In Persona/ Focus Austria: Thomas Renoldner 1

Thomas Renoldner embodies the diversity and creative contradictions of Austrian animation like no other. His four-decade oeuvre takes up different aspects of animated and experimental film and works with relish on the concept of the avant-garde. The spectrum ranges from early material experiments on Super 8 to subversive cartoons („Lonely Cowboy in 1992“) to body art in the quick-cut process („Sunny Afternoon“). His films are microcosmic explorations into the nature of themoving image and radical personal positionings („Fuck the Cancer“). By repeatedly placing his person and his body at the centre of his cinematic investigations, he seemingly renounces neutrality and objectivity. At the same time, he undermines the artistic claim with his unmasking sense of humour, which, however, never negates the seriousness of his concerns. Thus, Thomas Renoldner is not only an activist of animation and experimental film as well as a tireless facilitator and teacher of radical artistic animated film, but also a producer and craftsman of film who produced the minimalist-anarchic cartoons of comic artist Nicolas Mahler („Flaschko – der Mann in der Heizdecke“ (2002). Looking at the various audiovisual works and activities, which also include programme curation as well as ASIFA and festival management, Thomas Renoldner can be said, with a twinkle in the eye, to be a living Gesamtkunstwerk of artistic animation.

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