And we continue with tips for Wednesday, Thursday (public holiday) and Friday.
USA 2017, 113 min, OV, D: David Zellner, Nathan Zellner
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, David Zellner
A likably offbeat combination of western, comedy and romance, DAMSEL delights in upending audience expectations at every turn. The early stretches promise a larkish but heartfelt love-story as besotted young fop Samuel Alabaster travels across the 19th century Old West to meet his bride-to-be Penelope, with a miniature horse named Butterscotch and the “preacher” he’s brought along to perform the marriage ceremony. But when the supposed “lovebirds” finally meet up, all manner of hell very quickly breaks loose.
October 31, 3.30 p.m., Gartenbaukino • November 7, 11 p.m., Gartenbaukino
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USA 2017, 113 min, OV with German subtitles, D: Paul Schrader
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried, Cedric Antonio Kyles
Writer of TAXI DRIVER and RAGING BULL, director of AMERICAN GIGOLO, MISHIMA and CAT PEOPLE, veteran American auteur Paul Schrader has staged one of the most spectacular of recent cinematic comebacks with this acutely observed, character-based drama. Constructed around Oscar-tipped Ethan Hawke’s magnetic performance, it is an incisively intelligent and burningly topical film about faith, doubt, guilt and desire in the 21st century.
October 31, 11 p.m., Gartenbaukino
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Argentina/Brazil/Germany/Norway 2018, 92 min, OV with English subtitles, R: Maria Alché
Cast: Mercedes Morán, Esteban Bigliardi, Marcelo Subiotto
Marcela has just lost her sister Rina, it was sudden. Rina’s apartment must now be cleared of her possessions, the plants, furniture and clothing: succulents, dark wood, patterned scarves, a pair of old sunglasses. The curtains are closed and the light is soft and diffuse, like it must be on the floor of the sea, like it is at home, where Marcela lives with her husband and three teenage children. Family life is chaotic, as there are constant interruptions, the broken washing machine, the telephone calls and unexpected guests, the tears that arrive unannounced, the impromptu songs.
In the presence of Maria Alché and Christoph Friedel (Producer).
October 31, 6 p.m., Stadtkino im Künstlerhaus • November 2, 4 p.m., Urania
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USA 2017, 128 min, OV, D: Ethan Hawke
Cast: Ben Dickey, Kris Kristofferson, Alia Shawkat
Ethan Hawke’s BLAZE is a lyrical, meandering portrait of a life that was short and raucous. Recounting the story of hard-living, larger-than-life country musician Blaze Foley – a.k.a. Michael Fuller, a.k.a. Deputy Dawg – BLAZE is a film full of memories and memories-within-memories. Through a vivid lead performance by newcomer Ben Dickey, the film tracks the legendary singer’s path through back roads and honky-tonks with plenty of Blaze’s own characteristic blend of dirty jokes, tall tales, and country-and-western folklore along the way.
October 31, 11 p.m., Stadtkino im Künstlerhaus • November 7, 6 p.m., Gartenbaukino
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Switzerland 2018, 85 min, OV with German subtitles, D: Jean-Luc Godard
An absolute deconstruction of the sign, far from any structure of thought, is what is staged by Jean-Luc Godard in his most recent work. In line with his latest works – from HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA to ADIEU AU LANGAGE – this anarchic encyclopedic essay is yet another cinematographic leap into the abyss wherein a visual and linguistic exploration of the historical past and the social present collides with a perpetual sensory stimulation in which image and word become one and, at the same time, counterpoints. Employing a post-human aesthetics, Godard radically transforms the image and transits between formats, sound, visual fragments, and ideas that are contrasted and complemented, destroyed but also potentiated by their juxtaposition.
In the presence of Fabrice Aragno and Nicole Brenez (both Editors).
November 1, 3.30 p.m., Gartenbaukino
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Romania/Czech Republic/France/Bulgaria/Germany 2018, 140 min, OV with English subtitles, D: Radu Jude
Cast: Ioana Iacob, Alexandru Dabija, Alex Bogdan
Romanian writer-director Radu Jude confirms his status as one of Europe’s most unpredictable, important and talented filmmakers with his sixth feature-length work, which scooped the top prize – the Crystal Globe – at Karlovy Vary Festival. Bold and rambunctious but executed with intelligent maturity, this is a sprawling interrogation of a particularly dark episode in his country’s history – a genocidal assault upon Jewish and Roma people in 1941 under the direction of Nazi-collaborationist prime minister Ion Antonescu, whose swaggering cabinet speech announcing the policy provides the film with its title.
In the presence of Radu Jude.
October 31, 6.30 p.m., Urania • November 1, 8 p.m., Stadtkino im Künstlerhaus
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France 2016, 153 min, OV with English subtitles, D: César Vayssié
Cast: Pauline Hubert, Antoine Allory, Sarah Amrous
César Vayssié’s dense movie is an experiment in cinematography, that switches abruptly between essay, documentary film-making, staged theatrical scenes and choreographic hypertension. UFE (UNFILMÉVÈNEMENT) centers on a group of young people who plan spectacular artistic and political actions, attacking the role of television in an e ort to create social chaos. A kidnapped TV anchor is held hostage in a remote villa in the Alps. The location turns into an arts workshop and a base camp for political action, populated by actors, revolutionaries, and a rock band.
In the presence of César Vayssié.
November 1, 9 p.m., Urania
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Belgium/Norway 2018, 94 min, OV with English subtitles, D: Dora García
Cast: Gerardo Naumann, Adriana Barenstein, Graciela Martínez
“My Happening, I now repeat, was nothing other than ’an act of social sadism made explicit.”, writes the Argentinian intellectual Oscar Masotta in 1967. Spanish artist Dora García, employing different means of expression from re-staging and cinema to an enriching website with great texts accompanying the film, asks what the happenings of the mythical Lacanian of pre-dictatorship Argentinia can mean today. Even more she comes close to the ideal of fictional figure Pierre Menard from José Luis Borges’ story about a man who immersed himself in re-writing Don Quixote to the point of a deliberate anachronism. Due to an aesthetic of disorderly interruption and the constant pointing-out of the partly discomforting presence of the camera we never feel safe. The perversity of observing, the power structures of who is looking at whom become painfully palpable.
In the presence of Dora García.
November 1, 6.30 p.m., Filmmuseum • November 3, 3.30 p.m., Stadtkino im Künstlerhaus
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USA 2018, 110 min, OV D: Brady Corbet
Cast: Natalie Portman, Jude Law, Raffey Cassidy
VOX LUX begins with a scene of absolute devastation. A gunman massacres many of his classmates in an American high school. A sequence as shocking as anything in Gus Van Sant’s ELEPHANT. After this bloody overture, the movie turns into a satirical, macabre version of A STAR IS BORN. Austrian audiences may be intrigued to discover this most American of films was inspired by Robert Musil’s “The Man Without Qualities”. “It’s about a character who is on the periphery of major events during the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,” Corbet reflected of the links between the modernist Austrian novelist’s book and his movie after the film’s premiere. Bizarrely, the character in VOX LUX always there at the most seismic moments is Celeste, a pop star. Played by Cassidy/Portman, she is a survivor of the high school shooting who becomes the nation’s darling.
November 2, 11.15 p.m., Gartenbaukino • November 5, 3.30 p.m., Gartenbaukino • November 6, 6.30 a.m., Gartenbaukino
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Argentina/Austria 2018, 71 min, OV, D: Gastón Solnicki
Cast: Han-Gyeol Lin, Alexandra Prodaniuc, Karin Krank
Argentinian director Gastón Solnicki is one of the countless people whose lives were touched by former Viennale festival director Hans Hurch, who died suddenly last summer. Full of the same grief shared by many, Solnicki travels to Vienna to try and make sense of his feelings by shooting a film. He moves through the misty streets and passages, seeking out the places, objects, and images that might call forth his lost friend or tap into his own sense of loss, as gentle lines are sketched out between them by his natural flair for association.
In the presence of Gastón Solnicki and Gabriele Kranzelbinder (Producer).
November 2, 3.30 p.m., Gartenbaukino
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France 2018, 88 min, OV with English subtitles, D: César Vayssié
Cast: Elsa Michaud, Gabriel Gauthier
Did you ever wonder about the times when you weren’t assaulted on a minutely basis with images you’d be better off not having seen? What was it like half a century ago when photos like Ronald Haeberle’s taken at My Lai could touch people and turn the tide on a war – with the wiser ones like Guy Debord already sensing the Society of Spectacle ahead? How could things turn so drastically so quickly: in roughly two-third of an average European person’s lifetime? But also: What is left of May ’68, the very real changes these happenings brought about?
In the presence of César Vayssié.
November 2, 6 p.m., Stadtkino im Künstlerhaus • November 3, 8.30 p.m., Metro, Eric Pleskow Saal (Last Minute)
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Romania 2018, 70 min, OV with English subtitles, D: Corneliu Porumboiu
Cast: Laurentiu Ginghina, Corneliu Porumboiu
“Your sport is a political utopia,” Romanian filmmaker Corneliu Porumboiu tells his friend, Laurențiu Ginghină. Ever since he got injured in his youth and can’t play, Ginghină dreams of minimizing soccer’s strain on players. In all of Porumboiu’s work, existential questions simmer beneath the surface. His intuitive, conversational and witty portrait of his friend leads us into similarly loaded territory: Glimpses of post-communist Romania, European Union spleen and America’s dim capitalist mirage mix with one man’s impossible pursuit to revolutionize his beloved sport.
November 2, 6.30 p.m., Urania • November 6, 3.30 p.m., Stadtkino im Künstlerhaus
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