Vienna Shorts presents: Austrian Experiments

Director: Björn Kämmerer / 2016 / Austria / 4 min.

Kämmerer regularly uses everyday objects for his works, transforming them into something entirely new via the detail we get to see, the camera’s point of view, or the movements in front of the camera. He creates an interplay of abstract forms that become more concrete than one might have thought, produces rhythm and sound in silent moving images, and makes the monochromatic coloured lines and forms dance on the screen.

Director: Anna Vasof / 2016 / Austria / 4,5 min.

Video and object art are the building blocks from which Anna Vasof creates her animations. The umbrella onto which she mounts pictures is reminiscent of a zoetrope. She cuts up bird feathers with scissors, which begin to flutter once their individual pictures are played in sequence. A series of fingerprints is transformed into a never-ending ride through a tunnel. The videos share the fascinating moment in which the acceleration of their images topples into fluid animation.

Director: Rainer Kohlberger / 2017 / Germany, Austria / 8 min.

Rainer Kohlberger calls abstract digital image worlds his home. Many of his works start with the attempt to find their way through these worlds or to create them in the first place. This film, however, does not begin with a digital image but a real picture behind the noise and hints at structures, surfaces, and concrete scenes without revealing them, which allows the audience to plunge even deeper into the black-and-white delirium.

Director: Katharina Schaar / 2016 / Austria / 2 min.

Goya’s, at the time, provocative female nude The nude Maja (1797) and its counterpart The clothed Maja are the starting point of Katharina Schaar’s work. In one shot the two images are re-staged as a tableau vivant and extended by changing gender roles. A reflection on identity, sexuality and pictorial traditions.

Director: Anna Vasof / 2016 / Greece, Canada, Austria / 6,5 min.

Anna Vasof revives a fascination with moving pictures from a time before the cinematic apparatus with unusual experiments. She uses everyday objects or processes to conjure mechanisms that create a cinematic illusion. Watching her prepare for the four literally animated sequences only increases the charm. A film to marvel.

Director: Sigfried A. Fruhauf / 2016 / Austria / 5 min.

Right angles and squares in black and white form the basis for Fruhauf’s recent experimental film. He dissolves the inherently regulative strength of line structures in a thunderstorm of grids. It irritates the view and, at the same time, draws it into the screen. “Fuddy Duddy takes up the motif of the grid in order to blow it up and to disorder order.” (Siegfried A. Fruhauf).

Director: Alexander Gratzer / 2016 / Austria / 5,5 min.

“Waiter! Another espresso please.” The order is in, but nothing happens. The sound of a guitar accompanies time passing and adds to the sense of stillness. In this melancholic-minimalist as well as pointedly-film-analytical coffeehouse skit the love and attention are in the black and white details. Precision à la Loriot meets Viennese deceleration. A true pleasure.

Director: Lukas Marxt / 2016 / Germany, Austria / 7 min.

The El Mirage dry Lake in the Mojave Desert in California is a popular filming location for Hollywood movies, venue for car races and also closely connected with the art-historical movement of land art. Lukas Marxt condenses these traditions by allowing a car to draw circular tracks in the sand against this magnificent desert backdrop. A transient spectacle.

Director: Veronika Schubert/ 2016 / Austria / 5,5 min.

Elusive shapes, reminiscent of geographical borders, pass by our eyes. These are imaginary maps resulting from cloud formations engraved on more than 3,000 glass plates and recorded in time-lapse by Veronika Schubert. The soundtrack is a collage of political platitudes and media clichés regarding the refugees who arrived in Austria in the summer of 2015. A documentation of overburdening.

Director: Florian Kindlinger, Peter Kutin / 2017 / Austria / 13 min.

At the center of this work is a massive bulletproof glass panel that is handled, shot at, and set on fire. Packing a visual punch, Florian Kindlinger and Peter Kutin’s film discusses the separation of the real world and its representation. In what ways do human realities on the other side of the screens and displays still affect us? Maybe the answer is to break through the “fifth” wall. A remarkable, highly political piece of work.