In our VIENNALE DAILIES you will be informed daily about the happenings around the festival!
Strangely, nobody ever asked me about my shampoo, not even when I had hair down to my hips
(Lav Diaz)
NEED SOME FILMTIPS? HERE ARE SOME HIGHLIGHTS!
CELLULOID UNDERGROUND
Ehsan Khoshbakht | UK, Iran 2023 | 80 min | OV w/ EN subtitles
Monday, October 30: 3.15 pm - Stadtkino im Künstlerhaus
While recounting the life of his deceased friend and master Ahmad Jurghanian, an underground film collector in Iran, Ehsan Khoshbakht constructs a self-portrait that takes the form of a dazzling collage, where recordings of the two film buffs’ relationship coexist with fictional insertions, and glimpses of film history fill the gaps of an interrupted tale. As the country becomes an unstable reality after 1979, the film itself also disintegrates, embracing every possible texture, from pristine restorations to video, from gorgeous allegorical analogue to harshly mutilated prints. Jurghanian is a hero, a man who saved pieces of his country’s heritage from erasure by state powers, but he’s also a merchant trying to make a living out of buying and selling prints, an obsessive man-child who doesn’t know how to live outside his basement. Only a true friend could make such a sincere portrait. CELLULOID UNDERGROUND could have been a tribute to “the Iranian Langlois” or a self-indulgent autobiography, but is instead a nightmarish, helpless dive into the life and death of images, devoid of nostalgia or self-heroism. Only someone who has truly experienced this feverish delirium we call cinephilia could create something like that. (Victor Guimarães)
In the presence of Ehsan Khoshbakht.
AUGURE
Baloji | Belgium, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, France, Netherlands, South Africa | 90 min | OV w/ EN subtitles
Monday, October 30: 1.30 pm - Urania
Returning home is never easy. For Kof, returning to Congo-Kinshasa from Belgium after 18 years away brings unexpected challenges. Prompted by a family event, his visit takes a bizarre turn when no one shows up to greet him at the airport. This doesn’t faze him, but Alice—his white Belgian wife, who is pregnant with their child—is bafed. When they are met with hostility upon arriving at the event, a nightmare begins. Kof, who sufers from anxiety, has another such episode, reinforcing the family’s belief that he’s possessed. Meanwhile, Alice, expecting a very diferent kind of celebration, is in shock. The film then moves away from the couple to portray similarly complex situations involving Kof’s mother, sister and Paco, a child considered a sorcerer. AUGURE aims to immerse the audience in the life of a village in the heart of Africa and achieves this not only by showcasing its everyday quality but also via narrative structure. Dreams, hallucinations, musical numbers and various forms of performance art are woven into the story, revealing a unique, impressionistic storytelling logic that transforms the entire film into a kaleidoscopic view of a society where tradition and modernity collide in unexpected ways. (Diego Lerer)
RICARDO ET LA PEINTURE
Barbet Schroeder | Switzerland, France 2023 | 106 min | OV w/ EN subtitles
Monday, October 30: 4.00 pm - Filmmuseum
This new documentary by Swiss-French veteran Barbet Schroeder is perfectly encapsulated by its subtitle: “40 years of friendship”. With simplicity always the best tool, the director doesn’t need to try anything new here, as the camera, like in a Howard Hawks movie, stays on the same level as the subject: Ricardo Cavallo, an Argentinian painter born in 1954 and based in France since 1976. Cavallo is a hermit with an ascetic temperament, fascinated by the history of sculpture and painting, especially that of Velásquez. He is a passionate character and a humble craftsman, exploring the landscape of Finistère and watching the change of the tides, heir to a time when painting required concentration, silence and frugal living. Schroeder knocked on the door of his friend’s house and asked to come in with a small film crew. He eventually spent two years there. But the portrait of this man described by Schroeder as a “form of incarnation of good” is also reconfigured; Cavallo knows that this film is about him, but he’s always slipping away from its centre. Instead, he proposes us a fantastic journey through the history of art, remembering that “a painting is not made to be beautiful, it’s simply a matter of life and death”. (Francisco Ferreira)
ALSO: GALA SCREENING AMADEUS
on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Eric Pleskow (1924-2019)
On April 24 next year, the long-time president of the Viennale, Eric Pleskow, would have celebrated his 100th birthday. The Viennale will honor this with a gala screening of the film AMADEUS:
R: Miloš Forman | USA, France 1984 | 180 min, OV
Monday, October 30: 7 pm - Gartenbaukino
Read more about the Gala Screening HERE!
SOME OF OUR GUESTS TODAY
Ehsan Khoshbakht
Director of CELLULOID UNDERGROUND
Pavel Cuzuioc
Director of COSMOSAPIENS
Käthe Kratz
Director ofATEMNOT
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE VIENNALE CAMPARI LOUNGE?
Party: COMETA SÓNICO
The band members of Cosmica Bandida run the radio show El Cometa Sónica together, where they deepen their musical practice. In the process, the Bavarian remnants of Cosmic and 70s Disco fuse with Dark Cumbia and psychedelic sounds from Latin America. Warm-up for the live set at the Viennale closing.
From 8 pm - Free Entry!
HAVE YOU ALREADY LISTENED TO OUR VIENNALE PODCAST?
Listen to all episodes - including from past festivals - HERE! Our guests this year include Lav Diaz (ESSENTIAL TRUTHS OF THE LAKE), Lisandro Alonso (EUREKA), or Thomas Schubert (ROTER HIMMEL) - and many more!
PRESSE
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