Viennale-Trailer 2017

In July this year Hans Hurch travelled to Rome to meet Abel Ferrara and discuss the modalities and contents of a possible festival trailer with him. After Hurch’s sudden and unexpected death, the director decided to turn the small film into a necrologue: There is a cityscape in evening twilight, music, children screaming in the distance. The Viennale director’s peaceful-looking face, in profile, is faded in, an electronically distorted voice pronouncing, almost incomprehensibly, Hurch’s name. In an intense cross-fade esthetics a picture of the young Bob Dylan moves past as does the emblematic image of John Ford with his black eye patch.
Abel Ferrara’s trailer is a phantasmagoria, a visual puzzle tying up some things that were important to Hans Hurch with dream-like sequences, celebrating a moment of the highest existential distillation. In an accompanying note, the director writes, “A small thank you to someone who constantly and consistently maintained the dream of the eternal cinema.” (Thomas Mießgang)