Oy Vienna Filmfestival 2009
Oy Wina,
Austria seen through the eyes of Austrian filmmakers
As a part of the contribution of the city of Vienna to the 100 years of Tel Aviv celebrations, the Viennese artist group ritesinstitute (Karin Schneider & Friedemann Derschmidt) and the Israeli artist Tal Adler present Austrian film days in Tel Aviv. All the films are dealing with the construction of the Austrian identity: its past, its present, its abyss and its contradictions.
It is no coincidence that three of our chosen documentaries are dealing with the situation of minorities that are a part of today’s society – so called “guest workers” who grew old in a foreign land (“Gurbet”), the public racism against people from Africa (“Operation Spring”) or the touching story of the Romni Ceija Stojka and her famous artist family.
We cannot help but observing always a connection between the atmospheres of Austria’s present and its past. Hence, it is not surprising that sensitive filmmakers try to understand how the Ultra Catholic Austro-fascism, the time of National Socialism and the denial of responsibility in the 2nd Republic influence their everyday life. As a very exciting example for this approach we show the impressive family epic “The End of the Neubacher project”: In the course of an eight year quest into the disturbing legacy of his Nazi family, filmmaker Marcus J. Carney gains deep insight into the cycles of familial guilt and unresolved mourning.
Marcus J. Carney will be available for talks after the screening.
The Feature film, “Revanche” by Götz Spielmann was nominated for the Oscar 2009 and the director of “The Inheritors”, Stefan Ruzowitzky did also „The Counterfeiter“ which got an in 2008.
A real cinematic delicacy will be a small silence movie program from the great time of Vienna’s movie production in the 1920s. This special focus is done in cooperation with the Vienna Jewish Film festival and the Film Archive Austria and will show one of the most important Yiddish Movies by Sidney M. Goldin, „East and West“, a comedy between New York, Galicia and Vienna, between Eastern European Jewish religious tradition and assimilation.
The silent movie “The City Without Jews”, 1924, is one of the few Expressionist films from Austria that survived the times. It is based on the book of the same title by Hugo Bettauer from 1922, that created a horrifyingly accurate vision of the near future, although the book was intended as a satirical response to the primitive anti-Semitism of the 1920s. Especially for the „Oy Wina“ festival Harel Schreiber does a very new piece of electronic film music.
P.S.: In Vienna, 1902, under its hardcore anti-Semitic major Dr. Karl Lueger, a Jewish Journalist wrote an utopian novel there about his vision for a Jewish state. This novel was published in Hebrew as “Tel Aviv”. Herzl died some years before the founding of the City of Tel Aviv and many years before Vienna became one of the main places where the Holocaust started. Vienna and Tel Aviv are entangled by Utopia and disaster.
Curators:
Tal Adler, Friedemann Derschmidt and Karin Schneider
Manager:
Anna Szöke
