Austria

Plot summary [wikipedia.org]
The narrative opens in the decade before World War I. We are introduced to the central protagonist of the story, Hans Castorp, a young German. We encounter him when he is in his early 20s, about to take up a shipbuilding career in Hamburg, his home town. Just before beginning this professional career he undertakes a journey to visit his tubercular cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, who is seeking a cure in a sanatorium in Davos, high up in the Swiss Alps. In the opening chapter, Hans is symbolically transported away from the familiar life and mundane obligations he has known, in what he later learns to call the flatlands , to the rarefied mountain air and introspective little world of the sanatorium.Read More »

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Hermann Nitsch was born in Vienna in 1938. While studying graphic illustration, he became interested in religous art. He made copies from Rembrandt’s 100 Gulden Blatt and Christ Crucified, and from other religious themes by artists such as Tintoretto and El Greco. Other drawings Hermann Nitsch made at this time were strongly influenced by Cézanne, Klimt and Munch, amongst others. From around 1957 onwards, the depiction of Dionysian revelry and ceremonies began to feature in his work.Read More »

“Dame Rose ( Dame Carmen Cartellieri ) is a liberal and impudent youngster who sells flowers in selected and important places for aristocrats. There she is obliged by her greedy brother Toni ( Herr Eugen Preiss ) to flirt with old and rich aristocrats ( having in mind that Dame Rose is also a thin girl, that’s a inversely proportional situation for this German count… ). She catches the eye of banker Bergern ( Herr Fritz Helmers ).
Who has a young and handsome nephew, Baron Stein ( Herr Hans Rhoden ). Dame Rose promptly falls in love with Stein so she continues her flirtation both men at the same time.Read More »

A film about truth and lies or “alternative facts”. About individual and collective consciousness.  

“Waldheim no, Waldheim no” shouts a crowd in the center of Vienna in 1986. Ruth Beckermann was one of the activists trying to prevent the election of Kurt Waldheim and documented the political events with her camera. More than 30 years later she goes back into her own archive and additionally uses international TV-material to analyse this turning point in Austrian political culture. Read More »

A large, somewhat dilapidated house in the country. Although Niki, a doctor living and working in Munich, manages to arrive at his father’s deathbed just in time, the man who spawned him fails to give him the belated acknowledgement and love for which he so longs. Shortly after the father dies, his other grownup children arrive. These include Vito, an extrovert, and idealistic drifter; Mizzi, who is much younger and suffers from a neurophysical disorder and – although nobody expected it, even Kyra, who is the product of the father’s heady days of alternative living and free love. Niki and Vito haven’t seen this sister since their parents’ acrimonious separation twenty-three years ago.Read More »

Elisabeth of Austria left the scene long before her death. “I want to travel the world,” she said, “the Wandering Jew will be a homebody compared to me. I want to sail the seas, roam as a female Flying Dutchman until I have sunk and disappeared.” This is the start of Ruth Beckermann’s cinematic journey.

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Willi Hengstler’s adaptation of Jack Unterweger’s autobiography.

Johann “Jack” Unterweger (16 August 1950 – 29 June 1994) was an Austrian serial killer who murdered prostitutes in several countries. First convicted of a 1974 murder, he was released in 1990 as an example of rehabilitation. He became a journalist and minor celebrity, but within months started killing again. He committed suicide following a conviction for several murders. Austrian psychiatrist Dr. Reinhard Haller diagnosed him with narcissistic personality disorder in 1994.Read More »

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Cinema feeds on stories of love and death, but how often do filmmakers really offer new or challenging perspectives on either? Michael Haneke’s ‘Amour’ is devastatingly original and unflinching in the way it examines the effect of love on death, and vice versa. It’s a staggering, intensely moving look at old age and life’s end, which at its heart offers two performances of incredible skill and wisdom from French veteran actors Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva.

The Austrian director of ‘Hidden’ and ‘The White Ribbon’ offers an intimate, brave and devastating portrait of an elderly Parisian couple, Anne (Riva) and Georges (Trintignant), facing up to a sudden turn in their lives. Haneke erects four walls to keep out the rest of the world, containing his drama almost entirely within one apartment over some weeks and months. The only place we see this couple outside their flat, right at the start, is at the theatre, framed from the stage. Haneke reverses the perspective for the rest of the film. The couple’s flat becomes a theatre for their stories: past, present and future.Read More »

Two young characters in this story of rebellious youth are named after two Germans, brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl who were imprisoned and executed for their anti-Nazi stance during World War II. In this film, the rebels do not have such a clear-cut enemy but nevertheless, they cannot accept the way life is heading in Austria of the 1950s and they revolt by stealing, mugging, and trying out terrorist methods (bombs). Their future seems to be inexorably heading on a collision course with the forces that have “locked them out.”Read More »