Focus Austria: Shorts 2

Sixpackfilm was founded in the early 1990s as a non-commercial sales and distribution company for independently produced Austrian films and videos. Main tasks include festival support for selected current works of all genres and lengths as well as the handling of distribution enquiries, licensing, or acquisitions. In addition to current films, the steadily growing catalogue includes a comprehensive spectrum of historical contributions to the development of the Austrian film avant-garde since the 1950s.

The history of avant-garde film in Austria is closely linked to local post-war history, the delayed historical revision of the Holocaust and the failure to develop an independent post-war cinema. What has been the Nouvelle Vague in France, the Neorealismo in Italy, or the Neue Deutsche Film in Germany, manifested itself in Austria in the radical form of structural cinema or the proximity to Viennese Actionism.

While classic animated film in Austria has long been a little-noticed genre, its representatives have always seen themselves as border crossers to more experimental forms. With her studio for experimental animated film at the Viennese Academy of Applied Arts in 1982, Maria Lassnig created what was then the first training centre for animated film in Austria.The two programmes presented reflect this proximity between animated film and avant-garde film. Programme one is primarily concerned with the structural and formal examination of the single image – not without repeatedly breaking with it. Programme two has a comparatively narrative orientation and concentrates on the body, which is the focus of animation as a filmic, social, or human body. The two programmes – which include omissions – in combination with the further programmes of the Country Focus open up a view into the spectrum of Austrian history of animated film at or beyond the borders to experimental film.

Tickets on: https://arthaus-kino.de/specials/festivals/