Cinema doggy-style, experimental hot-house, Kubelka’s X-box and Seidl’s Latest. What goes on in Vienna.
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So tell me, what’s going on? General questions are always the most difficult to answer. To avoid serious work of thought, trivia pop to mind. So, let’s be lazy and start at that: Vienna’s first Doggy-cinema has opened this month. Yes – this is, what’s going on in Vienna, capital of trivia. We already have – reasonably enought – our mother-and-baby-screenings. Hushed sound, dimmed lights, lots of tolerance for whining and nappy-wetting. They’re an atmospherical success, so I hear.
Taking up the idea, one of Vienna’s traditional single-screen-theatres, Admiral-Kino on Burggasse, which was about to close down for good, was instead transformed. The new owner, a former pr-agent, announced the upcoming attraction: Any dog with a friendly temper and „Beißkorb“ (Austrian for muzzle) is in future admitted. I’m not quite sure, if watching a movie on top of a doggy-dark-room-sniffing-orgy would be pleasant for any human actually interested in the film. But then, I’m glad Admiral-Kino will live.
Let’s stick to the topic: Dark rooms. The essential hot-spot in Vienna 2007 was again the so called „invisible cinema“. A rather small, black theatre, with velvety black chairs, black walls, black ceiling and a white screen that gets all the attention. The screening room of the Austrian cinematheque, which – lucky for us Viennese – is still programmed by Alexander Horwath.
Cinema-philospher Peter Kubelka, whose light & sound-thunderstorm „Arnulf Rainer“ is screenend within IFFR-Exploding Cinema, co-founded the cinemateque and designed this room. And, on rare occasions, he grants us one of his weirdly-inspiring personal appearances. Kubelka’s March lecture on traditional and new media ranks high in my 2007-charts of Kino-moments. Imagine the 73-year-old 16mm-materialist, watchchain sticking out of his waistcoat, grabbing an x-box-controller and driving a breathtaking formula-1-race on the cinamatheque’s screen. Fully absorbed, sweating heavily, exclaiming afterwards, that this was one of the most exiting moments of his live!
Of course Mr. Kubelka still refuses to have any of his films transferred to digital media. But then his fascination with the x-box is part of the argument: Analog is for film, where the colour black is defined by a total absence of light (watch „Arnulf Rainer“, and you will understand) . Digital is for interactivity.
A dogma, if it is well reasoned, can be inspiring. Norbert Pfaffenbichler is another Austrian filmmaker, whom you might want to call dogmatic or austere. His works are built like screen-mathematics. His short „Mosaik Mécanique“ (the name pays tribute to Kubelka’s „Mosaik im Vertrauen“) is a living storybook. 7 x 14 single takes from a 1914 slapstick-film unfold synchronically on screen. Yes, you may get bored while you watch the geometrical pattern of 98 tiny, sizzling frames for almost ten minutes. But the experience might change your perception of any film’s syntax.
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Like Pfaffenbichler’s work most Austrian films at IFFR 08 are shorts, which sort of mirrors the national output. Last year’s harvest of narrative and documentary features was simply less remarkable than the one brought in on the experimental field. Johann Lurfs psychedelic full-body-experience „Vertigo Rush“ (19 min), left me thrilled at its Viennale premiere. Certainly the use of zoom-in/track-out has been inflationary ever since „Vertigo“. But 25-year-old Lurf drives it to full excess.The slow acceleration of camera-tracking-speed in combination with subliminal deep bass frequencies makes your skin crawl.
Ulrich Seidls „Import/Export“ screens in the Kings&Aces-section. Still, to me this is not about routine. It’s the discovery of a new, almost optimistic Seidl. There is a shift of aestetics, that goes along with a shift of political perspective: The walls, against which Wolfgang Thaler’s camera used to pin the characters, here make way for deep-focus-shots of endless corridors. It’s no longer fate, that holds down all those big mouths, prostitutes, small-time-crooks. It’s the system, the economy, it’s Import & Export. And the system might even be changed. Now, take that for a sunbeam, variety!*
Another mindshaking Austrian film, „Kurz davor ist es passiert“, the feature-debut of Ulrich Seidls direction assistant, Anja Salomonowitz, never made it to IFFR. Sadly missing are also a few outstanding 2007 documentaries, on the subject of National Socialism and Shoah in the lives of the perpetrator’s descendants: Marcus Carney’s intimate portrait of his own family, „The End of the Neubacher Project“ or Klub Zwei’s short interview study „Väter/Täter “ („Fathers/Perpetrators“).
So now, that we’ve successfully switched from trivia to serious matters, I might as well mention the biggest disaster of the Austrian film year 2007: A new, wonderful film centre was planned by Delugan Meissl, the Austrian architects, who are also assigned with the Amsterdam Filmmuseum. It was supposed to host several institutions: the Austrian Film Archive, Viennale, Stadtkino and a new centre for film exile. A café, an open-air-theatre and a filmmuseum with haptic objects on display were all planned out. But since the building site is part of a stately-owned park, both city and state had to decide. Just a few weeks ago, they went for the only competing project: a massively oversized concert-crystal, where the Viennese choir-boys will soon wave their sailor-hats at Japanese tourists. Economy always beats public interest. Yes, that’s also Vienna, capital of trivia, capital of tackiness, feel-bad-movie-heaven.
* It was a hard blow and much debated, when Variety labelled Austrian films a bunch of „feel-bad-movies“. The nation now relies on Borat’s successor, gay Austrian fashionista Brüno to turn this image upside down.
(published in the IFFR 08-special edition of the Filmkrant)