In our VIENNALE DAILIES you'll find everything you need to know about what's happening around the festival!
We want to make films that unnerve,
that threaten, that open minds up
like a good can opener.
(Robert Kramer)
OPENING OF THE RETROSPRECTIVE: ROBERT KRAMER
October 18 to November 28, 2024.
Robert Kramer began his filmmaking career as an activist who regarded cinema as the most efficient and immediate way to express his political beliefs. After his involvement with the radical Newsreel collective and a series of essential American political films of that era – In the Country (1966), The Edge (1967), ICE (1969), Milestones (1975) – Kramer relocated to France and reinvented himself as a diaspora filmmaker observing Europe with a set of fresh eyes. Above all, Robert Kramer was one of those very rare filmmakers for whom filmmaking was not a profession or a passion that they would pursue, but simply and primarily a way of life, a way of existing in the world. Consequently, his films exist far beyond the usual basic categories of fiction, documentary, or experimental cinema, instead presenting themselves as an extension and manifestation of Robert Kramer's remarkable curiosity and desire to understand the world, perhaps even change it a little bit. In his own words: “Everyone mainly thinks of the movies as something that is being done to tell you. I think the first thing, for me at least, is to tell me, to give me some handle on what’s really going on here.”
A program by Viennale and Austrian Film Museum.
FILMTIPS FOR TODAY!
ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL
Rungano Nyoni | United Kingdom, Zambia, Ireland 2024 | 99 min | OV w/ EN subtitles
Friday, October 18, 1.00 pm: GARTENBAUKINO
Sunday, October 27, 3.15 pm: STADTKINO IM KÜNSTLERHAUS
After encountering her uncle’s dead body in the middle of an empty street Shula meets with her aunties, who have gathered for the funeral preparations. “You don’t even look traumatised, you seem fine,” they chastise her. They couldn’t be more wrong. In Rungano Nyoni’s surreal vision of middle-class Zambia, where rows of bunk beds in a college dorm are draped in plastic, scorned relatives are made to sleep in an empty swimming pool, and mourners wail in the darkness of a power outage, Shula is outwardly calm and sensible, even when sporting her glittering helmet. She does not so much as cry. But her placid expression belies the turmoil beneath the surface, which begins to crack as the family arrives and her own buried memories return. These include a segment from a children’s television program about the guinea fowl, a colourful bird that warns other animals when a predator is near. But is the danger in the past, buried with the dead, or still present, among those who protect their secrets? Though mostly shot at night, ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL builds to a nightmarish climax that takes place in the full and terrible light of day. (Genevieve Yue)
MILESTONES
Robert Kramer, John Douglas | US 1975 | 206 min | OV
Friday, October 18, 6.30 pm: FILMMUSEUM
Sunday, November 10, 5.00 pm: FILMMUSEUM
Described by Serge Daney as “the anti-NASHVILLE”, MILESTONES is an epic film about American counterculture, influenced by the works of Jacques Rivette. It contains close to 50 loosely connected characters, some playing scripted roles, others playing themselves, while the vérité style is so unaffected that the viewer only gradually, almost incredulously, becomes aware of the staged elements. The film was in fact often reviewed as if it were a documentary. This open web of lives captured in diary-form is a reflection of the lifestyle of the radical, mobile and (predominantly) white minority that formed part of the civil rights movement in the 1960s before embarking on more personal journeys in the ‘70s. MILESTONES is one of the most monumental portraits of the era. In the words of film journalist Thomas Brom, “Unbelievably schizophrenic, fascinating and utterly true.” (Christoph Huber)
On the 18th of October in the presence of Keja Ho Kramer.
FILMSTUNDE_23
Jörg Adolph, Edgar Reitz | Germany 2024 | 83 min | OV w/EN subtitles
Friday, October 18, 3.30 pm: STADTKINO IM KÜNSTLERHAUS
Thursday, October 24, 11.00 am: METRO, HISTORISCHER SAAL
In May 1968, a high school teacher from Munich had an idea: to invite director Edgar Reitz and his crew to the school and spend a few weeks teaching filmmaking to girls aged 13 to 14. He transformed the task into an experiment in cinema education, documenting the process and turning it into the TV movie FILMSTUNDE (1968), which advocated for film to be treated as an important subject in German schools. Fifty-five years later one of the students, now a 68-year-old woman, runs into the 90-year-old Reitz at a concert and they decide to reconnect, together with Jörg Adolph, to revisit those images. This encounter is built on shared memories, full of tenderness and wise reflections on how cinema deeply affected each of their lives. But FILMSTUNDE_23 is also a journey back in time to a certain kind of Germanness, in line with Reitz’s long-term interests. If we compare these images to Frederick Wiseman’s HIGH SCHOOL from the same year, we don’t see the ghosts of the Vietnam War or the vital rage of adolescence. But what we do see is a German girl turning a camera on police officers in an intentional attempt to ridicule power through time lapse and slow motion. It was May ‘68, and it shows. Subtly, silently, on a tiny strip of Super 8 film. (Victor Guimarães)
SOME OF OUR GUESTS TODAY
Joshua Oppenheimer
Director of
THE END
Yeo Siew Hua
Director of
STRANGER EYES
James Benning
Director of
BREATHLESS
Alexander Horwath
Director of
HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT
Regina Schlagnitweit
Artistic collaboration
HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT
Michael Palm
Camera of
HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT
Ralph Wieser
Producer of
HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT
PARTY TODAY
MAMBO CHICK / CAFÉ MONDO / KAMAL ALJAFARI / ELSA KREMSER / LEVIN PETER
OPERA CLUB, FROM 10 PM - FREE ENTRY!
The warm-up for the party evening takes place in the established format “Filmmakers on the turntables”. This year's line-up: Kamal Aljafari (A FIDAI FILM) as well as Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter (DREAMING DOGS). Afterwards, Mambo Chick will bring their Tropical Style to Vienna with a vinyl-only set. The evening will be rounded off the evening by the Viennese collective Café Mondo.
PRESS
Die Viennale hat ihre 62. Ausgabe politisch eingeläutet
Auf dem Punkt: Die Kurzfilmprogramme der Viennale
Viennale: Hohe Kunst des Abseitigen