#theircatsaswell
Lisbeth Kovačič
Stations of an animal refugee story in which, thanks to Social Media, the cat gets a German passport sooner than its owners.
D
Film Archive
Stations of an animal refugee story in which, thanks to Social Media, the cat gets a German passport sooner than its owners.
Franziska Bruckner
Franziska Bruckner
#uploading_holocaust
Sagi Bornstein, Udi Nir
Young Israelis performing a rite of initiation, the “Journey to Poland”: seven days, three mass graves, four concentration camps, and cameras running all the time. An exercise in identity made up of YouTube videos – horror 2.0.
#uploading_holocaust
Documentary Film
Austria,
Germany,
Israel
2016
75 minutes
subtitles:
English
It’s like an initiation ritual. Every year 25,000 Israeli pupils and students go on a trip to Poland, visiting four concentration camps, three mass graves and two ghettos in seven days. It’s a journey to the dead, their roots, and themselves: as Jews and citizens of Israel. They document everything on their smartphones: hotel rooms, barracks, shooting ranges, themselves, their friends. The material shared on YouTube is the basis of this film – and it’s revealing. The two Israeli directors Sagi Bornstein and Udi Nir set contemporary recordings against videotapes from the 1980s. How will the memory change when there are no more contemporary witnesses? What can the crumbling sites still reveal? When will the rituals become hollow?
The Holocaust is the narrative of Israel, the constituent element of the state, even more than Zionism. That’s what the young people are taught to believe. The concept is historical imagination and immersion. They are supposed to feel the squeeze of the cattle wagons, the hardness of the narrow pallets and the oppression of the gas chambers. Horror 2.0. The video material also shows, however, how much smarter the young people are. There are no stupid questions, documentary filmmaker Marcel Ophüls once said, only stupid answers.
Cornelia Klauß
Nominated for Young Eyes Film Award
The Holocaust is the narrative of Israel, the constituent element of the state, even more than Zionism. That’s what the young people are taught to believe. The concept is historical imagination and immersion. They are supposed to feel the squeeze of the cattle wagons, the hardness of the narrow pallets and the oppression of the gas chambers. Horror 2.0. The video material also shows, however, how much smarter the young people are. There are no stupid questions, documentary filmmaker Marcel Ophüls once said, only stupid answers.
Cornelia Klauß
Nominated for Young Eyes Film Award
American Passages
Ruth Beckermann
A fragmented and haunting image of the US between a spirit of departure and hopelessness at the beginning of the Obama era.
American Passages
Credits
Ursula Wolschlager
Ruth Beckermann
Antoine Parouty, Lisa Rinzler
Dieter Pichler
Atanas Tcholakov, Matthew Dennis
A fragmented and haunting image of the US between a spirit of departure and hopelessness at the beginning of the Obama era, revolving around racism, the housing crisis, individualism and religion. Beckermann constructs an argument of contradictions that foreshadows current American politics and discovers only the detritus of the American Dream in all its perversity. What’s left is an amazed and curious collection of that which is still filmable. The US seem particularly well-adapted to the passage-like character of Beckermann’s works which take the liberty of letting people speak, not prejudices.
Patrick Holzapfel
Patrick Holzapfel
Auf amol a Streik
Ruth Beckermann, Josef Aichholzer
A look at the incendiary political situation in Austria at the end of the 1970s. It was the time that made Beckermann turn to film.
Auf amol a Streik
Credits
Ruth Beckermann, Josef Aichholzer
Ruth Beckermann, Josef Aichholzer
Ruth Beckermann, Josef Aichholzer
Ruth Beckermann, Josef Aichholzer
A look at the incendiary political situation in Austria at the end of the 1970s. It was the time that made Beckermann turn to film. First in collective efforts, here with Josef Aichholzer, who founded Filmladen distribution with Beckermann and Franz Grafl in 1978. Their motivation is clearly political. They listen where nobody else seems interested. The subject is a strike at the Semperit works in Traiskirchen. On different levels and by means of conversations, interviews, charts and photos the filmmakers try to understand what is otherwise treated only too superficially. Quite naturally the film lets the workers speak, too.
Patrick Holzapfel
Patrick Holzapfel
Bianca läuft …
Tina Bara
A passionate runner who can hardly walk. A highly talented painter whose pictures tell a tale of self-destruction. A dark secret which the film approaches cautiously.
Bianca läuft …
Bianca, a young woman living in the Austrian province of Burgenland, is a mystery. She is a passionate runner, but when she walks her legs fail. She is a highly talented painter, who keeps sketching photorealistic images of herself that show her pierced, nailed, cut, in flowing robes, or tied to her running shoes. She talks about her diseases, the collapses happening at shorter and shorter intervals, and her passion for collecting dead animals, always with a smile on her ageless face.
The photographer and filmmaker Tina Bara respects her protagonist’s cocoon. She lets the paintings speak, which show cruel signs of self-destruction and self-hatred, screaming out for someone to probe the causes of this. At the same time, “Bianca Is Running” is a very quiet film whose strength lies in uncertainty. The director turns this cautious, gradual approach and her own doubts into the dramatic principle of her debut film, creating a structure that is open to interpretation. The encounters with Bianca take us into uncertain territory – neither she nor the film offer any footholds.
Cornelia Klauß
The photographer and filmmaker Tina Bara respects her protagonist’s cocoon. She lets the paintings speak, which show cruel signs of self-destruction and self-hatred, screaming out for someone to probe the causes of this. At the same time, “Bianca Is Running” is a very quiet film whose strength lies in uncertainty. The director turns this cautious, gradual approach and her own doubts into the dramatic principle of her debut film, creating a structure that is open to interpretation. The encounters with Bianca take us into uncertain territory – neither she nor the film offer any footholds.
Cornelia Klauß
Bojo Beach
Elke Groen
Fishermen on a beach in Ghana. A patient and respectful observation of work processes in fixed shots – a substantial work in the spirit of the inventors of cinematography.
Bojo Beach
Documentary Film
Austria
2017
25 minutes
subtitles:
_without dialogue / subtitles
Credits
Elke Groen, Bady Mink, Alexander Dumreicher Ivanceanu
Elke Groen
Elke Groen
Emily Artmann
Ina Ivanceanu
Fishermen on the Ghanaian coast going about their daily business – or at least the work they must do to ultimately have some kind of business (perhaps). In the same spirit, filmmaker Elke Groen, in her respectful and reserved observation, has no preconceptions of what the ultimate result of this material shot on one day in May 2016 is to be. So this is no quick report in which everything is eventually reduced to one pithy idea, but the cinematographic creation of an experience space.
Ralph Eue
Ralph Eue
Cinema Futures
Michael Palm
Cinema’s leap into the digital age and vanquishing of the analogue – a promise of salvation. An opulent essay about the visions and losses brought by a dubious departure.
Cinema Futures
Documentary Film
Austria
2016
126 minutes
subtitles:
German
The “digital revolution” reached cinema at a fairly late date. It was almost universally regarded as a cause of joy since people believed its promise that it would make everything better, bigger, more beautiful and, above all, easier. To compound matters, this revolution was staged, celebrated and economically enforced as the greatest technological advance since the arrival of sound film. Who wanted to be left behind as an eternal reactionary or dull fault-finder in this heady air of departure?
From a distance of several years, “Cinema Futures” now explores the field between the specific cultural technique of analogue film and the promise of salvation brought by the alleged eternal life of bits and bytes. On one side there is the vision of the digital age as the final victory over transience. On the other side there is the threatening idea that our present is needlessly turned into a “dark age” not much of which will survive. Because, firstly, film as a physical object and, secondly, cinema as a techno-social infrastructure have become obsolete and, thirdly, no man and no machine will be able to read the howsoever “immortal” data.
Ralph Eue
Nominated for Healthy Workplaces Film Award
From a distance of several years, “Cinema Futures” now explores the field between the specific cultural technique of analogue film and the promise of salvation brought by the alleged eternal life of bits and bytes. On one side there is the vision of the digital age as the final victory over transience. On the other side there is the threatening idea that our present is needlessly turned into a “dark age” not much of which will survive. Because, firstly, film as a physical object and, secondly, cinema as a techno-social infrastructure have become obsolete and, thirdly, no man and no machine will be able to read the howsoever “immortal” data.
Ralph Eue
Nominated for Healthy Workplaces Film Award
Das Fieber
Katharina Weingartner
Africa is still ruled by malaria. A thriller about the larger connections between the parasite and the pharmaceutics industry, claims of heteronomy and the richest man on earth.
Das Fieber
The fight won’t end. Malaria still rules large parts of Africa. Every 60 seconds a child south of the Sahara dies of the disease. All in all, it causes around half a million deaths per year. But why is it so impossible to successfully conquer the disease, even though countless relief organisations have been working on a solution for many years?
The reason, of course, is money, global conflicts of interest, the powerful pharmaceutical industry. That’s nothing new. But the Austrian filmmaker Katharina Weingartner produced an enthralling documentary thriller which literally inscribes exciting, context-shifting and -widening lines of connection into the more or less familiar general picture: connections between the parasite and the pharmaceutical industry, between self-determination in East Africa and the richest man in the world. The focus is on three courageous people in Uganda and Kenya who are fighting the disease on the spot and are often more successful with alternative methods than Western medicine is comfortable with. Because after all a solution of their own, without foreign help and technology, without the mercantile and public philanthropic interests of the helpers, would mean independence.
Julia Weigl
The reason, of course, is money, global conflicts of interest, the powerful pharmaceutical industry. That’s nothing new. But the Austrian filmmaker Katharina Weingartner produced an enthralling documentary thriller which literally inscribes exciting, context-shifting and -widening lines of connection into the more or less familiar general picture: connections between the parasite and the pharmaceutical industry, between self-determination in East Africa and the richest man in the world. The focus is on three courageous people in Uganda and Kenya who are fighting the disease on the spot and are often more successful with alternative methods than Western medicine is comfortable with. Because after all a solution of their own, without foreign help and technology, without the mercantile and public philanthropic interests of the helpers, would mean independence.
Julia Weigl
Das Venedig Prinzip
Andreas Pichler
About the last residents of a Venice reduced to a Disneyland for cruise ship tourists. Scary images of a city turned capitalist nightmare.
Das Venedig Prinzip
Documentary Film
Germany,
Italy,
Austria
2012
80 minutes
subtitles:
German
It’s hard to find a more popular city than Venice. But what is a dream for many people has become a nightmare for the residents. This film shows cruise ships and coaches spilling their loads of tourists at the banks of the old town, from which they flood squares, bridges and alleys. The tourists may bring money – especially for the big corporations -, but they are also the curse of this city.
This film follows a few residents, perhaps the last of their kind, through their Venice. They show an infrastructure on the verge of collapse. Food stores are rare; schools and post offices have closed, replaced by ever more hotels and piers for huge cruise ships. “What can you do?” a Venetian woman asks resignedly. “Sell glassware and souvenirs?” She too rents out her house to pay for its refurbishment. Another born Venetian is forced to move to the mainland because he can’t afford the rent. Only foreigners and rich Italians can pay the expensive prices per square meter, an embittered real estate agent concludes. Only 60000 residents still live in the historic city centre today. The same number of people visit the city every day. Venice is degenerating into an open air museum. The film takes a sobering look behind the picture postcard idylls of Doge’s Palace, Rialto Bridge and the pigeons of St. Mark’s Square.
– Antje Stamer
This film follows a few residents, perhaps the last of their kind, through their Venice. They show an infrastructure on the verge of collapse. Food stores are rare; schools and post offices have closed, replaced by ever more hotels and piers for huge cruise ships. “What can you do?” a Venetian woman asks resignedly. “Sell glassware and souvenirs?” She too rents out her house to pay for its refurbishment. Another born Venetian is forced to move to the mainland because he can’t afford the rent. Only foreigners and rich Italians can pay the expensive prices per square meter, an embittered real estate agent concludes. Only 60000 residents still live in the historic city centre today. The same number of people visit the city every day. Venice is degenerating into an open air museum. The film takes a sobering look behind the picture postcard idylls of Doge’s Palace, Rialto Bridge and the pigeons of St. Mark’s Square.
– Antje Stamer
Der Prozess
Gerald Igor Hauzenberger
The biggest criminal case in Austria, where harmless animal rights activists were accused and convicted of being enemies of the state. A Kafkaesque swan song for Western democracy.
Der Prozess
Credits
Igor Hauzenberger’s film is extremely disturbing. When, in the name of article 278a, which was adopted to fight organisations like the Mafia and Al Qaeda, a protest letter is turned into a threat, an animal rights activist into an enemy of the state, and an NGO into a terrorist organisation, the pillars of our civil society are beginning to totter alarmingly. Thirteen animal rights activists are facing trial in Vienna because they staged some high-profile protests against factory farming and fur trading in front of stables and department stores. Sure, naked protesters in the Viennese city in the middle of winter, carrying dead animals or, covered in blood, crucified pigs’ heads through the streets, are not a pleasant sight. It’s also annoying that this Association against Factory Farming (VGT) is not simply a gang of losers but an international network among whose leaders are scientists and green politicians, including the charismatic Dr. Dr. Martin Balluch who chose the way of the street after a university career. Igor Hauzenberger follows the protesters over several years, tries to shed some light on the legal jungle and persistently tries to get public attorneys, press officers and department store operators in front of his camera. In vain. This biggest criminal case in Austria yet is turning into a test case: democracy versus those who are not averse to shouting “we need Hitler back” occasionally.
– Cornelia Klauß
– Cornelia Klauß
Die Geträumten
Ruth Beckermann
A sensitive dissection and an experiment with the discourse and the speechlessness of lovers: we see wet eyes and hear heavy swallowing in the face of words that sometimes weren’t even posted.
Die Geträumten
Credits
Ruth Beckermann
Johannes Hammel
Dieter Pichler
Ruth Beckermann, Ina Hartwig
Georg Misch
A sensitive dissection and an experiment with the discourse and the speechlessness of lovers: we see wet eyes and hear heavy swallowing in the face of words that sometimes weren’t even posted. The long lasting correspondence between Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan is recorded by voice actors (Anja Plaschg and Laurence Rupp) in an ORF sound studio, interrupted by smoking breaks and short conversations that, like an echo, allow the words to have an effect in the present day. With co-author Ina Hartwig, Beckermann condensed the back and forth of emotions to an essence that could be seen as an impossible love story or a possible history of love.
Patrick Holzapfel
Patrick Holzapfel
Die papierene Brücke
Ruth Beckermann
It would be good to have no images of certain things, Beckermann’s urgent narrator’s voice says. That way they would be remembered.
Die papierene Brücke
It would be good to have no images of certain things, Beckermann’s urgent narrator’s voice says. That way they would be remembered. Her pulsating film essay, however, works against forgetting on a lost search for home. It is both a personal and a historical journey, undertaken by Beckermann with her camera and a restlessness that needs to know more. The weight of the past is made tangible by the wakeful and permissive registration of what is happening in the here and now. We drift through the remains of a Jewish identity in Czernowitz, Israel, the set of a television film made in former Yugoslavia and the Viennese streets where Kurt Waldheim divides the population.
Patrick Holzapfel
Patrick Holzapfel
Die Tage wie das Jahr
Othmar Schmiderer
A year on an organic farm in the Waldviertel of Lower Austria: Elfie and Gottfried take care of sheep, goats and various products made by animals and humans together.
Die Tage wie das Jahr
Documentary Film
Austria
2018
86 minutes
subtitles:
English
A steady-handed film: a year on an organic farm in the Waldviertel in Lower Austria. Filmed from neither too close nor too far away but at the exactly right distance, portraying life and its various activities and incidents between the house and the stables. There is the ewe that sounds almost human as it gives birth to its lamb. The delicate kids skipping over the straw as if it concealed red-hot stones. The front loader whose long thin arms drive into the hay bales and skewer them. Or watching Elfie, the farmer, prepare glass bottles for labels with a glue stick. In the meantime, her husband Gottfried is setting up a small market stand. And during milking goats as well as people are entertained by historic dance music. Being present at all these processes has a meditative quality, the special rhythm created by a strong but not hectic and very regular beat communicates itself to the viewer and generates enjoyment and hope.
Carolin Weidner
Nominated for the Healthy Workplaces Film Award
Carolin Weidner
Nominated for the Healthy Workplaces Film Award
Die Telefonbuchpolka
Benjamin Swiczinsky
“When I look for inspiration or an entry into high society, I read the phone book …
Die Telefonbuchpolka
Credits
Benjamin Swiczinsky, Iris Haschek, Golli Marboe, Johannes Schiehsl, Conrad Tambour
Benjamin Swiczinsky
Georg Kreisler
Benjamin Swiczinsky
Benjamin Swiczinsky
Benjamin Swiczinsky, Julia Ocker, Daniel Lundquist, Timur Tietze, Johannes Schiehsl, Conrad Tambour, Nana Swiczinsky
Benjamin Swiczinsky
Benjamin Swiczinsky, Johannes Schiehsl
“When I look for inspiration or an entry into high society, I read the phone book …” Austrian-American songwriter and comedian Georg Kreisler’s cult song as an animated music video.
Don’t Touch Me When I Start to Feel Safe
Brigitta Bödenauer
Systems of security are challenged by abstracting manipulations when sound and image oscillate between confidence and irritation.
Don’t Touch Me When I Start to Feel Safe
Animated Film
Austria
2003
5 minutes
subtitles:
_without dialogue / subtitles
Systems of security are challenged by abstracting manipulations when sound and image oscillate between confidence and irritation.
Franziska Bruckner
Franziska Bruckner
Doppelgänger
Michaela Taschek
The filmmaker’s father dies. Based on photos and home movies, Michaela Taschek imagines a doppelganger story that provides a plot for her long-term feelings of alienation.
Doppelgänger
Documentary Film
Austria,
Germany
2017
20 minutes
subtitles:
English
Erich Taschek, filmmaker Michaela Taschek’s father, used to be a fun-loving and sociable man. But then “Eichi” turned into a taciturn loner who locked himself in the cellar to make models and hardly ever left the house. After his death Taschek uses family photos and home movies to invent a wild doppelganger theory that provides a plot for her long lasting feelings of alienation. An essay about disappearance and the power of projection in “documentary” images.
Esther Buss
Esther Buss