Austrian Avant-Garde Cinema. 1952 – 1994

The tour began on March 11, 1994, in Chicago, at the famous "Art Institute," launching by far the most extensive and successful retrospective of Austrian film in the United States to date. "These seven programs offer America a deep insight into one of the world's greatest avant-garde film traditions." Steve Anker, director of the San Francisco Cinematheque, knows what he's talking about. In the U.S., Anker is one of the most sought-after curators of independent film as a profound expert on the subject. In 1993, after extensive viewings, he put together this show with a total of 64 works. To date, it has been shown at twelve renowned institutions and has become a tour de triomphe. It was scheduled to end on June 18, 1995, at the Mecca of contemporary art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York. But the success of the exhibition has not allowed it to rest; other, originally unplanned stops will follow. Initially at Jonas Mekas' legendary Anthology Film Archives in New York, the London Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) is to be followed by Manchester, Bristol, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dublin; negotiations are underway with Paris, Marseille, Rome, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, São Paolo and Tokyo.

Exclusively in Vienna we present an eighth program. This is by no means a "correction"; rather, it features new and rediscovered films that were not available at the time the program was created.
First of all, there is the first film Ernst Schmidt jrs, Steine (1964/65). Its negative was lost. Only when Helmut Benedikt, Schmidt jr's half-brother and heir, followed the trail of a thirty-year-old open invoice from the Munich "Bavaria", did he come across the original of this beautiful film - properly stored since 1965 - which can be celebrated as a real discovery.
Herbert Vesely's An diesen Abenden (1952) was considered quasi-lost. Rumor had it that there was a last copy in the Museum of Modern Art; its condition was unknown. Until Enno Patalas of the Munich Film Museum took up the cause. We are now allowed to show the fully restored version of this early "outsider production" in Vienna (in which, by the way, Radax was actively involved for the first time).
Not missed, but almost decomposed: such was the condition of Sekundenfalle (1982) by Dietmar Brehm. An early document of the "Third Generation", a milestone on the way to the "post-classical" phase of the avant-garde. In 1994 the film was carefully restored and a 16mm version was produced, which will now be shown for the first time.
And from more recent times come the films of Gustav Deutsch, Thomas Strobl and Oliver Lasch.

It has been a good twenty years since the legendary encyclopedia "A Subhistory of Film" by Ernst Schmidt Jr. and Hans Scheugl was published. Now the time has come again. Just in time for the film series, a new, comprehensive work on the subject is coming onto the market: "Avantgarde Film. Österreich 1950 bis heute", edited by A. Horwath, L. Ponger and G. Schlemmer: analyses, interviews, reprints of classic texts, as well as an index unique in its kind and scope, which covers all films ever made in Austria in the field of avant-garde and experimental film, as well as the corresponding biographies.

Marc Adrian, Martin Arnold, Moucle Blackout, Dietmar Brehm, Linda Christanell, VALIE EXPORT, Gustav Deutsch, Sabine Hiebler & Gerhard Ertl, Renate Kordon, Thomas Korschil, Kurt Kren, Peter Kubelka, Oliver Lasch, Mara Mattuschka, Rudolf Polanszky, Lisl Ponger, Ursula Pürrer, Ferry Radax, Johannes Rosenberger, Angela Hans Scheirl, Hans Scheugl, Dietmar Schipeck, Ernst Schmidt Jr., Thomas Strobl, Peter Tscherkassky, Herbert Vesely

Program
Program 1: Material & Sensation: An Overview 
Program 2: The Primacy of Form: Kubelka & Kren 
Program 3: Body as Material 
Program 4: Culture & Its Discontents
Program 5: Place/Replacement
Program 6: Interior Spaces
Program 7: Intimate Invasions/Subverting Sexuality
Program 8: Anfangs

for the detailed program and more information see downloads