Austrian Competition 3
A partly bizarre, partly subversive and mostly postmodern cinematic experience awaits the audience of the third programme of the Austrian competition – always a step ahead and yet keeping a commenting and interested eye on the filmic past. In some films you can find references to the Nouvelle Vague and Buñuel, in others background noise, sound footage or off-screen voices take on a commenting or irritating function. Eight animated, documentary, fictional or experimental short films form a programme that follows the motto “it’s not what you say; it’s the way that you say it”.
Total length: 84 min
Mystery Music
Austria 2009, 5 min, DigiBeta
Director/Screenwriter: Nikolaus Mahler | Cinematographer/Editing: Thomas Renoldner | Music: Ulrich Troyer
The idea of “visual music” receives an ironic response in this animation by Nikolaus Mahler, where the “sounds” of various musical instruments flow across the screen in the shape of thick sausages. The acoustic completion of the wonderfully “unagitated” image narrative with experimental electronic sounds adds an additional level of humour to the work.
des souvenirs vagues
Austria 2009, 8 min, BetaSP
Director/Screenwriter/Cinematographer/Editing/Producer/Sound: Michaela Schwentner
The shoes and blue headscarf stand out from the diffuse white space (of thought) in which Michaela Schwentner moves around in a half dancing, half haphazard manner. They are vague memories that the protagonist filters out of the female voices from various films, personal moments, then again staged sequences – like a choreography of hazy memories.
Nachnacht
Austria 2010, 8 min, HD, Digital
Director/Screenwriter/Producer/Cinematographer/Editing: Herwig Kerschner | Original Music/Sound: Herwig Kerschner, Michael Fakesch | Cast: Antonia Schuster, Paul Weixelbaumer, Herwig Kerschner
Surreal seeming pictures of symbolic power come together in Herwig Kerschner’s condensation of thoughts to create nightmarish sequences. The arbitrary montage of images and intensive sound backdrop make for an atmosphere of anxiety and uncertainty. The boundaries between dream and reality become blurred, an empty swimming pool is all that remains.
Parallax
Austria/Norway 2009, 5 min, DigiBeta
Director/Screenwriter/Cinematographer/Editing: Inger Lise Hansen | Production: OK Center for Contemporary Art Linz | Assistant: Hilde Malme
Head over heels, forwards, backwards. Irritation, movement, illusion and loss of orientation. In her time as artist in residence in Linz, Norwegian artist Inger Lise Hansen created a stop-motion-view of the Upper Austrian capital that is reminiscent of past and present industry, while at the same time pointing to the future like a spacecraft.
Commentary
Austria/UK 2010, 15 min, DigiBeta
Director/Screenwriter/Producer: Robert Cambrinus | Cinematographer:
Cheung Jun Keung | Editing: Nathan Cubitt | Cast: Menis Yousry, Zmira Wicking,
Alice Brickwood
A persiflage on the function of running commentary and the dismantling of the filmmaker’s own screen images: during the course of the film, that deals with a Muslim father’s conflicts of identity, the off-screen voice of Robert Cambrinus tells us about the creative process of the project and its background. A humorously subversive act of reversal which opens up alternative perspectives.
ri-m#03_BDJ
Austria 2009, 3 min, DigiBeta, HD
Director/Screenwriter/Producer/Editing: Klaus Pamminger | Original Music/Sound: Hjalti Bager-Jonathansson, Klaus Pamminger
Picture details from Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour alter an apartment’s interior design. By putting together the puzzle pieces the rigid shot seemingly comes to life. The result of Klaus Pamminger’s unconventional episode is an indiscernible, but all the more impressive metamorphosis of filmic space.
STATE OF FLUX – Wave#1 / Wave#2 / Wave#3
Austria 2009, 11 min, DigiBeta
Director/Screenwriter/Producer/Animation/Sound: Rainer Gamsjäger
Sonorous ocean murmurings of merging waves blend with recurring picture elements. Rainer Gamsjäger’s fascinating triptych is a lasting, reverberation-inspiring composition of waves that, little by little, breaks down into its raw film material. Gamsjäger: “Space and movement experience a new classification.”
K 11 – Confessions of a Sex Tourist
Austria 2009, 29 min, BetaSP
Director/Screenwriter/Cinematographer: Puja Khoschsorur | Production: Le Donja | Editing: Puja Khoschsorur, Reinhard Klingenberg
K11 is the nickname for the notorious red light district Svay Pak, eleven kilometres North of the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, where sex tourists were also offered young girls and children. There Puja Khoschsorur, who worked for a local NGO, approached a 44-year-old businessman with a hidden camera and let him talk about his tricks and preferences. A disturbing document.