Haneke’s Amour Wins Again
Michael Haneke’s Amour was the top winner at the European Film Awards 2012 ceremony held at the Mediterranean Conference Centre in Valletta, Malta. The film took the awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress, having already picked up the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival last May, the second time Haneke has [...]
Inside Celluloid: Peter Kubelka at the Viennale
It was an event to “tell your children about”, Viennale Director Hans Hurch Hurch proclaimed: a new work by avant-garde film-maker Peter Kubelka, “Monument Film”, based on his seminal 1960 short film named after his friend and mentor Arnulf Rainer. In a smart navy blue suit and open-collar white shirt, his white hair well-groomed, [...]
V-50: That Was the Viennale that Was!
Just days after the successful run of the 50th New York Film Festival the (in fact) more senior event, the Viennale – The Vienna International Film Festival – loped into town for its 50th appearance on 25 October. Yes, New York followed Vienna’s lead for once: the Viennale was founded in 1960, but suspended twice [...]
We Are All Basically Alone
“Today, November the 5th, I will begin my report.” A woman sits in one room of a small wooden hunting lodge, writing by the dim light of a candle. “…not because writing gives me pleasure, but because I realised that I must write, so I will not lose my mind. I am completely alone, and [...]
Viennale 2012: A City Goes to the Movies
Now in its 50th year, organiser Hans Hurch calls the Viennale “a festival at eye-level”, and despite annual adaptations of venues and programme, in essence it’s a constant. This is an event that “doesn’t serve anything or anyone,” Hurch says. It is its own reason for being. Proof lies in the city’s undying enthusiasm for [...]
The Scenic Route: On Location in Vienna
It’s mid-January 2012: a regular night at the Café Weidinger at the intersection of Gablenzgasse and Neubaugürtel – old friends playing billiards, customers sipping on warm drinks, laughter and debate in equal volume. Tonight however, we’re all under the watchful eye of noted American photographer and documentary filmmaker Jem Cohen, capturing footage for Museum Hours, [...]
360: Arthur Schnitzler Revisited
The film 360, which premiered in Vienna 17 September, unites the acclaimed talents of screenwriter Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon) with director Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener, City of God). The fourth major adaption of Arthur Schnitzler’s acclaimed 1897 play Reigen for the screen, it joins Max Ophüls 1950s masterpiece La Ronde (with Simone Signoret [...]
Teaching the Holocaust
Leo Bretholz remembered the scene with perfect clarity, although some seven decades had passed. He had been standing in the courtyard of their family farm in the rain, looking up at his sister’s room, where he could see her cowering behind the window, her brown hair and pale face unmistakable though the glass. “She was [...]
World Cinema: Made in Vienna
Don’t judge a book by its cover, we’re told. But a city by its films? For Vienna, judging requires selecting which Vienna you have in mind: Imperial Vienna, Red Vienna, Nazi Vienna, Occupied Vienna, or any of the modern-day Viennas? Or perhaps even an imaginary Vienna, as Orson Welles evoked in his famous observation in [...]
