Monday, 25 January – 19.00 – 21.30
Cinema Futures (2016) – dir. Michael Palm
2hrs
Press Kit:
http://www.mischief-films.com/download.php?path=film_atomic_futures&file=CinemaFutures_Presskit.pdf
Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM4ytsVaY9Y&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=MichaelPalm
Synopsis
The “digital revolution” reached the cinema late and was chiefly styled as a technological advancement. Today, in an era where analog celluloid strips are disappearing, and given the diversity of digital moving picture formats, there is much more at stake: Are the world’s film archives on the brink of a dark age? Are we facing the massive loss of collective audiovisual memory? Is film dying, or just changing?
CINEMA FUTURES is a documentary film about the present and future of film and the cinema in the digital era. In individual episodes and cinematic aphorisms, future scenarios, cultural fears and promising utopias are sketched out, accompanying the epochal transition from an approximately
120-year history of analog photochemical celluloid strips to the immaterial and radically evanescent age of digital picture data streams. The focus is on a love of the cinema, albeit devoid of nostalgia.
CINEMA FUTURES travels to international locations and, together with renowned filmmakers, museum curators, historians and engineers, dramatizes the future of film and the cinema in the age of digital moving pictures.
With Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, Tacita Dean, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, David Bordwell, Tom Gunning, Jacques Rancière, Margaret Bodde, Paolo Cherchi Usai, Nicole Brenez, Michael Friend, Greg Lukow, Mike Mashon, and others.
Director
Michael Palm
Born in Linz, Austria in 1965, Michael Palm works as a film editor and sound designer/composer since 1988; since 2001 he is writing and directing, mainly in the field of feature documentary and experimental film.
He studied at the Viennese Film Academy (film and video editing) and at the University of Vienna, focusing on film and media studies.
He is the author of numerous lectures and articles on the theory, aesthetics and history of film and cinema. From 1990–94 he worked as film critic, since 1998 he is a lecturer at the Viennese University for Music and Arts and the University of Arts in Linz, Upper Austria.
Tuesday, 26 January – 20.00 – 22.00
cyborgs (2019) – dir. Philipp Krebs, Max Leimstättner
57mnts
Synopsis
“cyborgs” is a playful piece of sensual ethnography and technological reflexivity. It gazes at the ease and implicitness of handling different kinds of technologies in everyday life. It follows people interacting with machines and digital images, tracking data of their own bodies, or even using camera and sound equipment in order to make a movie.
On the edges of embodiment theories, Science and Technology Studies, and reflexive ethnographic filmmaking the movie also seeks to explore the agencies of technological things in interaction with human bodies. By using many different technologies of capturing video and sound we tried to raise not only questions of what we can show with these technologies but also what and how they want us to see – even what its flaws might contribute to the narratives of the movie.
Directors
Philipp Krebs is spatial planner, researcher and cameraman. He graduated from the Institute of Spatial Planning (Technical University of Vienna) where he teaches as an external lecturer.
Max Leimstättner is ethnographer and sound engineer for film and TV productions. He graduated from the Department of European Ethnology (University of Vienna) where he still teaches as an external lecturer from time to time.
Wednesday, 27 January – 1930 – 2130
Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway (2019) – dir. Miguel Llansó
1hr 23mnts
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkJ3ObHny6E&ab_channel=ArrowVideo
Website: https://www.lanzaderafilms.com/Jesus-Shows-You-the-Way-to-the-Highway
Synopsis
CIA Agents Palmer and Gagano are tasked with the mission of destroying a computer virus called “Soviet Union”. They enter the system using VR but the mission turns into a trap.
Director
Miguel Llansó (Madrid, 1979) is a big fan of experimental-punk- weird music and films. He studied Philosophy and Cinema before leaving on his many adventures. He has mainly filmed in Ethiopia, where he lives half the year. Inspired by Werner Herzog, he created and distributed the film WHERE IS MY DOG? (2010, with Yohannes Feleke), screened at the IFF Rotterdam (2011 & 2012) and other international festivals. He also directed, produced and wrote CHIGGER ALE (2013) – a short film about Hitler’s Ethiopian clone which premiered at FF Locarno in 2013 and has been screened at BAFICI, Tampere, Hamburg and more than 25 international film festivals.