Love is something else
A tour de force through Hollywood cinema, from its beginnings to the present day. The new, technically furious film by Virgil Widrich, which has just celebrated its international premiere in Cannes, comprises 300 works of film history, 65,000 paper prints of individual images and thousands upon thousands of folded paper objects.
While each individual frame in Fast Film is underlaid with several layers of images and implicitly celebrates the visual pleasure of cinema, the films by Roland Zumbühl, Sigmund Steiner, Maike Höhne and Marie Kreutzer emphasise a multi-layered atmospheric tone.
YOAKE - a chewing gum story - last year's entry in the official competition at Cannes - tells the story of a businessman from Japan who meets his childhood acquaintance in Vienna, where she is studying music. Zumbühl almost casually picks up on different cultural codes and interweaves them with superficially insignificant things: the flavour of chewing gum or a simple gesture of greeting. A compelling short film about the ever-changing feeling of belonging and being a stranger.
firn also deals with something similar, but within the family circle. Bernd, who studies painting in the city, visits his father and brother on the farm they run together. Here too, the inadequacy of communication plays a key role. The question "Wos mocht des Mal ́n?" is only answered with an abbreviated but meaningful "Eh". Although these different ways of life are conveyed through a sense of distance, they do not linger in cliché, but approach each other sensitively.
An (almost) complete emptying of language takes place in Von der Hingabe. Communication takes place through looks, silence and the body. Precisely captured, mostly tender gestures are mounted parallel to the explicit, non-embarrassing portrayal of the sexual act, which merge light-footedly into different spaces.
Un peu beaucoup focuses on the inner life of sixteen-year-old Melanie - superbly played by Pauline Reiner - who falls in love with her older sister's crush and becomes pregnant. This story is told primarily through omissions and allusions. The result is a subtly staged short fiction film that creates a dense, timeless atmosphere that is unparalleled in contemporary cinema. (Dietmar Schwärzler)
Program
Fast Film (Virgil Widrich, A 2003, 35mm, colour)
YOAKE - a chewing gum story (Roland Zumbühl, A 2002, 35mm, colour, 14 min.)
firn (Sigmund Steiner, A 2003, 35mm, colour, 12 min.)
Von der Hingabe (Maike Höhne, D 2002, 35mm, colour, 12 min.)
Un peu beaucoup (Marie Kreutzer, A 2003, 35mm, colour, 34 min.)
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