Unknown Territories. American Independent Films

What is independent filmmaking in the USA? We couldn't define it in terms of genre or even content. Instead, we'll show it to you. The selection for the week of short and medium-length films came about during an extensive viewing tour through the stocks of the most important distributors in New York, Chicago and San Francisco.
Spread over nine blocks, you will find the result: the 40 most beautiful and influential films of recent years. The program blocks are arranged according to thematic focal points. Political and feminist films are juxtaposed with portraits, new forms of documentary film are shown alongside avant-garde films. The distinctly personal view is nowhere to be found, nor is the trend towards breaking down rigid genre boundaries.

As with last year's "Found Footage" festival, we have set a personal focus. Back then, Bruce Conner was so successful that we included four of his works in the program again. This year, Pat O'Neill - a magician with the optical printer - will be presented. "Optical printing" is the art of multi-exposure, montage-like layered film. Since the 1960s, Pat O'Neill has developed this technique into a visual abundance of shapes and colors that is still unique today. Famous in the USA like Conner, he has remained unknown in Austria to this day. This is about to change...

Jack Smith's "Flaming Creatures" also offers the rare experience of a belated discovery. In 1963, the year it was made, this film was around just long enough to cause an uproar. Never before had homosexuality been shown so lustfully and radically on film. Then it was banned, and last year it managed to be taken off the index. It remains to be seen whether "Sodom" by Luther Price will have a similar fate. It is already provoking heated discussions.

We sought support from Steve Anker, the director of the Cinematheque in San Francisco. In the USA, Anker is considered the most distinguished curator of independent film. In Vienna, he will personally present his programs: new works by Stan Brakhage, classics by Ernie Gehr and a block of films by women: "Body as Battlefield".
There are also three very intimate documentaries by women: Su Friedrich's portrait of her German mother takes us back to Nazi Germany (which, with "Universal Hotel" by Peter Thompson and "Signal - Germany on the Air" by Ernie Gehr, almost forms a thematic focus of the festival). Chick Strand observes Mexican women at work on "Fake Fruits", sensitively opening up terrain that could never be explored in this way. And Leslie Thornton's futuristic documentary "Peggy + Fred in Hell" is little less than an existentialist essay set in a post-apocalyptic world.

Things are also apocalyptic in Craig Baldwin's "Tribulation 99", one of the many found footage films in the program: a fast-paced satire trip through the eggheads of politics, and the ultimate proof that they are controlled from outer space in order to destroy us all.
But before that, sixpackfilm invites you on an expedition through all the celestial and cinematic directions of the Unknown Territories of American independent film.

Program overview
Close-Up: Arriving from afar
The trails of the law of the jungle
Ghosttowns and Dreamlands
Pat O'Neill
Ernie Gehr
Cartography of Guilt
"Ladies and Gentlemen!" The discovered gender
Stan Brakhage: Selected Films 1982-1990
Body as Battelfield: Films by Women 

for more information and the detailled program see downloads