14th of November 2023, 20:00
Location: Stadtkino im Künstlerhaus, Akademiestraße 13, 1010 Vienna
Opening by Tanja Prušnik, president of the Künstlerhaus & Sigrun Höllrigl, festival director
Moderation: Katharina Wenty
Traditionally, the Art Visuals & Poetry Film Festival opens with an international program in different languages. The main international prize is the audience award. All visitors in the cinema will receive a voting card at the entrance. With these cards the winner will be chosen in a live voting by the Viennese audience. The film most popular with the audience will be rewarded with prize money of 1000 €.
Multilingual Films. All films, unless not already in English are provided with English subtitles. Projection quality: DCP.
Heartbreaking Brechtian melodramas of Douglas Sirk, whose "All That Heaven Allows," another key intertext, hovers above and behind our crazy whirlwind of a love story that spans more than 30 years.
Inspired by 2 poets, one from Quebec, Gilles Cyr and the other from France, Francis Ponge and his Parti pris des choses, Successeur des herbes is the second collaboration between Mériol Lehmann and Sylvain Campeau.
This poem is a tragic monologue: that of a woman mourning her dead love. It is a melancholy dialogue between Arabic music (enveloping the dance) and Jewish calligraphy (translating the english text we can hear into signs we can see). Both are about beauty, proximity, love and death. Failed rendezvous, land, uprooting and exile. In this context, "May peace be with you", which opens the poem, and "May love be with you" which closes it, are invitations to resist the death drive within us.
Shades of Gray is a short poetry film that explores the complex experience of being mixed race in a white-dominated society. The film captures the feelings of isolation and confusion that arise when one is not fully accepted by either their family or their wider community. The protagonist, a mixed-race person, feels like an outsider in both worlds.
Touches are journeys - a film poem about the multi-faceted journey of interpersonal, intercultural encounters. How are we connected with each other? Based on a poetic text collage by Marion Steinfellner, which brings together Indian, Japanese, German, and Austrian texts by Yuko Kaseki, Savita Rani, Mersolis Schöne, and Marion Steinfellner. * The film is shown out of competition.