaineering achievements.

One day can change the course of your whole life. Julian knows that. He lives in a small apartement with his father, who has been drinking ever since the death of his wife. However Julian found stability in his two good friends Andreas and Sophia. One day he suddenly finds something in the park, which he hesitantly takes with him. But he doesn't yet know how this find will drastically change his life. The first film production from 'filmABdate'.

A woman in a hall of mirrors on the Vienna Prater.

A young band has been working towards their first gig for over a year. But on the morning of this huge event they are faced with a big challenge. This not only tests their friendship but also makes them question their ideals and morals.

In an alchemy of material and matter, Katrina Daschner stages queer structures of desire: architectural details, bodies and materials are eroticized and staged as fetishes, animated and inanimate materials merge with the performances of women.

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.

Nostalgia for childhood in the subconscious. The lion says to the snake, "Tomorrow it'll be different." The snake sadly strokes its own skin. After a while the lion cries again, "No, no Tomorrow it'll be the same again." The snake asks, "Will it be the same again tomorrow?"

Air raid bunkers represent the architecturally intact remains of World War II. The film looks into their ideological as well as their material texture and puts them into the context of the urban infrastructure of the nineties.

The film shows the surfaces of two seas, one at sunrise and the other at sunset. The sea surfaces are mirrored horizontally atop one another, gradually separating. Their mutual horizon breaks down, a new white, artificial horizon appears.

A son triggers a dispute situation at a family dinner.

If you go freeriding with the Zeppelin, you don't have to worry about the traffic jam on the motorway. You should only be free from giddiness! And these are Stefan Ager, Andreas Gumpenberger and Fabian Lentsch, fortunately. Because they have to abseil a good 50 meters to the summit from the protected Zeppelin gondola. The three freeriders find new ways not only for the approach, but also for the eagerly awaited descent.

The filmmakers seek out experts and amateurs in the field of the supernatural and ask them to explain the methods by which they make contact with the "cosmic information web". In their search for "units of sense" in the chaos, the researchers use, interestingly enough, those techniques which are presently central to popular culture - de-construction, sampling and scratching.

a story about human compassion, about Hans Breuer, who cannot sleep at night knowing there are refugees who need help, two hours’ drive away from his bed.

Following the traces of Jürgenssen’s path through the final years of World War II (from Hungary to Italy, and later denazification in Upper Austria, where he got married), Olger visits sites and speaks to witnesses from the period when Olaf Jürgenssen was part of the German war crimes, even if his photos seem to suggest that he was there in all innocence. In a video interview before his death his grandfather remains vague and deflects questions. Nils Olger’s pointed conclusion from his somber and calm film about history, memory and denialism: “What will I remember of my grandfather? Negatives.” (Bert Rebhandl)