20.10. – 01.11.2022
The VIENNALE film festival turns 60 this year but is far from getting old.
VIENNALE director Eva Sangiorgi dedicates the VIENNALE ‘22 to film festivals as such: “ON FESTIVAL” is the motto of this anniversary edition. Around the actual film program, the VIENNALE brings together members of the film industry and festival experts to reflect and discuss the past, present and future of film festivals.
Because the rise of streaming services and the associated changes in the forms of film exploitation and film production also have a direct impact on film festivals as such. The Corona years made many film festivals starting to experiment with hybrid festival forms or – during the peak of the pandemic – have taken place exclusively online. Against this background, the behavior of film audiences in going to the cinema and in watching films has changed in general.
Film festivals, which have – beside the film program – a strong b2b festival section directly for the film industry, feel these changes the most. Many pitching forums and co-production markets have already moved to a not inconsiderable part into the digital space. And will probably not return from there in the old form on site.
For most cineastes and the film industry itself, however, the live festivals remain irreplaceable. The immediate proximity and regular direct exchange among colleagues is irreplaceable for this highly project-related art form, in which production staff and cast are put together starting from almost zero for practically every production.
Ruth Beckermann is also focusing on immediate proximity with her film “Mutzenbacher”, which won the prize for Best Film in the Encounters section of this year’s Berlinale and will also be shown at the VIENNALE.
As part of a casting situation, Beckermann places 4 men on a sofa. The casting participants are handed over an unknown text passage from the erotic novel “Josefine Mutzenbacher” and asked to read it aloud in front of the camera. Afterwards they are interviewd about this text by the director. Beckermann thus succeeds in a socially relevant analysis of the relationship between imagined images, language and pleasure. The pleasure for playing with language is also the focus of another film that will be shown at the VIENNALE: The documentary “Elfriede Jelinek – Letting the language off the leash” by Claudia Müller paints a complex, woven portrait of the mostly media-shy Nobel Prize winner for literature. Hardly any other writer has polarized as much as Jelinek in the recent past. She is insulted, insulted, revered and honored with the most important literary and theater prizes. Jelinek’s language is complex. Claudia Müller also reflects this complexity of the writer and her language in the complexity of the visual language of her documentary film, in which she draws a collage-like image of Jelinek with a multitude of found footage and archive material. The festival audience of this year’s VIENNALE has a lot to talk about the festival and its films. But only if they attend it.
VIENNALE ’22
20.10. – 01.11.2022
Various locations, Vienna
www.viennale.at
