The Man Who Lived at the Café Central
Peter Altenberg was a writer who wore sandals in the snow, chased underage girls, and wrote small works that could reflect an entire world. Altenberg: The Little Pocket Mirror is a documentary about his life, well worth watching for its beautiful images, its eloquent stumble through modernist and modern day Vienna, and its spotlight on [...]
Gita Kaufman Retraces the Shadows From My Past
Gita Weinrauch Kaufman “can never forget, nor forgive, what happened.” She wanted us to know that right off, from the beginning, before trying to pull the many threads of place and memory together. The result became Shadows From My Past, a new documentary by Mrs. Kaufman and her late husband Curt that will be screened [...]
Documentary Film: The law in these parts
Today, the Filmcasino is hosting a Mediterranean breakfast starting at 11:00, before the screen of The law in these parts, a documentary investigation by Ra’anan Alexandrowicz into the justice of the Israeli legal system. It has been the winner of the World Cinema Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival 2012 and won “Best Documentary” at the [...]
Diagonale: How to Snatch Defeat From the Jaws of Victory
I pulled into Graz just in time for the gala opening, threw on a fancy suit, refreshed my hair and make-up, and jumped into a cab prepared to sidestep the paparazzi and compete with the stars of stage and screen, entering Austria’s premier film festival at the Helmut-List-Halle. No red carpet. OK. But the hordes were there all right, thronging the entrance [...]
Taking the Night Train to Lisbon
Night Train to Lisbon, directed by the Danish filmmaker Bille August, is a German-Swiss-Portuguese co-production that united him for the second time in Portugal with Jeremy Irons, having previously filmed The House of the Spirits in Lisbon and the Alentejo in 1993. The film is adapted from the ruminative 2004 novel by Pascal Mercier (the [...]
Action and Integration in Ottakring
CopStories, Episode 1: A Viennese taxi driver who hates foreigners pulls up in in front of his apartment building in Ottakring, positioned just so as to prevent his new Muslim neighbours from moving in with their baby grand piano. Someone calls the police. The officers from the Kreitnergasse station show up and talk to the [...]
Film Preview: Hannah Arendt’s Battle for Conscience
Forcing her students to think was German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt’s passion. Still, she had no idea how bitterly her forceful questioning of assumptions during the trial of Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961 would bring her into conflict – not only with her academic teaching colleagues at American universities – but also with [...]
Finding Faces for the Silver Screen
Defining success can be vague, especially in the film industry. Is it fame or creative satisfaction? Is it income, reputation or recognition? For casting directors, it’s not usually about the limelight. Most are invisible, and prefer it that way. Then there’s Lana Veenker. When Veenker is out, she is surrounded by actors, following at her [...]
Haneke on Ageing, Loss – and Liebe
Austrian film enthusiasts couldn’t believe their ears last 27 May, when the jury at the Cannes Film Festival awarded Michael Haneke the prestigious Palme d’Or for the second time in four years, this time for Amour (distributed here as Liebe, in the English-speaking world as Love), a joint production of companies in France, Germany and [...]
