M–Austrian Avant-Garde Film & Video

DIETMAR BREHM: BLACK GARDEN

Dietmar Brehm (Austria)

“The moods of his films resemble an atmosphere between the dream and trauma. Brehm treats the dream as a source of strategies for association, similar to the secondary process to which according to Freud all the workings of the unconscious are subject.  Dietmar Brehm a master of the grammar of a non-conceptual language.”

GUSTAV DEUTSCH: FILM IST. (1-12) / DVD-Version

Gustav Deutsch (Austria)

“It is, in a word, glorious... what I feel is the inherent power and mystery of such material, the arrangement of these images and sounds into a definition of cinema constitutes one of the greatest pedagogic films I have seen.... my main reaction is to have my socks knocked off.”

KURT KREN: ACTION FILMS

Kurt Kren (Austria)

"Kurt Kren's Action films are the most tangible way of comprehending the nature of Actionist works of art and events today. I’m not referring to the recognizability of an action's dramaturgical details, but rather to the fact that Kren's Action films make it possible to immerse oneself into their structural essence so as to grasp their energetic and aesthetic…

KURT KREN: STRUCTURAL FILMS

Kurt Kren (Austria)

"Kurt Kren´s achievements with regard to the montage of short cuts in his early works was many years ahead of the rest of the (film)world, in both form and content. Kurt Kren was a pioneere: an avantgardist in the classic and best sense of the word. A filmmaker who knows how to think in images like few others in this trade, and who realized these…

KURT KREN: WHICH WAY TO CA?

Kurt Kren (Austria)

“What does it mean to recognize a documentary gesture in Kren’s films? What is being documented? The documentary images that Kren uses in his works do not arise out of a plan, but instead, come from the right moment, a coincidence, a momentary observation, or a seized opportunity.”

MARIA LASSNIG: ANIMATION FILMS

Maria Lassnig (Austria)

Maria Lassnig trained at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, and then spent several years in Paris in the 1950s and 60s, where she was exposed to Art Informel and Surrealism. From 1968 to 1980, she lived in New York, where she did pioneering work in film, producing a series of remarkably inventive animations all presented by INDEX for the first…

MARTINA KUDLÁČEK: NOTES ON MARIE MENKEN

Martina Kudláček (US)

"Martina Kudláček has made a name for herself creating bio-docs on experimental cinema personalities such as, Maya Deren (IN THE MIRROR OF MAYA DEREN) and Alexander Hammid (AIMLESS WALK) (TFF 2005). Kudláček latest brings into focus the underground film icon Marie Menken, best known for her role as a…

MICHAEL PILZ: FACTS FOR FICTION (WAS ÜBERSETZT IST NOCH NICHT ANGEKOMMEN) / PARK OF REMEMBRANCE (PARCO DELLE RIMEMBRANZE)

Michael Pilz (Austria)

“Whether he is working in the so-called documentary or so-called fictional mode, with 16mm, 35mm or high-8-video: for Pilz the central issue is our perception and the film or video is a disposition, a condition for the temporal and spatial organization of a reflection. This refers in the first instance to the mere listening and observing, but also to an…

NORBERT PFAFFENBICHLER: NOTES ON NOTES ON FILM

Norbert Pfaffenbichler (Austria)

While the development of the Notes on Film – series is logical, the expansive directions it takes are baffling. Pfaffenbichler’s unique sensibility finds expression in a growing emphasis upon the comic and the uncanny, whereby his avant-garde and often structuralist approach is coupled with an ever-increasing pleasure in playful experimentation. The source material is...

PETER TSCHERKASSKY: ATTRACTIONS, INSTRUCTIONS AND OTHER ROMANCES

Peter Tscherkassky (Austria)

While engaged in a process of deconstruction, Peter Tscherkassky also recognizes the power of cinema, utilizing its control over space and time, in order to uncover the energies of motion and story, of the violence inherent in both revolt and containment. As the materials of the moving image now undergo transformation, as the very term film perhaps…

PETER TSCHERKASSKY: FILMS FROM A DARK ROOM

Peter Tscherkassky (Austria)

“A confrontation with the codes of narrative-representational cinema is one of Peter Tscherkassky´s constant concerns. If one attempts to distill a constant from his films, then this must surely be the oscillation between the abstract and the concrete, between the dry and the sensual, which is the source of energy of his work. The question of belly or brain…

PETER WEIBEL: DEPICTION IS A CRIME - Video Works 1969-75

Peter Weibel (Austria)

“Why a crime? In literary times the observer could not only observe but also be involved in the action itself and report afterwards with words. With pictures you cannot do this, because you are confronted with the decision: either to act / to intervene or to observe / to make a picture, because you cannot at the…

VALIE EXPORT: 3 EXPERIMENTAL SHORT FILMS

Valie Export (Austria)

“Austrian artist VALIE EXPORT has been an influential and provocative figure on the international art scene for over three decades. Her practice includes film, video, photography, text and performance. Initially expanding the Actionist project to confront a complex feminist critique of the social and political body, her works achieve a compelling fusion of the visceral...

VALIE EXPORT: INVISIBLE ADVERSARIES

Valie Export (Austria)

"Anna, an artist, is obsessed with the invasion of alien doubles bent on total destruction. Her schizophrenia is reflected in the juxtapositions of long movie camera takes with violently edited montages: private with public spaces; black & white with colour, still photographs with video, earsplitting sounds with disruptive camera angles. Anna uses her body like a...

VISIONARY: CONTEMPORARY SHORT DOCUMENTARIES AND EXPERIMENTAL FILMS FROM AUSTRIA

Various Directors (Austria)

“VISIONary sees itself as a communicator for innovative examples of contemporary Austrian audiovisual art, specifically short, experimental and documentary films and music videos. While these works represent some of the most interesting examples of contemporary Austrian art at present, they are rarely seen except at festivals and…

aDDITIONAL TITLES FROM THE AUSTRIAN AVANT-GARDE