As part of the open-air cinema KARLSkino 2024 organized by VOLXkino on Vienna's Karlsplatz (23 to 28 September, admission free!), the Viennale presents three festival highlights from last year's program.
KARLSkino is an open-air cinema that shows a selection of cinematic delicacies and rarities free of charge and in the open air on Vienna's Karlsplatz. Karlsplatz is not only the venue for KARLSkino, but also the protagonist and host. The first three evenings of KARLSkino were curated together with Viennale director Eva Sangiorgi and include three highlights from last year's festival program. María Alchés and Benjamín Naishtat's PUAN, Philippe Garrel's LE GRAND CHARIOT and LA BÊTE by Bertrand Bonello will be shown.
Viennale Edition
PUAN, Maria Alché, Benjamin Naishtat, AR/IT/FR/DE/BR 2023, OV w/ EN subtitles
Monday, 23.09., 7.30 pm
For Marcelo (Marcelo Subiotto), the arrival of Rafael (Leonardo Sbaraglia) marks the start of a conflict. Following the unexpected death of the head of the Political Philosophy Department at the University of Buenos Aires where Marcelo works, he is certain that he will be the one to fill the vacancy. However, Rafael, a younger candidate with an impressive track record (he’s known for quoting philosophers in their original languages, plays the piano, has a beautiful singing voice and a captivating smile) quickly gains the favour of everyone in the department. For his part, Marcelo is quiet, unassuming and paunchy, and doesn’t really know what to do in a situation like this. PUAN, whose title refers to the affectionate nickname for the street where the Faculty of Philosophy is located, challenges the typical ways in which such professional conflicts play out. While the central rivalry generates tension, other problems also loom large—personal, financial and political. What sets María Alché and Benjamín Naishtat’s narrative apart is the way PUAN moves from the self-centred realm of professors’ offices, with its humour and pettiness, to the harsher, more intense real world, which is where the true adversary lies. (Diego Lerer)
LE GRAND CHARIOT – THE PLOUGH, Philippe Garrel, FR/CH 2022, OV w/ EN subtitles
Tuesday, 24.09., 7.30 pm
The script of Philippe Garrel’s latest film is forged from steel, with camera movements as precise as the microscopic mechanisms of a Swiss watch. Such respect for the inner life of his characters is shown that we enter their consciences without the need for a single word to express their specific condition. Set in the present day, the story focuses on the vicissitudes of a family of puppeteers. The father, his mother and his three children have been performing different children’s theatre classics for decades. They have a small theatre in front of their house and also tour the country. Their company is well-known and respected and has overcome obstacles of all kinds for that very reason. However, misfortune leads to a new challenge and everything changes. At this crossroads, Garrel imagines two opposing ideas that threaten the present situation: upholding a tradition can be exhausting or even fatal on the one hand, even as older artistic forms like puppet theatre can easily feel inadequate due to younger generations’ lack of interest in them. LE GRAND CHARIOT raises a question that hardly just concerns the world of puppeteers: how can a tradition that has become a minority practice, like Garrel’s cinema, resist? (Roger Koza)
LA BÊTE, Bertrand Bonello, FR/CA 2023, OV w/ EN subtitles
Wednesday, 25.09., 7.30 pm
LA BÊTE, Bertrand Bonello’s astonishing sci-fi drama, is a thrilling journey of the mind staged with visionary élan. Loosely adapting the Henry James novella The Beast in the Jungle (1903), Bonello tells the ill-fated story of Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) and Louis (George MacKay), which is reconfigured over three points in time and space: Paris in 2044, in Los Angeles in 2014 and Paris once again in 1910. A dark cloud looms over the heroine’s troubled soul from the outset. In a near-future world dominated by AI where productivity is everything, she is restless, emotional and thus sub-optimal. Cleansing her “DNA” ofers an apparent solution, whereby she is transported through a time portal where she experiences fragments of her past lives, which are deleted from her mind in the process. Gabrielle first meets Louis in 1910, who captures her heart and spirit, as a powerful bond is forged, full of melancholy and eternal longing. A poignant quest for deeper connection, LA BÊTE follows two lovers who will never live out their mutual attraction. As we move with them from one epoch to the next, like in a hall of broken mirrors where memory and feelings merge into exciting but painful experiences, we realise that everything human is doomed to vanish. (Maria Giovanna Vagenas)
The complete film program
23.09. PUAN, Maria Alché, Benjamin Naishtat, AR/IT/FR/DE/BR 2023, OV w/ EN subtitles
24.09. LE GRAND CHARIOT – THE PLOUGH, Philippe Garrel, FR/CH 2022, OV w/ EN subtitles
25.09. LA BÊTE, Bertrand Bonello, FR/CA 2023, OV w/ EN subtitles
26.09. BAAF (Best Austrian Animation Festival) presents: Highlights of the Austrian animation film (1997-2023)
27.09. KARLSTAG – no screenings
28.09. CARAVAN, Lucy Ashton, AT 2024, OV w/ EN subtitles (Diagonale Audience Prize 2024)
Film starts at 19:30, admission free
Karlsplatz, Resselpark, 1040 Vienna
Further information about the KARLSkino and the program can be found here.