Farewell to Peter Schreiner
Yesterday we received the sad news Peter Schreiner passed away on June 9.With Peter Schreiner, Austrian cinema loses a great auteur in the true sense of the word, as the Viennese-born director was usually responsible for directing, writing, cinematography, editing and producing his works. In doing so, he seemingly effortlessly crossed the boundaries between documentary and feature film and established himself as one of Austria's great thinkers and exceptional filmmakers. His films are sensitive portraits shot in expressive black and white and deal with existentialist questions of being human. Our sympathy goes to his wife Maria, his family and friends.
Selected films by Peter Schreiner are available online: dafilms.com / watchaut.com
Rain of prizes
We are very happy about no less than 4 awards at the Vienna Shorts! Viktoria Schmid's NYC RGB was awarded the Austrian Short Film Award and thus qualified for the Academy AwardⓇ. Stefanie Weberhofer received the ORF Topos Audience Award for the most popular film under 12 minutes for Farbversuchsprogramm. The Prix très chic was awarded to Issues with my other Half by Anna Vasof and The Act of Dying by Jan Soldat.
German Film Award 2023: Best Documentary "Elfriede Jelinek - Language Unleashed"
Martina Haubrich (left) and Claudia Wohlgenannt (right) accepted a Golden Lola for the best documentary film together with Claudia Müller (center). We congratulate the two producers, the director and the entire team on this award!
Local Artists–distinctions for Selma Doborac and Siegfried Fruhauf at this year's Crossing Europe Filmfestival
We congratulate Selma Doborac for the Local Artist Award for De Facto at this year's Crossing Europe Film Festival Linz and Siegfried Fruhauf for the Special Mention for Cave Painting.
Jury Statement De Facto: „Layer upon layer of abstraction is cast over the research, yet the film is stripped down to its core. Carefully orchestrated details in image and sound contrast the brute force of the spoken word. Performed in breathless rhythm, the film gets into the heads of perpetrators and war criminals, presenting an inside view - without judging and without dramatizing. The maelstrom that develops is painful and lingering. While scene after scene the light leaves the set in the forest, the cinema in our heads remains brightly lit. Those images bear witness to atrocities that are sadly all too present – even in this very moment. The director has succeeded in creating a masterpiece about the question of morality and the unleashing of violence.“ (Nicola von Leffern)
Jury Competition Local Artists: Nicola von Leffern, Markus Reindl, Anna Spanlang
sixpackfilm @ Oberhausen 2023
With four films in the International Competition and one film in the German Competition, we are pleased to announce a sensational presence of sixpackfilm at the 69th Oberhausen Short Film Festival 2023 (April 26 - May 1, 2023)
Garten Sprengen by Veronika Eberhart, AT 2022, 12 min -> IC 1
C-TV (When I tell you I like you...) by EvaEgermann und Cordula Thym, AT 2023, 30 min –> IC 3
will have been by Sasha Pirker, AT 2022, 17:30 min –> IC 6
Bildwerden by Christiana Perschon, AT 2022, 10 min –> IC 6
Blind Date 2.0 by Jan Soldat, AT/DE 2022, 8 min –> GC 2
Nominations for the Austrian Film Awards 2023 for ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED, MUTZENBACHER, STORIES FROM THE SEA, DIRNDLSCHULD and WILL MY PARENTS COME TO SEE ME
Highly gratifying news from the Academy of Austrian Film: ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED, Claudia Müller's densely woven collage of the Nobel Prize winner has been nominated for the 2023 Austrian Film Award in the categories Best Documentary, Best Cinematography (Christine A. Maier) and Best Editing (Mechthild Barth). In the category Best Short Film Wilbirg Brainin-Donnenberg with DIRNDLSCHULD and Mo Harawe with WILL MY PARENTS COME TO SEE ME are among the nominees. Last not least we are equally happy about the nomination of MUTZENBACHER by Ruth Beckermann for Best Documentary and STORIES FROM THE SEA by Jola Wieczorek in the category Best Music (Julia Kent).
We congratulate all nominated artists - the list can be found on the website of the Austrian Film Academy.
Helin Çelik's ANQA at Istanbul Film Festival (April 7-18, 2023)
ANQA, Helin Çeliks sensitive Portrait of three women from the Middle East, who have experienced abuse and domestic violence and who have radically rebelled against it, plays in the competition of Istanbul Film Festivals IKSV 2023 (April 7-18, 2023)
Friederike Pezold (Pezoldo) Retrospective at Anthology Film Archives, NY (March 10 – 16)
Revolution of the Eyes (2022, 75 min.)
Canale Grande (1983, 88 min.)
Toilette (1979, 78 min.)
A photographer, performer, and video and installation artist who made one fascinating excursion into feature filmmaking with CANALE GRANDE (1983), Friederike Pezold (Pezoldo) is an exhilaratingly multi-media artist, and one who deserves far more recognition in the U.S. than she’s thus far received. Pezold’s work is defined above all by a preoccupation with the intersection of technology, media, and the body, a theme she has explored in many different forms. Born in Vienna in 1945, and educated in Munich, Pezold is perhaps best known for her photo series and multi-channel video works which center on – and tend to deconstruct – her own body. Her feature-length video TOILETTE (1979) is emblematic: over the course of 78 minutes, it focuses on and isolates various parts of her body, bestowing on them a certain monumentality as well as a mysterious (and comic) abstraction. TOILETTE reflects an overriding goal of Pezold’s work: to be both subject and object at once.A couple years earlier, Pezold had inaugurated an ongoing project entitled “Radio Free Utopia”, in which she designed a special apparatus that allowed her to move through the city shooting video which was simultaneously displayed, via a closed-circuit feed, on a monitor attached to her body. “Radio Free Utopia” was a radical and deadpan funny extension of the utopian ideas of other video artists of the time, who were determined to circumvent the restricted production and distribution channels of commercial media networks. It also became the pretext for CANALE GRANDE, whose protagonist – played by Pezold herself – wanders through Vienna and Berlin equipped with the “Radio Free Utopia” rig. Incongruously, however, CANALE GRANDE was filmed – beautifully – on 35mm, in part by the accomplished filmmaker and cinematographer Elfi Mikesch. An unusual and provocative marriage of film and early video, it combines the visual beauty and texture of film with early video’s preoccupation with new ways to produce and circulate imagery, while also reflecting the new medium’s liberation from the conventions of narrative drama.
Having held CANALE GRANDE in the highest esteem ever since hosting a screening in 2018, we are thrilled to showcase it for a full week in February, alongside TOILETTE, and to present the U.S. premiere of Pezold’s most recent moving-image work, REVOLUTION OF THE EYES (2022), a typically singular, funny, and uncategorizable piece that finds Pezold meditating on the changes to perception and behavior wrought by the new technologies of our own time. (Jed Rapfogel)
Peter Weibel 1944-2023
Thick reality (Stan) or stupid (Ollie) reality: Peter Weibel is dead. In DENKAKT from 1968, Ernst Schmidt jr. shows the still young rebel Weibel thinking while sitting on a balcony, wearing a Bazooka Leiberl, a former chewing gum brand. A text can be heard in which the theorist and artist, who was a pioneer in Austrian media art, ponders reality (and the medium of film) on the basis of the characters Stan and Ollie, a theme that accompanied him throughout his life. One of Weibel's characteristics was always that he spoke quickly and a lot, letting the desire to convey and develop ideas come out in the tone even during the act of speaking, even pouring his thinking directly into words. And ideas this man had very, very many. His numerous collaborations with VALIE EXPORT, such as AUS DER MAPPE DER HUNDIGKEIT, TAPP UND TASTKINO or UNSICHTBARE GEGNER, for which he contributed the script and also acted, are legendary. His TV works, soaked in humor, also remain unforgotten. In keeping with the history of media art, he realized them in the medium of TV, at that time on ORF, and remained a welcome guest. As part of the discussion format "Club Zwei," for example, he had blood drawn live in the action ZEITBLUT, which successively filled the picture in a glass container in front of the camera and thus ran into the screens of Austrian households. As a media poet, he called this action "telecommunication," his quite essential comment on the question of the evening: "For what art and paid by whom?" Weibel has always remained an advocate for art, whether as an artist, an exhibition curator, as the longtime director of the ZKM, or in his extensive teaching and publishing activities. In a track by his cult band Hotel Morphila Orchester, Weibel once sings more pertinently than perfectly, "The media channels are my body channels." That was probably truly to be understood in the same way. Rest in Peace - our heartfelt sympathy goes out to his partner Susanne Widl, his family and friends.
Berlinale Forum – DE FACTO wins "Caligari-Prize 2023"
Outstanding news: DE FACTO by Selma Doborac is awarded the Caligari Prize 2023!
The jury states: "an extraordinary and highly intense film that, like hardly any other before it, makes us think philosophically about destructive (group) dynamics and the inhuman in human beings". The 38th Caligari Film Prize was awarded to Selma Doborac for her documentary fiction hybrid DE FACTO (AT/DE 2023, 130 min) from the programme of the 53rd Berlinale Forum.
-> Jury Statement
Portrait: Selma Doborac: Caligari-Prize-2023 ©Dario-Lehner
