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© Viennale

THE TRAILERS OF THE 60TH VIENNALE

 

In celebration of its 60th edition, the Viennale has asked six filmmaker friends, representing different positions of contemporary cinema, to create festival trailers. Their short works differ in tonality as well as emotion, but they all speak of cinema, its history and the world around us.

VIENNALE-TRAILER 2022: LE SOLDAT - CLAIRE DENIS

France/Austria 2022, 1 minute

Who appears when we see ourselves in the mirror, make ourselves visible? What inner experience do we hide from others? In a double hand gesture, Claire Denis reminds us at the same time of Jean-Luc Godard (1930-2022) and of the actor Michel Subor (1935-2022), who played in four of her films and with whom Denis also remained closely connected in private. Denis juxtaposes a scene from Godard's Algerian war film LE PETIT SOLDAT (1960/63) with a miniature from her hypnotic work BEAU TRAVAIL, wherein she directly quoted Godard's scene in 1999. Michel Subor starred in both films. Her most recent work STARS AT NOON is dedicated to his memory.

Viennale-Trailer 2022: WALDEN - RYUSUKE HAMAGUCHI

Japan/Austria 2022, 2 minutes

What else is there to be expected from Hamaguchi, who in 2021 alone made the two fantastically tender films WHEEL OF FORTUNE AND FANTASY and DRIVE MY CAR. If he can keep us in suspense for three quiet hours, he can also decelerate our pulse in two minutes. He just points the camera at it: water, waves, reflections of branches, sounds of forest life, a pure impressionistic work of pausing. And suddenly, in this meditative world that you sink into, a few wise female sentences from a bygone cinematic era sound and immediately feel very close - that's all the sky allows.

 

Viennale-Trailer 2022: SONGS FROM NAPLES - NARCISA HIRSCH

Argentina/Austria 2022, 1 minute

"Red lips should be kissed," Cliff Richard once sang, and that's probably the first association that comes to mind when confronted with the pursed red female lips that 94-year-old German-Argentine experimental filmmaker Narcisa Hirsch presents in close-up in SONGS FROM NAPLES. But then the red woman's mouth bites gleefully into a piece of raw liver with its dazzling white teeth, taking on something thoroughly predatory. Hirsch, who has repeatedly devoted herself to the themes of women, the body and sexuality in her films, here returns to a motif (and the 16mm material) from her 1971 film CANCIONES NAPOLITANAS.

VIENNALE-TRAILER 2022: INDEPENDENCE DAY - SERGEI LOZNITSA

Niederlande/Österreich 2022, 1 Minute

In the present context, the titular INDEPENDENCE DAY is anything but just another marker in the annals of history. Rather, such actually and concretely and very tangibly symbolizes the freedom of the democratically organized world in distress. Loznitsa, a tireless worker in archives and historical sites, is a virtuoso of actualization. Whether he is updating the archival or showing the archival context to the archival, we feel that it concerns us. That gesture that establishes the connection between the private and the political. A cinematic haiku that could also be a trailer.

Viennale-Trailer 2022: THE LIONESS - NINA MENKES

US/Austria 2022, 2 minutes

A young lady looks past us and the eye of the camera. Tension piles up. A troupe of dancers in sequined costumes just before the big performance, bustling. (Sacred) cows and wild monkeys roaming in a monstrous temple complex carved into the rocks, images of majestic tranquility flowing through. Two lionesses behind bars, a brief thought of Rainer Maria Rilke's poem "The Panther." A circus performer with four hula hoops at once in glittering garb. On the soundtrack, the world calls out to us that there is an incredible amount to discover in it. Now! Wide awake sensual impressions, one after the other like the blink of an eye, are after all the most beautiful experiences that cinema has to offer.

VIENNALE-TRAILER 2022: VIENNA WALTZ - ALBERT SERRA

Spain/Austria, 2 minutes

A heavily puffing fighting bull, a potency concentrate, moves as in an arena, irritated and ready to attack at the same time; however, he seems to turn his attention rather in a shadowy forest sometimes here, sometimes there. And instead of the opposing torero, a conspecific emerges, one could also say he overlaps with himself, equally irritated. The words "Sex", "Death", "Blood", "Bye" peel out one after the other from the black-green shimmer. One potency turns away, the other dallies indecisively in the face of danger. Cinema is a space of possibilities, often seducing us with its beauty. But it is about the fundamental - and about the consequence of the decision.

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