The Viennale kicks off
- Fifty years after having received its name, the Viennese film festival is awaiting some 100,000 visitors this year. Its 50th anniversary trailer is by the late Chris Marker
The 2012 Viennale (October 25 - November 7) officially started yesterday at the Gartenbaukino which hosted its opening ceremony and the screening of American film Argo.
It’s quite a special edition this year because, even if the non-competitive event (with the exception of the Vienna Film Award and FIPRESCI Prize) was created in 1960 by a group of critics, it only received its name two years afterwards, 50 years ago, when the town of Vienna decided to subsidise it (even if, for the next five years, it was called the "Festival of Cheerfulness" privileging comedies to distract audiences from the time’s pro-communist agitation). As previously requested from Godard, Varda, and Lynch, the Viennale asked Chris Marker to compose its 50th anniversary trailer to mark the occasion. The famous documentary filmmaker and essayist has since passed away, but has left us with this surprising minute of film that recounts a quest for the ideal viewer, and that ends up finding him were one might less expect, thankfully and unfortunately (to watch the trailer, click here).
The Viennale every year welcomes about 100,000 viewers -- if not ideal, then at least young and from all over -- to see about 300 films. Among the feature films screening this year are two Cannes laureates, Romanian director Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Cosmina Stratan
interview: Cristian Mungiu
interview: Cristian Mungiu
interview: Cristian Mungiu
film profile] and Danish director Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Thomas Vinterberg
interview: Thomas Vinterberg
film profile], as well as other Cannes selectees like Alain Resnais’s You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], Belgian director Joachim Lafosse’s Our Children [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Joachim Lafosse
film profile], Rachid Djaïdani’s Rengaine [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Rachid Djaïdani
film profile], British director Ben Wheatley’s Tourists, Noémie Lvovsky’s Camille Rewinds [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], Pascal Bonitzer’s Parisian tale with a Rimbaud-related title Cherchez Hortense [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], and the late Raul Ruiz’s last film Night Across the Street. Festival-goers will be able to discover two Berlinale LUX Prize finalists, Miguel Gomes's Tabu and Hungarian director Bence Fliegauf's Just the Wind, as well as Olivier Assayas’s Something in the Air [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Olivier Assayas
film profile] and almost 104-year-old maestro Manoel de Oliveira’s Gebo and the Shadow [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] from the last Venice Film Festival. Among the Austrian titles that have been selected are Peter Kern’s Diamantenfieber and Antonin Svoboda’s The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich (Svoboda is one of the co-founders of dynamic production company Coop99), a film notably starring Julia Jentsch.
The special sections include a homage to five filmmakers including Claire Denis, an evening dedicated to very experimental and anarchist Austrian filmmaker Peter Kubelka, and a Vienna-Moscow section. The year’s homage explores the career of Michael Caine through ten films. The programme will also focus on the works of Italian documentary filmmaker Alberto Grifi and Portuguese director Manuel Mozos.
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