Canale Grande

A young woman refuses to watch television and decides to create her own program. The changeable and unpredictable structured underground film sees itself as a protest against a standardization of the world of images, as a call for radical subjectivity. Insightful in its satirical intention, but not always successful in its claim to a truly independent visual fantasy. (F.P.)

Canale Grande is one of the secret masterpieces of Austrian cinema, a prime example of subversive cinematography. In this low-budget work, the protagonist (played by director Pezold herself) is fed up with conventional television and invents her own, highly personal form of "close-up" viewing. While Pezold's signature is thoroughly contemporary in its freshness, the atmospheric cityscapes have a touching time capsule quality. (Diagonale Catalog 21)