INNOVATIVE FILM AUSTRIA

Innovative Films Made in Austria – Exploring Terra Incognita

One might think that it takes the effects of a pandemic to see with all clarity how indispensable the arts and culture are for our society. The performing and visual arts – including film as an artistic medium – are an integral part of our lives. The projects, events and institutions associated with these art forms also represent an important economic factor. Recent months have clearly shown how rapidly and easily our everyday life – both work and leisure – can be derailed, and our customary social fabric thrown off balance when arts and cultural events cannot be attended and experienced collectively.

The fact that filmmakers have reacted to the Covid-related restrictions in their own way is encouraging – and at the same time not surprising. For film and video artists, it is a daily practice and challenge to enter terra incognita in terms of both content and form. They take on changed perspectives, sense the unexpected and integrate things that are irritating and sometimes disturbing into their artistic work. Their approach and their works of art invite us to rediscover our everyday lives. Film and video create images that may never have been seen before. They are capable of rearranging the familiar in order to provide new insights or tell new stories, provoking a possible change of perspective. The resulting, specific artistic strategies and approaches to that which is not expected offer the audience a wide range of opportunities to research, rethink and reassess our changed living and working conditions. Film and video can provide orientation in a time of increasing digitization of our society, a process that has only gained momentum due to the pandemic.

For many years, innovative Austrian films have been very successful worldwide with their incomparable visual signature. This is a fact that makes me extremely proud.

With this in mind, this Innovative Film catalog introduces the audience to a broad selection of new works created in the past year with the support of the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport.

The 15th edition of the catalog serves as an ambassador for innovative film-making across national borders in both analog and digital forms, actively contributing to its international visibility and dissemination.

I wish you an informative and inspiring read and many extraordinary terra incognita adventures at the cinema – the undisputed linchpin of film art.

With best wishes

ANDREA MAYER

© Peter Lechner/HBF

Secretary of State for Arts and Culture/Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport

English translation by Eve Heller