The Vienna Film Festival takes place this year under special conditions. Some international guests will come spontaneously, but the first program highlights are already there. They should be intoxicating.
It doesn’t fit into any of the common categories, is beguiling to look at, has an unexpected effect – and it prefers to have it in dark surroundings: the selection of films at this year’s Viennale should be a little like the fly agaric. Colorful and cheerful illustrations of Amanita muscaria, not animals, not plants, whose poison allows new worlds of perception, adorn the poster of the 58th edition, which – like every film festival this year – takes place under special conditions.
The Viennale is three days shorter than usual this year (from October 22nd to November 1st). The cinemas will be less crowded, but there will be more in number – five new venues, including the Admiral and Votivkino, complement the inner city halls between the horticultural and urban cinema. This is a logistical necessity, says Viennale director Eva Sangiorgi, but also a gesture of collaboration: the crisis brings new partners together. And it requires flexibility. Which guests could come to Vienna? “It will be a last-minute decision.” From the USA and Latin America there will probably not be too many, says Sangiorgi. But maybe a few.
First insights. In any case, modern US cinema is well represented: Indie director Kelly Reichardt will not only have a book dedicated to essays, interviews and poems, Sangiorgi even praised her latest film “First Cow” as one of the most important of the year. In this neo-western in the Oregon of the gold rush years, an unequal male couple hires out by secretly milking cows and baking cakes. A highlight in the Viennale program for Sangiorgi is also the abortion drama “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” by Eliza Hittman, which won the jury award at the Berlinale.
Matt Dillon’s second directorial work, known as an actor, is as tender as it is passionate: “El Gran Fellove”, a documentary about the Cuban musician Francisco Fellove. The old documentary master Frederick Wiseman is represented with his latest film “City Hall”, a portrait of the Boston City Hall. The 90-year-old is not expected to visit.
Ukrainian director Oleg Zentsov was illegally imprisoned in Russia from 2014 to 2019. While in prison, he hired friends to turn one of his plays into a film. He directed via e-mail: “Nomery” is a dystopian parable about life in a totalitarian society.
The program is still growing. Austrian cinema is getting its own track, curated by the directors of Diagonale, which was canceled in March. A special is dedicated to the domestic underground filmmaking of the 1970s, when there was no film funding; one of the films by Christoph Schlingensief; the annual cooperation with the film museum shows found footage films under the title “Recycled Cinema” – that is, films made from other films.
The Italian Alice Rohrwacher shot the festival trailer. He shows a cheeky game of temptation: A girl bites an apple to piano tones and a Pablo Neruda poem. In any case, it is easier to digest than a toadstool.
(“Die Presse”, print edition, 23.08.2020)
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