Viennale 2017 Preview

Cinephiles were shocked last month by the news that Hans Hurch, who had been the director of the Vienna International Film Festival (Viennale) since 1997, suffered heart failure in Rome, where he had been meeting with Abel Ferrara, and passed away at the age of sixty-four. Interim director Franz Schwartz, co-founder of Vienna’s Stadtkino, assures us that this year’s edition “will be yet another Viennale by Hans Hurch,” as much of the program was in place at the time of Hurch’s passing.

And one of this year’s special programs will be an Homage to Hans Hurch. The festival has asked fourteen of “what might be called Hurch’s ‘aesthetic accomplices’” to choose a film to screen in his memory. Cinematographer Ed Lachmann, for example, has selected Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000), and Tilda Swinton has suggested Robert Bresson’s Au hasard Balthazar (1966). Filmmaker Klaus Wyborny has chosen Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub’s Antigone (1992).

Further special programs include Napoli! Napoili! The Emergence of the New Neapolitan Cinema,Duel in the East: Valeska Grisebach - Her Films and a Carte Blanche, and Carmen Cartellieri: An Austrian Cinema Pioneer.

The title of the retrospective, co-presented by the Viennale and the Austrian Film Museum, is Utopia and Correction: Soviet Cinema, 1926–1939 and 1956–1977. “The utopias of the first generation of Soviet filmmakers that were ‘corrected’ during Stalin’s reign of terror meet the hopes, dreams and disappointments of the generation of directors who, after Stalin’s death in 1953, revived Soviet cinema with regard to its aesthetics and content. Thirty films, created between 1926 and 1977, are arranged in 15 dialogical ‘pairs’ in this retrospective.”

The full Viennale 2017 program will be announced on October 10, but the festival’s presented a preview today. This year’s edition runs from October 19 through November 2.

Features

Barbara Albert’s Mademoiselle Paradis (Licht). The Toronto International Film Festival’s page (TIFF).

Thomas Arslan’s Bright Nights. Critics Round Up (CRU).

Robin Campillo’s BPM (Beats Per Minute). Reviews from Cannes.TIFF.

Dustin Guy Defa’s Person to Person.CRU.

João Dumans and Affonso Uchoa’s Arábia.

Feng Xiaogang’s I Am Not Madame Bovary.CRU.

Philippe Garrel’s Lover for a Day.Cannes.

Alain Gomis’s Félicité.CRU.

Valeska Griesebach’s Western.Cannes.

Eliza Hittman’s Beach Rats.CRU.

Hong Sangsoo’s The Day After.Cannes.

Abbas Kiarostami’s 24 Frames.Cannes.

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s The Third Murder.TIFF.

John Carroll Lynch’s Lucky.CRU.

Valerie Massadian’s Milla.CRU.

Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.TIFF.

Ilian Metev’s ¾, a Concorso cineasti del presente award-winner in Locarno.TIFF.

Manuel Mozos’s Ramiro.

Astrid Johanna Ofner’s Farewell.Austrian Films and Locarno.

Alex Ross Perry’s Golden Exits.CRU.

Carla Simón’s Summer 1993.

Ali Soozandeh’s Tehran Taboo.

Nicolas Wackerbarth’s Casting.CRU.

Greg Zglinski’s Animals.Berlinale.

Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless.Cannes.

Documentaries

James Benning’s Readers.

Hartmut Bitomsky’s Shakkei: Borrowed Landscape.Neuer Berliner Kuntstverein.

Denis Côté’s A Skin So Soft.Locarno.

Raymond Depardon’s 12 Days.Wild Bunch.

Tabbert Fiiller’s The Public Image Is Rotten.

Amos Gitai’s West of the Jordan River.

Emmanuel Gras’s Makala.Cannes.

Ted Griswold and Chris Valdes’s Olancho.

Dieudo Hamadi’s Mama Colonel.Berlinale.

Rahul Jain’s Machines.Dogwoof.

Romuald Karmakar’s Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht.

Mark Kidel’s Becoming Cary Grant.

Shevaun Mizrahi’s Distant Constellation.Locarno.

Peter Nicks’s The Force.

Alexandre O. Philipp’s 78/52.

Marie Voignier’s Tinselwood.Berlinale.

Ann Carolin Renninger and René Frölke’s From a Year of Non-Events.Berlinale.

João Moreira Salles’s In the Intense Now.Cinéma du Réel.

Lee Anne Schmitt’s Purge This Land.

Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s Romy: Anatomy of a Face (1966/1967). Image above.

Frederick Wiseman’s Ex Libris - The New York Public Library.Film Forum.

Retrospective

Pavel Arsenov’s Save the Drowning Man (1968).

Dinara Asanova’s The Key That Should Not Be Handed On (1977).

Boris Barnet’s By the Bluest of Seas (1936).

Uldis Brauns’s 235 000 000 (1967).

Marlen Chuciev and Feliks Mironer’s Spring on Zarechnaya Street (1956).

Marlen Chuciev’s July Rain (1967).

Sergei Eisenstein and Grigorij Aleksandrov’s The General Line / Old and New (1926–1929).

Nikolaj Ėkk’s Road to Life (1931).

Sergej Gerasimov’s Seven Courageous (1936).

Aleksandr Ivanovskij and Gerbert Rappaport’s A Musical Story (1940).

Vladimir Jurenev’s Spring of Life (1941).

Sergej Jutkevič’s Lace (1928).

Michail Kalatozov’s The Unsent Letter (1960).

Michail Kalik’s Following the Sun (1961).

Grigorij Kozincev and Leonid Trauberg’s Alone (1931).

Aleksandr Mačeret’s Men and Jobs (1932).

Aleksandr Medvedkin and Aleksandr Olenin’s New Moscow (1938).

Gleb Panfilov’s I Want the Floor (1976).

Julij Rajzman’s The Pilots (1935).

Aleksandr Razumnyj’s Timur and His Team (1940).

Ėl’dar Rjazanov’s Beware of the Car (1966).

Igor Savčenko’s Accordian (1934).

Larisa Šepit’ko’s Wings (1966).

Igor Šešukov’s The Second Attempt of Viktor Krokhin (1977).

Vasilij Šukšin’s Strange People (1969).

Michail Švejcer’s Other People’s Relatives (1956).

Michail Švejcer and Sof’ja Mil’kina’s Time, Forward! (1965).

Dziga Vertov’s A Sixth Part of the World (1926).

Aleksandr Zarchi and Iosif Chejfic’s Member of the Government (1940).

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