Discoveries from Austria World Cinema

A woman. A doctor. But nothing is as it really seems.

Kärnten is renowned for its beautiful bathing lakes, but beyond the treeline, Austria's southernmost state has even more hidden gems: sparkling mountain lakes set against stunning alpine backdrops. The documentary embarks on a cinematic journey to explore the most picturesque mountain lakes in the region.

In subotopic, the viewer’s gaze dives below the water’s surface downwards into ever deeper layers of water. In morphed single-frame switching, bizarre pictorial plants and insect creatures pass by the viewer. One dives into lightless spaces until one penetrates a surface of light again. Diving deeper and deeper, existing parallel worlds are made visible under water and new utopias are created. Above and below, inside and outside dissolve. A dive into a mystical underwater world where reality and utopia meet.

Writer Angelika Reitzer visits a farm in Styria, recalling her father’s life as a farmer and his enduring joy in “sticking pigs.” An essay filmed in both black-and-white and color, exploring tradition, modernization, and small utopias.

Time seems to stand still in southern Burgenland. Not only for the gentle tourism, but also for those men that Katrin Schlösser visits in her impressive documentary. The “buben” or “boys” of various ages referred to in the title tell of their work, everyday life, their families, and mainly about the changes that demands of them, a new image of masculinity. Of a transformation that they have to deal with.

As a talented Taekwondo-Fighter, Marlene Jahl has already won several important medals. Her next goal: the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. A tightly scheduled training plan and her study of medicine, leave her hardly any private time

An attempt by the director to delve into the nature of sexuality and relationships with her friend in order to understand what their experience together was for them.

Friedl vom Gröller doesn’t give Christiana Perschon an interview. She gives her more: the film of a brief encounter, which in its ephemeral playfulness, precisely captures the artistic program of those portrayed. An intergenerational dialogue as affectionate togetherness.

Inspired by Dürer’s The Great Piece of Turf, Claudia Larcher explores a tree from the crown through to the roots. The gaze glides slowly over leaves and bark, explores insects and fungi, until the earth reveals itself as a fantastical, animated world. A plea for the marvelous.

The film follows the new ski brand VAN DEER-Red Bull on its journey through the first World Cup season. Exciting races, sensational victories and unforgettable moments. And right in the middle of it all is alpine ski racing legend Marcel Hirscher.

Very few people really knew Herbert von Karajan. The conductor gave access to his private life only a little circle of strictly loyal people who kept their secrets even long after the maestro’s death. This documentary for the first time shows in the whole dimension the real man Karajan: not only the image of a dandy that he himself had shown to the public, but the unfiltered image of his personality. Newly discovered original film footage from the inner circle shows Karajan’s private life like it really was.

A film by Film group A.S.K. 1991.

Broadcast on the Austrian Television (ORF) in June 1972, TV & VT-Works comprises a series of ‘tele-actions’ in which a cigar-smoking newsreader is periodically interrupted by public interventions raising the question “Is this Art?”. Disrupting the smooth flow of information and thus the illusion of comprehending the world from one’s living room, these actions interrogate TV temporality to examine the mechanisms of production and spectatorship. A work of culture jamming avant la lettre.

A lonely, depressed man wakes up from a nightmare and searches for a reason to go on living. He doesn't find it outside, but he finds clarity and decides to kill himself. When he arrives home, he realizes in a dialogue that it is his son who loves and needs him, and this saves him from suicide.

A documentary about the life and films of Austrian director Louise Fleck.

Species from primeval times appear from the depth, digging into the sand like aliens from another universe. Bizarre, monstrous but fragile as well. Accompanied by the scores of Radian.

All hell breaks loose in a local bar hosted by a very generous barmaid. Here our hero, a poor Krampus called Napoleon, meets a fierce ballerina dealing him a bad tarot card, until a mysterious Asian rabbit comes to the rescue. Finally strange masked men enter...friends or foes? Napoleon will find out in a weird celebration.

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.

Found footage filmed by Russian soldiers in Vienna in 1945. On the soundtrack is “ The Flat Foot Floogee” with a “Floy Floy,” 1938, by Louis Armstrong and the Mills Brothers. It is also part of “ Das Lied vom Hofer” (1972).

"A slow motion blow-up to 35 mm foregrounds the kinetic serendipity of a handhold portrait shot in 1980 and entirely edited in-camera. At the time I explored the groundbreaking portability and technical features of Super 8 to capture the wild intensity of my dog Juice as we played in a down and out neighbourhood in Buffalo, New York. In 2009 I treated the film as an objet trouvé — without bettering its formal quirks and lags — documenting the so-called 'amateur' nature of the medium and an unselfconscious phase of filmmaking practice." - Eve Heller

elesyn 15.625 goes back to the fundaments of electronic sound and image synthesis—the electromagnetic signals, their frequencies, amplitudes which are the basis for colours, lines, tone pitch, movement and dynamics. Moving images and music are generated by "simple" forms of signal routing like acoustical and optical feedback, radio waves, bended circuits. The result is a very colourful - in the visual as well as in the the aural sense of the meaning - diorama of "electric synaesthesia" or the idea thereof.

Action by Otto Muehl.

"Video as box, the TV set as box. Communication is the medium."

Visual opacities and blurs, the side effects of the eponymous eyedrops are what inspired Dietmar Brehm to HYLO-VISION-PLUS. Version 1. A dynamic cloudy sky at the start and end, in between: faces, gazes, bodies in movement. An intoxicating and energizing night of flickering contrasts, sensory stimuli, and chimeras that grants only a few moments of pause.

As streaks and stains, they float through the field of vision, interfere with seeing and fray the nerves. Victoria Halper creates these fleeting image interferences, so-called mouches volantes, with Super8 film, digital material, and a dirty camera lens. An autobiographical experiment that challenges viewers’ clear sightedness.

Nico was a musician, a model, muse, actress: an icon who evaded descriptions, broke expectations, and cultivated a self-destructive lifestyle. Karin Fisslthaler’s homage dissects Nico’s image and puts it back together in broadly based audiovisual body collages. An exciting remix, a resounding portrait in incessant transformation.

Paul, a bisexual man leading his life in a self-determined way, receives Jan Soldat at his home in order to shoot a sex date. So we see Paul vacuuming under the bed and pushing cabinets together to make space before the arrival of the man with whom he has arranged to have sex. Since both men are rather on the passive side and the double dildo fails to win over the visitor, they agree on a blowjob and find practicable middle ground in mutual masturbation.

Pezold is quite serious when she calls for a revolution of the eyes. In our depressingly digital day-in day-out, we have unlearned how to see; we merely register a restless flow of data. But looking, watching means something else: it means appreciating what's in front of us, taking the time to let a presence unfold its meaning(s). Quietness helps. And so, with Revolution der Augen, we are invited to return to the origins of cinema and its initial promises, with the experience and knowledge gained through all kinds of media over some six score years. It's tabula rasa time!

The work is based on the idea of making a video with a minimum number of parameters. A uniform white grid on a blue background structures the picture. This grid moves orthogonally to the left, right, upward and downward at four different speeds. All of the audiovisual composition´s parameters are based on the ratio of the screen´s dimensions in digital video, 720 x 576. These figures or multiples or fractions of them define the speed and length of the animation. Bernhard Lang´s soundtrack follows the same logic: The frequencies of a synthetically generated square sound were modulated on the...

Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungen is regarded as one of the most important milestones in the history of music. In the first part, the Rheingold, it begins with the chain of fateful entanglements that ultimately attracts the downfall of the race of the gods.

This documentary features Tyrolean creatives and focuses on the question, how to deal with borders, migration and exchange between different cultures.

Baron Goetz von Boyneburg offers an insight into his curious life. What is real, and what is made up on this aristocratic stage?

Empress Zita tells of her childhood, of her marriage to Archduke Karl, the assassination attempt in Sarajevo, of her conversation with Emperor Franz Joseph on the anniversary of his death and of Emperor Karl's coronation.

Breathtaking pictures of the variety and diversity of the Carinthian mountains, their untouched natural and ancient cultural landscapes.

It is the past that determines the future of Armenia, says a woman right at the beginning of the film. Much of what is said later in the film proves her right.

Robert Fuschnig, a muscle-bound self-promoter in his late 30s, is known in his ever-growing internet community as Rob Fusion – a guy the girls fall for, a buddy you can steal horses with. On Facebook, he has a lakeside villa, expensive cars, and beautiful women. However, the reality is different: a sick mother, a job that bores him and no deeper contact with his fellow human beings.

A young woman indulges in her erotic daydreams: the gorgeous barmaid from the hip bar, who thirsts for menstrual blood; laura‘s beautiful cousin, who makes the Magic Mike of Drag in a cheeky net shirt; and don’t forget super blonde Sasha, extra cool bondage expert and rigger with a special sense of order. But even in her imagination Thea encounters many barriers. Very humorous and with a special feel for foley effects. It crackles, pops and smacks – ASMR fans will be delighted. Marie Luise Lehner, (author, musician and film director) browses through the Kink catalogue: hair, sploshing, playfight, nylon, feet, shibari – you name it – and delights us with a unique, refreshingly relaxed reflection on sexual desire today.

A moving painting and a delirious stream of consciousness, painted in the darkest tones.

A deserted, anonymous city: a boy on the threshold of adulthood meanders aimlessly through a never-ending night, always in search of new chance encounters, sex, true love, purpose. Above him, the universe sparkles picturesquely until it fades together with his ideals and the inevitable dawn comes. A film about the existentialist questions that every adolescent asks himself and the retreat from the uncomfortable answers, into the transfiguration of life, towards a poetic dream.

The film turns first to the history of the Phaidon Press, which was founded in 1923 by Béla Horovitz in Vienna

The documentary breaks through the big taboo surrounding the safety of vaccinations and opens up a public discussion that is long overdue. The investigative documentary deals with a highly sensitive topic without pandering to the prejudices of anti-vaccination activists.

In Maya Deren’s AT LAND, each vision of a foot hitting the ground took us into a new space via the magic of montage. DAS RAD works a similar transformation through the motif of a child’s handstanding wheel motion. Silent and in grainy black and white, the film takes us, simply but mysteriously, into a world of childhood. The ghosts of romanticism linger in the shots of misty hills. As in von Gröller’s ELITE (V’20), the gestures of everyday life become dance-like, and the camera itself gets involved in the dizzy, wheeling motion. Normal perceptions are literally overturned.

Snowboard pro Elias Elhardt and drone pilot Sebastian Schieren are both masters of airtime: One with his snowboard and big aerials, the other with his camera drone in a new dimension of filmmaking. In PLAYING GRAVITY each of them finds a new way to trick the forces of nature and go head-to-head in an acrobatic race down the mountain.

Felix alone in his apartment. Multiple lanes and syringes of Mephedron and a little G. The filmmaker is watching.

The Days and the Year depicts the life and agricultural work of Gottfried and Elfie on a small farm in the Waldviertel region of Austria. Having decided in favour of ‘small-scale’ farming, the two of them have consequentially pursued this aim, always regarding their animals as living creatures and the soil as a cosmos in its own right.

A story told through images, exploring some of life's greatest fears: loss, separation, and loneliness.

What are the unheard and unseen messages in online meetings? The documentary explores the vast influence of digital media and its technological exploitation on everyday spatial home office situations. A monolog by an artificial voice becomes the protagonist in and endless loop of information.