Dance stimulates the eye, creates visual and acoustic associations. Bodies swing to the beat, words take on a gestural guise, jokes express themselves through rhythmical effects, poetry becomes choreography: from the very beginning of film history dance, musical and rhythmical scenes have played an important role – vice versa films have also been used as vehicles for expressing music, dance and rhythm. In this year’s festival-focus VIS is interested in the translation of movement and choreography in films, the fusion of pictures and sound and the synchronised processes on and off-screen. The festival team has put together ten programmes of award winning films and rarities worth seeing – thereby enabling an entertaining, colourful and pleasurable voyage of discovery through the world of dance films, music videos and rhythmic cinema.

Daniel Wiroth’s and Lionel Hoche’s sensual and sizzling classic of dance films “Erè mèla mèla” from 2001, that left a lasting impression with some festival team members after its first transmission on ARTE, is the starting point in more than one respect. After all, the film wasn’t merely an inspiration for ideas, but also the centre of gravity for the dance film programme “One Step, One Dance, One Song” developed together with sixpackfilm, which can be positioned somewhere between whimsical misplacements and filmic (mass) choreographies. Furthermore, in cooperation with the distributor sixpackfilm, the great dance film maker Miranda Pennell has been invited to Vienna for an extraordinary tribute-programme.

Anyone who enters the words music, dance and rhythm in Google will inevitably stumble upon the Disney-collection of the same title. Rhythmic choreographies and musically coordinated movements often take on a central role, not least in animation films. Therefore three programmes in this year’s festival specifically highlight the interconnection of animated films and their musical execution. Away from the Disney canon the programme at the Reformed Church looks at the synaesthetic fusion of picture and sound in the Avantgarde – including a live performance! In “Animated Music in Austria” curator Thomas Renoldner points out the cross-link in the history of Austrian animation films. And in the Airbed Movie programme the best animated music videos of the past two years will be projected onto the ceiling.

Speaking of music videos: arguably the most popular branch of the short film industry will come under subjective scrutiny in a retrospective programme of the past decades by FM4-experts. And the following evening the screen sessions highlight the developments in the Austrian music video scene in a decade which has enabled a high degree of professionalism and distribution through platforms like YouTube or MySpace. This year’s artist in residence, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, will also be examining music clips and pop culture in his carte-blanche-programme. And finally two programmes broach the subject of rhythm: on the one hand a programme curated by VIS with several terrific international highlights, on the other hand the long overdue tribute to the Austrian film artist Thomas Draschan. Rhythm is a Dancer – so let’s dance!