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PROGRAMPRESENTATION
VIENNALE PRESS OFFICE
[email protected]
01/526 59 47
Fredi Themel
DW 30
Birgit Ecker
DW 33
Antonella Cerullo DW 20
(Akkreditierungen)
[email protected]
PRESS OFFICE AT THE INTERCONTINENTAL VIENNA
For the duration of the festival, the Viennale press office will be located in our new festival hotel,
the InterContinental Vienna (Johannesgasse 28, 1030 Wien).
The office is open on October 23 from 12am to 6pm and as of October 24, daily from 10am to 7pm.
Press information, film stills and festival photos can be downloaded at: www.viennale.at/en/presse/download
VIENNALE – VIENNA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Siebensterngasse 2
A-1070 Wien
printed by
VIENNALE 2014
OCTOBER 23 TO NOVEMBER 6
PROGRAM OF THE VIENNALE 2014
About the Festival
TRIBUTES
A DANGEROUS METHOD
A Tribute to Viggo Mortensen
THE INSCRIPTION OF THE WORLD
In memory of filmmaker Harun Farocki
IN FOCUS
ARAB UTOPIA
The Algerian Filmmaker Tariq Teguia
SPECIALS
REVOLUTIONS IN 16MM
Towards an Alternate History of the Small Gauge
THE MEMORY OF FILM
Fritz Kortner and the Cinema
CINQ FOIS GODARD
Jean-Luc Godard. As seen by five filmmakers.
BROKEN SEQUENCE
Three positions of current, independent cinema
RETROSPECTIVE
John Ford
PROGRAM VIENNALE 2014
Fire and Flame for this City
As we explained at our summer press conference regarding this year’s Viennale poster subject, the festival sees
itself as being “the keeper of the flame.” In other words, we aspire and feel co-responsible for keeping and carrying
on the flame of cinema. Specifically, this means keeping cinema alive in an individual, original and free way rather
than in a commercialized, market-oriented and standardized form.
Our intention is to turn the negative notion of event culture into a positive one, and make the presentation of and
discourse about films a cultural event. An event and experience for many. In the sense of a lively cinematic culture,
we indeed wish to be fire and flame for this city – and far beyond its borders.
Hans Hurch
Innovations at the Viennale 2014
To keep our work and the festival exciting and in motion, we have implemented several changes this year. These
changes include, for example, adding one cinema, and, at the same time, taking one away. This year’s festival is
the first in many years that won’t be using the old Stadtkino at Schwarzenbergplatz as a venue. Instead, we’ll be
using the additional cinema hall in the new, extended Metro Kinokulturhaus, named after Viennale president
Eric Pleskow. In addition, the entire premises of the recently reopened Metro cinema will serve visitors as a new
attractive festival location.
Another innovation is that the Viennale will be extended by one day. This doesn’t mean more films, but more
time and opportunity to explore the Viennale program – a desire repeatedly expressed by our audiences.
What remains, however, are the well-established and popular venues,
such as the successful festival center in the former Austrian federal
post office headquarters, used now for the third time.
From the Festival Program
AMOUR FOU
The Viennale program in 2014 features roughly the same number of
productions as in previous years. Part of our festival philosophy is
that the Viennale shouldn’t become bigger and more extensive from
year to year. At the same time, however, we hope to again offer the
kind of multifaceted, open and exciting program that we are known
for and that is expected from us. This can be seen in our choice of this
year’s opening and closing films, both signs of the multifacetedness
and liveliness of European author cinema: the closing film TURIST
by Swedish director Ruben Östlund and, particularly, the opening film
– this year from Austria – by director Jessica Hausner, AMOUR FOU,
a wayward and simultaneously mature and form-conscious work.
TURIST
What’s particularly striking in the 2014 festival program is the large number of films by female directors. This
high percentage is not the result of a selective strategy but is solely due to the outstanding quality and density of
this specific filmmaking scene.
As in previous years, the main program consists of about 150 feature films and documentaries and is characterized by the parallel and simultaneous presentation of great, prominent names and works, on the one hand, and,
on the other, marginal, less known, yet often all the more surprising and exciting films. The most recent films by
Jean-Luc Godard, Woody Allen, Olivier Assayas, Abel Ferrara, Joe Dante, Lars von Trier, Bruno Dumont and
Alejandro González Iñárritu, but also new works by James Benning, Eugène Green, Hong Sang-soo, Alexandre
Rockwell, Ira Sachs, Jean-Marie Straub and Lav Diaz cross paths with completely unknown, wonderful discoveries.
The latter include films by Chris Gude from Colombia, Cristóbal Arteaga Rozas from Spain, Sophie Hyde from
Australia, Chaitanya Tamhane from India and Drew Tobia from the USA.
Late in the evenings, the Gartenbaukino will also present a fine selection of genre cinema, including the small
zombie sensation A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT by Ana Lily Amirpour, new works by Sion Sono
and Miike Takashi from Japan and by Kim Byung-woo from South Korea, as well as a new, absolutely idiosyncratic
film by American director Joel Potrykus. Plus: music documentaries on Björk, Pulp or Nick Cave. To mention a
few.
The festival’s extensive documentary film program, by now an international trade mark of the Viennale, presents
about 60 feature-length productions and offers a rich combination of the known and the unknown, the unexpected and the sometimes odd. All this is complemented by a number of international and Austrian short films.
Some of the Viennale’s specific qualities include the large, annual retrospective, realized in conjunction with the
Austrian Film Museum and this year dedicated to John Ford, and various tributes and special programs. These
include a program that devotes itself to the cinematic and technical form of 16mm. A selection of no less than
65, mainly short films, curated by Katja Wiederspahn, head of the Viennale program department, together with
the director of the Harvard Film Archive, Haden Guest. Further highlights are tributes to the actor Viggo
Mortensen, the director Tariq Teguia, the late filmmaker Harun Farocki, the work of Fritz Kortner and a special
homage to Jean-Luc Godard.
A GIRL WALKS HOMe ALOne AT nIGHT
SIddARTH
MInG OF HARLeM
PASOLInI
TRIBUTES
A Dangerous Method
A Tribute to Viggo Mortensen
The American-Danish actor Viggo Mortensen is
probably what one could call a classical Hollywood
maverick – both cult star and outsider, unpredictable and wayward, and celebrated for his memorable work. Reduced to a common, albeit
simplified, denominator, Mortensen’s enormous
versatility and acting talent lies between his role as
the mystic swordsman Aragorn in Peter Jackson’s
The Lord of the Rings trilogy and his three-time collaboration with David Cronenberg in A HISTORy
OF VIOLENCE (2005), EASTERN PROMISES
(2007) and A DANGEROUS METHOD (2011). yet,
Viggo Mortensen is much more than a master of
transformation; he basically reinvents himself with
every role, from THE INDIAN RUNNER (1991) to
THE ROAD (2009) and, most recently, through his superb performance at the physical boundaries of acting in
Lisandro Alonso’s emigrant epos Jauja, celebrated at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Within a few years,
Mortensen, who radically rejects any clichés and stereotypes, has become one of the most interesting and idiosyncratic actors of his generation. And incidentally, so to speak, a world star of cinema.
Presenting about half a dozen of his films as well as the premiere of his most recent work, JAUJA, the Viennale
is the first festival to pay tribute to the actor Viggo Mortensen.
The Inscription of the World
In memory of filmmaker Harun Farocki
A few days ago, the German director and video artist Harun
Farocki died unexpectedly at the age of 70. Starting in the middle
of the 1960s and over several decades, Farocki made about 120
films and installations, developing an extremely original and
specific form of essayist-documentary cinema that explores the
functions, realities and ideologies of modern media image production in various ways. In a simultaneously analytical and playful manner, the filmmaker posed questions, made statements,
speculated and insisted, and thus created a rich, politically and
aesthetically challenging oeuvre that is unequalled in contemporary filmmaking. With Farocki’s passing, cinema has lost a
great thinker, provocateur and analyst – and a wonderful person.
In memory of Harun Farocki the Viennale will dedicate a
multi-part program to the filmmaker featuring his most important works.
IN FOCUS
Arab Utopia
The Algerian Filmmaker Tariq Teguia
For several years now, the Algerian photographer
and filmmaker Tariq Teguia, born in 1966, has not
only been his country’s most important director
but also one of the most significant political chroniclers of the so-called “Arab Spring.” Rather than
directly documenting historical events, however,
he is a political-aesthetic researcher, a storyteller
and narrator of lost and repressed Arab identity.
From the young couple in ROMA WA LA
N’TOUMA (2006), torn between their Algerian
roots and their desire for change and emigration
to the photographer and surveyor of a lost homeland in GABBLA (2008) to Tariq Teguia’s most recent work, ZANJ REVOLUTION (2013), about the buried tradition of resistance and revolt in the long, rich, Arab
history – the filmmaker dedicates all his efforts to issues about one’s own identity, about violence and lived history.
This small cinematic work is a great, radical challenge, an aesthetic and political provocation, and, basically, no
more and no less than a passionate evocation of another possible, utopian Arab world.
The festival program “Tariq Teguia in Focus” presents a selection of shorter works as well as the three featurelength films by this exceptional, contemporary director.
In Anwesenheit von Tariq Teguia.
SPECIAL PROGRAMS
Revolutions In 16mm
Towards an Alternate History of the Small Gauge
W-47 «STORMy»
bLACK IS
Many of the greatest revolutions in twentieth-century cinema were
made possible only by the invention of 16mm. From Direct Cinema
and Cinéma verité to the many still resonating waves of avant-garde
film, the dynamic mobility, accessibility and unprecedented intimacy
of 16mm cameras and equipment empowered and brought forth filmmakers on a scale still unrecognized. yet, despite its tremendous influence, the history of 16mm cinema remains unacknowledged and
largely unwritten. In twelve distinct, often provocative, experimentally
arranged chapters, this retrospective chronicles an unofficial, alternate history of the revolutionary small gauge by defining, exploring
and deconstructing major genres of 16mm cinema: home movies,
wartime reportage, stag and erotic films, educational and industrial
films, diary film and first-person cinema, radical ethnography, collective film and counter-cinema, structural and experimental films. At
the same time, this series showcases the work of master filmmakers
Shirley Clarke, Nathaniel Dorsky, Marjorie Keller, Marie Menken, Gunvor Nelson, Dorothy Wiley, Leslie Thornton and Shinsuke Ogawa, to
name but a few. Over the years, they have expanded the infinite possibilities of 16mm as an artists’ medium and their work points towards a possible future of the small gauge.
Curated by Haden Guest and Katja Wiederspahn.
The Memory of Film
Fritz Kortner and the Cinema
AbdUL THe dAMned
Born and trained in Vienna, Fritz Kortner (1892–1970) always fought
against routine thoughtlessness and conventional formality, unwaveringly searching for a fresh and authentic way of expression – be it on
the stage or on the screen, in silent films or talkies, in German or English, as versatile actor, committed script-writer or ambitious director.
A successful stage and film star in Berlin in the 1920s, he was eager
to direct; established in Hollywood, he was drawn back to Germany
in 1947 to help rebuild cultural life in the ruins left behind by the
Nazis. Even if Kortner’s cinematic oeuvre doesn’t quite have the same
influence as his style-shaping theatrical work, many of his film roles,
productions based on his scripts and the few films he directed are still
worth seeing. In his uneasy waywardness, the creatively obsessed
artist still represents an intellectually stimulating challenge today.
Curated by Armin Loacker and Martin Girod.
deR RUF
Cinq fois Godard
Jean-Luc Godard. As seen by five filmmakers.
At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Jean-Luc Godard presented his
most recent work, ADIEU AU LANGAGE (3D), and once again surprised
many with his inventiveness and keenness to experiment. While
American spectacular cinema is about to take leave of 3D technology,
Godard dismantles the hybrid genre into its spatial and acoustic parts
to create his own cinematographic realm. A Godard sphere.
nOUVeLLe VAGUe
The Viennale takes Godard’s latest film as an opportunity to reflect
on his extensive creative work and his influence on cinema. At the
festival’s invitation, five French filmmakers – Olivier Assayas, Pascale
Ferran, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Luc Moullet and Agnès Varda – have each
chosen a film by Jean-Luc Godard that is important to them and written their own texts about these films.
based on an idea by nada Torucar.
PUISSAnCe de LA PAROLe
Broken Sequence
Kevin Jerome Everson, Dorit Margreiter, Deborah Stratman
Three positions of current, independent cinema
Fe26
O’eR THe LAnd
Following the presentation of “The Raw and the Boiled” at last year’s
festival, the Viennale is also dedicating a special program to experimental cinema in 2014. “Broken Sequence” gathers and connects
what doesn’t fundamentally belong together – or, at best, does so only
loosely – but can be brought together at a profit: experimental, bold,
sophisticated, sociopolitical and aesthetically relevant as well as formally independent and materially aware cinema. Despite all the differences in artistic interests, the works presented share the ambition
of involving the audience in an immanent reflective process. In other
words: people ought to ponder them - in view of the only seemingly
casual films by the Afro-American Kevin Jerome Everson on everyday
life, abstraction and truth; in view of the subtle films by the American
Deborah Stratman on nationalism, freedom and truth; in view of Austrian media artist Dorit Margreiter’s works that have moved from exhibition space to cinema, on space, perception – and truth. “Watch
global, think local,” so to speak.
In the presence of Kevin Jerome everson, dorit Margreiter and
deborah Stratman.
RETROSPECTIVE
JOHN FORD
The famous quotation “My name is John Ford and I make Westerns” stands like an epitaph over Ford’s creative
work, but it’s not entirely correct. The director, who made his first film in 1917 and his 124th in 1966, worked in
practically all genres, and not only did he deal with the formal language of Hollywood cinema in various ways,
he also partly invented it.
Dedicating this year’s retrospective to John Ford, the Viennale and Austrian Film Museum aim to honor and
introduce every phase of his artistic output with a selection of 45 films. In rare productions such as JUST PALS,
KENTUCKy PRIDE and BUCKING BROADWAy we can explore the early silent film era, while the expressionistic THE INFORMER and THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND, as well as the little known masterpiece
PILGRIMAGE, give us an opportunity to discover the period of early talkies. The classics, that is, highly acclaimed
films from the 1940s, including My DARLING CLEMENTINE, THE GRAPES OF WRATH and HOW GREEN
WAS My VALLEy, go hand in hand with Ford’s documentaries, created during the Second World War. Cavalry
films like FORT APACHE and SHE WORE A yELLOW RIBBON mark the beginning of a nostalgic review, and
THE SUN SHINES BRIGHT, THE SEARCHERS and THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTy VALANCE represent
the phase of Ford’s late work.
As in previous years, the retrospective will be documented in the form of a book, including new essays, classical
texts, and statements by Ford as well as reviews of all the films shown at the retrospective.
A RETROSPECTIVE BY VIENNALE AND AUSTRIAN FILM MUSEUM
October 16 to November 30, 2014
Österreichisches Filmmuseum, Augustinerstraße 1, 1010 Wien
Tel. 01/533 70 54 • www.filmmuseum.at