DAILY: Day 8, October 24, 2024

In our VIENNALE DAILIES you'll find everything you need to know about what's happening around the festival!

I just try to make movies that respect the intelligence of the audience. Respect that they understand that the narrator is always unreliable and respect that they understand that the medium can do whatever it wants.

(Guy Maddin)

FILMTIPS FOR TODAY

BONA
Lino Brocka | Philippines 1980 | 88 min | OV w/EN subtitles

Thursday, October 24, 3.30 pm: STADTKINO IM KÜNSTLERHAUS

Rarely screened after its initial release—and at one point assumed lost—BONA is a tale of obsession that showcases auteur Lino Brocka and actress Nora Aunor at their most poignant. When young Bona starts bringing third-rate actor Gardo lunch to his film shoots, it seems like an innocent infatuation. Yet everything begins to spiral when she tends to the wounded actor after a gang of thugs assault him. Against her family’s wishes, she soon moves into Gardo’s shack, caring for him in almost motherly fashion—cooking, cleaning and even financing his life as a casanova of the slums. What drives her behaviour defies any easy explanation—irreducible to pathological desire, traditional societal structures or gender roles—which gives the film a Buñuelian feel. Behind her decision to slave away for Gardo, there nonetheless lies an integrity that prevents her from embodying a simple victim. Instead, Brocka’s impassive realism and Aunor’s apt performance elevate the melodramatic source material to more suggestive territory. By the end, Bona’s decision has caused so much anguish that even when a Jeanne Dielman-like boiling point arrives, to speak of gratifying catharsis would be too simple. (Salvador Amores)

TAE (LIFE LINE)
Hah Myung-joong | South Korea 1986 | 104 min | OV w/EN subtitles

Thursday, October 24, 1.30 pm: METRO, HISTORISCHER SAAL

Having started his career in Hong Kong after being scouted by Run Run Shaw himself, Ha Myung-joong became the leading man in many Korean ﬁlms of the 1970s, including Im Kwon-taek’s JOKBO, also showing in this series, before he turned to directing. Unlike his more well-known DAENGBYEOT (BLAZING SUN, 1985), which was a prize winner in Berlin and elsewhere, TAE has rarely been shown internationally, making this new restoration all the more important. Filmed on location on an isolated island, his third feature uses the barren rocks, the mysterious sea and age-old mysticism for full emotional impact. Sociopolitically, it is hard to miss the ﬁlm’s critique on how capitalism and religion conspire against humanity’s survival, let alone its happiness. In the colonial 1920s, landowner and loan shark Choi creates a scheme to monopolise the island’s economy. With the help of corrupt shaman Chung-Baek (played by real life shaman Chae Hee-ah), Choi spreads the rumour that it is a water spirit that is responsible for the lack of ﬁsh, and not ruthless overﬁshing by his companions. Soon the island becomes a battleground for survival. (Gerwin Tamsma).

Image of movie Mondongo I: Mondongo - El equilibrista

Mondongo I: Mondongo - El equilibrista
Mariano Llinás | Argentina 2024 | 73 min | OV w/EN subtitles

Thursday, October 24, 8.30 pm: METRO, ERIC PLESCOW SAAL

A complex, disturbing and ultimately devastating trilogy of ﬁlms, EL TRÍPTICO DE MONDONGO is an experimental portrait of failure and self-destruction, as well as the painful chronicle of a friendship’s demise. Mariano Llinás was commissioned to create a documentary about Mondongo, an Argentine art collective known for their portraits of cultural icons and popular myths produced using plasticine and other unconventional materials—a task that proved overwhelming. EL EQUILIBRISTA is perhaps the most “traditional” of the three ﬁlms, an observational documentary that follows the creation of El Baptisterio de Colores, a dodecahedron inspired by the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence. As we witness the painstakingly intricate construction process, combined with an interview where the artists share their story, we sense the ﬁlmmaker’s frustration with the project’s direction. To enhance his portrayal of the process, Llinás begins experimenting: he incorporates Bernard Herrmann’s music to infuse everything with dramatic intensity, adds humorous and ﬁctional elements, harshly criticises the artists’ work and slowly deconstructs the traditional idea of a portrait—much like Mondongo does in its own work. (Diego Lerer)

In the presence of Mariano Llinás.

SOME OF OUR GUESTS TODAY

Kurdwin Ayub © Neven Allgeier — Kurdwin Ayub

Kurdwin Ayub
Director of
MOND

Florentina Holzinger and
Andria Tayeh
Actresses in
MOND

Patricia Mazuy
Director of
LA PRISONNIÈRE DE BORDEAUX

Roberto Minervini
Director of
THE DAMNED

Paolo Benzi
Producer of
THE DAMNED

NOW AVAILABLE: TEXTUR #7 – ROBERTO MINERVINI

The seventh edition of the ongoing publication series TEXTUR is dedicated to the Italian-born director Roberto Minervini, who has been based in the USA for more than 20 years. Shifting gently between feature film and documentary, his films deal with the socio-political complexities of his adopted country and are interested in the people who otherwise remain invisible, marginalized or unheard. In addition to a major interview, the volume edited by Eva Sangiorgi and James Lattimer contains a conversation between the Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Frammartino and Minervini, texts by his editor Marie-Hélène Dozo and his producers Paolo Benzi and Denise Ping Lee, exclusive images, sketches and notes from his film shoots as well as contributions by Mark Peranson, Payal Kapadia, Jessica Sarah Rinland, Rachael Rakes, Goffredo Fofi and Pablo Marín.

Available from today at the Viennale box offices as well as ONLINE!

TALK WITH Albert Serra
I Don't Want To See This Anymore! The Immorality Of Images And "the Pain Of Others"

Viennale Zentralino: 6 pm

Can a picture or a movie be immoral per se or does immorality arise through reception and interpretation? Does art exist because of or in spite of moral obligation? Twenty years after Susan Sontag's incisive analysis of the affective power of the image in her essay Regarding the Pain of Others, the discourse on the implications of images has intensified. What questions about morality, ethics and responsibility do filmmakers face today?
With: Albert Serra (TARDES DE SOLEDAD)
Moderation: Mark Peranson