Vienna as a light, modern city and a place that encourages improvisation of the mind. The jobless Hans Schmidt and Ann Berger become true champions in the city. However, setbacks and false interpretations underlie their attempts at economic stability. Hans gets involved in a serious accident, which renders him unable to work. Anna alone can’t the bill for the taxi. The community helps her. Hans and Anna become a part of Socialist Vienna.Read More »
Laika, a stray dog, was the first living being to be sent into space and thus to a certain death. According to a legend, she returned to Earth as a ghost and has roamed the streets of Moscow ever since. Following her trace, and filmed from a dog’s perspective, SPACE DOGS accompanies the adventures of her descendants: two street dogs living in today’s Moscow. Their story is one of intimate fellowship but also relentless brutality, and is interwoven with unseen archive material from the Soviet cosmic era. A magical tale of voyagers scouting for unknown spaces.Read More »
Brenner Pass, Alpine border, spring 2016: the Austrian government announces the construction of a border fence, expecting a shift of the refugee routes to Italy after the Balkan route is closed. The residents fear the fence just as much as the supposedly threatening influx of foreigners to their homeland.
Two years later, the fence is still rolled up in a container, as the inrush of refugees never occurred.Read More »
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A deadly car crash sets off three parallel stories of women at crisis points, faltering behind the doors of the same, plain Vienna apartment block. A bored nurse with a stable, comfortable family life has a wild but almost-wordless extramarital affair with a fashion-conscious traveling salesman, who’s obsessed with sex photos. An unstable young Austrian grocery checker lies to hold on to her philandering Yugoslavian boyfriend, claiming she’s pregnant. Finally, a recent divorcée whose violent, ex-husband is a King of Denial intent on getting her back. Will the residents’ fibs and moral failures save or destroy them ? Can the women safely express their fears ?Read More »
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Bricks are manufacured in Africa, India and Europe and used to erect clinics, children’s homes, schools and residential buildings. Harun Farocki observed the different steps of the manufacturing process. Bricks are cast, fired or pressed by hands, machines or robots. Depending on the country of production, this involves a single worker or a large group. The film’s title communicates a decisive aspect: Farocki merely offers material to the viewer, who has to draw the actual comparisons between traditional, early industrial, and fully industrialized societies himself. Read More »
From luise-rainer.com:
Many sources, including Luise herself, referred to the ‘overnight sensation’ that Luise made in her first film for MGM, Escapade (1935). This narrative of the newly discovered film star conveniently erased Luise’s film career up to that point. She had appeared in three films in Europe before Hollywood came calling.Read More »
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In a small Austrian village near the Czech border lives Sepp Paur, a widower. The food supply that his late wife stored in the freezer is running low. It is time for Sepp to look for another wife. He looks across the border, where the widow Paula lives. Two people, two neighboring villages. In between? The border. The film is about all these, but not only. It’s also about the loss of borders, the loss of home, the loss of youth, the loss of love.Read More »
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This short film takes us to Horn, a town in Lower Austria where Ulrich Seidl grew up. For years it has been a tradition that high school students organize the graduation prom. This isn’t only one of the town’s most important social events, but also the culmination of Carnival. Ulrich Seidl: “The Prom was the reason I was kicked out of the Film Academy. The teachers didn’t like its structure or editing, and thought that the film would hurt the Academy’s reputation.”Read More »
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The subject is a 50-year-old dwarf who stopped growing at 1 meter 40. He is fat and plays the piano strangely but the point Seidl makes is that he is like others, and you should judge him according to the same criteria you would judge them.Read More »