Viennale kicks off

by Bénédicte Prot

21/10/2010 - Today marks the opening of the Austrian capital’s major annual film festival, the Viennale (October 21-November 3). It will present 84 narrative features, 60 documentaries, 54 shorts and a comprehensive retrospective dedicated to late maestro Eric Rohmer, which includes 40 of his films, two documentaries about him and Godard’s Il Y Avait Quoi, containing quotations from Rohmer.

Among the narrative features are titles presented at Berlin (Banksy’s Exit Through the Gift Shop [trailer] and Thomas Arslan’s In the Shadows [trailer]), Cannes (including Xavier Beauvois’s Of Gods and Men [trailer, film focus], Mike Leigh’s Another Year [trailer, film focus], Olivier Assayas’s Carlos [trailer], Jean-Luc Godard’s Film Socialism, Manoel de Oliveira’s The Strange Case of Angelica) [trailer]) and Venice (namely François Ozon’s Potiche [trailer] and Abdellatif Kechiche’s Black Venus [trailer, film focus]).

The documentary line-up also includes titles shown at major festivals, such as Andrei Ujica’s The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaucescu, Pietro Marcello’s The Mouth of the Wolf [trailer, film focus] and Michelangelo Frammartino’s The Four Times [trailer, film focus].

Siegfried A. Fruhauf, the director of artistic (often silent) short films is the focus of a special programme, as are the great masters of silent cinema. There will be a tribute to recently-deceased French DoP William Lubtchansky, who worked with leading directors: Rivette, Godard, Iosseliani and Doillon.

The Viennale will close on November 3 with a gala ceremony where the Vienna Film Prize for Austrian cinema will be awarded. Since last year, the award has been split into two separate gongs for a narrative film and a documentary (with both winners receiving €14,000). Other accolades include the FIPRESCI Prize (awarded last year to Jessica Hausner’s Lourdes [trailer, film focus]) and the Der Standard Readers’ Jury Award.

(Translated from French)