Crossing europe film Festival Linz

Media Information – Linz, 10 March 2015

This year the festival will already start in the afternoon of the Opening Day (23 April) with the start of films from all program sections, then the opening of CROSSING EUROPE will be celebrated in the evening with five selected premieres that present a representative cross-section from this year’s festival program and especially illustrate the incredibly broad spectrum of European filmmaking. Numerous film guests are expected again for the festival opening in the Ursulinensaal. Outside, visitors can experience the premiere of the outdoor installation CODED INTIMACY by Nathan Guo (winner of the OK | Art Prize of the Energie AG 2015) on the facade of the OK. In addition, together with CROSSING EUROPE the season is also opened on the roof for the Höhenrausch pathway: the voestalpine open space will be opened with the film installation THE CLOUDS ARE NOT LIKE EITHER ONE – THEY DO NOT KEEP ONE FORM FOREVER (2014) by Viktoria Schmid.

The Nightline on the opening evening, starting at 10:00 pm in the OK | Mediendeck kicks off with Austrian artists: the Viennese Trash-Blues-Rock’n’Roll-Duo ASH MY LOVE and DJ HOORAY from Linz.
THE VISIT (DK, AT, IE, FI, NO 2015) – Austrian Premiere

D: Michael Madsen, 90 min, Program Section: European Panorama, world distributor: Autlook Filmsales

Michael Madsen’s current documentary film, which premiered only a few weeks ago at the Sundance Film Festival, sketches an image of the potential encounter between humanity and intelligent life from outer space. There are no little green men to be found here, though. Instead, the viewers – as observers – take the perspective of the extraterrestrial “visitors” and are thus compelled to see the earth with the eyes of the “aliens”. In this way, THE VISIT becomes a self-reflexive medium for our society, our way of living, and for being human itself. Both fascinating and entertaining is the way Madsen skillfully stages a multitude of theoretical ideas, hypothetical assumptions, and unwittingly comical lab experiments revolving around the fictive encounter between humans and aliens. The fact that many experts heard in the film were interviewed in the UNO-City in Vienna and that many scenes were shot in Austria, lessens the possible fear of a threat “from above” at least for the local audience.

The documentary film by Ufuk Serbest deals with Turkish migrant women of the first generation. When the first so-called guest workers came to Austria from Turkey over forty years ago, their wives and families gradually followed. Three women, representative for many, speak out in this film, talking quite bluntly about the ups and downs of their arrival in Upper Austria and the following – often extremely hard – years that followed. They talk about arranged marriages, partnership, and family life marked by inadequate language abilities, isolation, and working life. They all wanted to stay only a few years in Austria, to use this time to save money for a better life in Turkey. Yet in the end they stayed here, in the often still strange, new homeland – usually for the sake of the children who grew up between the cultures. At “sensitive” film, but on the basis of individual lives, at a second glance it intensely captures both the positive and the negative impacts of the phenomenon of migration in Europe.

Director Barbara Windtner sets out together with the dancer Ulrike Hager in search of the choreographer Isolde Klietmann, a dance pioneer in the inter-war period in Linz. From Maribor to Linz and Vienna and then all the way to Argentina, they follow the traces of the unusual artist and teacher, who had to flee Austria together with her Jewish husband when the Nazis came to power. In her new home country – first in Buenos Aires, then Mendoza near the Andes – she was able to continue her career, however. Isolde’s great-niece Monika Klietmann goes along on the journey, inspired by the idea to search for Isolde’s former pupils and bring her dance to life again on the basis of their memories. A dance-road-move that playfully traces the path of the life of an artist who was able to inspire her surroundings throughout her lifetime.

Sergei Loznitsa, Tribute guest 2015, was invited to the official competition of the International Film Festival of Cannes in 2010 with his first full-length feature film SCHASTE MOE / MY JOY, so that the already acclaimed and prize-winning documentary filmmaker was now recognized there as a feature film director as well. This riveting, parable-like “tour de force” through post-Soviet Russia revolves around a truck driver who leaves his home town with a truckload of goods and suddenly lands in the middle of nowhere. In a place where brutal violence and survival instincts triumph over humaneness and reason. All are prisoners of a system, in which the authorities abuse their power and people have forgotten how to be human. Loznitsa’s harrowing film is based on experiences and notes from his research and filming journeys through Russia and is a plea for the dignity of human beings and the right of every person to a little happiness in life.

In his debut film WELP / CUB the young Belgian director Jonas Govaerts sends a handful of boy scouts – children and their young supervisors – on an excursion into a uncanny forest. A cruel creature is said to live there: only the outsider Sam notices that there is something to this legend, and that in the green thicket there is indeed something horrifying that seems to be coming closer and closer. WELP / CUB is a skillfully executed reference to the worthy style school of the US slasher without the ironic breaks that have currently become almost obligatory.

This program section brings together feature films as well as documentaries, presenting film highlights of the past festival season and outstanding award-winning works from the past year as Austrian premieres. This year the European Panorama again assembles eccentric filmmaking and strong artistic positions of European auteur filmmakers. To represent them, four filmic positions are announced today.

Two great Russian directors presented their current feature films last autumn. In Venice the “multi-tasker” Andrei Konchalovsky presented Belye Nochi Pochtalona Alekseya Tryapitsyna / The Postman's White Nights (RU 2014) and won the Silver Lion for Best Director for this serene, seemingly almost documentary portrait of lonely life on Lake Kenozero in in northern Russia. The expanses of Russia – but in western Siberia and in the past, specifically in the 1930s – is also where Alexey Fedorchenko takes the audience in Angely Revolucii / Angels of Revolution (RU 2014; world premiere at the International Film Festival Rome): a motley group of avant-garde artists attempts to convince the Khanty people of the advantages of the Russian cultural revolution using unorthodox methods.

// Both films are presented in cooperation with the Austrian Film Museum. Screening Dates Vienna: Thursday, 30 April and Friday, 1 Mai, 9:00 pm.//
Documentary films on the themes of art, music and youth culture have had an important place in the CROSSING EUROPE program from the beginning. The tradition is continued again this year with two new works from Germany: B-MOVIE: LUST & SOUND IN WEST-BERLIN (DE 2015 – Austrian Premiere) by Jörg A. Hoppe, Klaus Maeck and Heiko Lange only recently celebrated its world premiere at the Berlinale. The film centers around the music and art scene of West Berlin in the 1970s and 1980s that has meanwhile achieved cult status – documented and thus recorded for posterity by the British musician and label-maker Mark Reeder, who will also be in Linz in person. Speaking of cult: no less than the unique, and also in Austria extremely popular, eccentric musical genius Helge Schneider is the subject of the electrifying documentary by the young German filmmaker Andrea Roggon, MÜLHEIM – TEXAS. Helge Schneider hier und dort (de 2015), which will celebrate its international premiere in Linz.

// Mark Reeder (Protagonist) and Andrea Roggon (Direcor) are present. //
Working Worlds (in cooperation with AK OÖ/KULTUR)

Now for the twelfth time, this section illuminates European working worlds and realities in the age of globalization and economic crises. The film selection is as critical and topical as ever; curator Lina Dinkla (Dok Leipzig) has selected four documentary films that tell in different ways of the effects of the European financial crisis, taking up the consequences of the bank crash, the burst real estate bubble, massive lack of employment and perspectives, and others.

One of these films is the world premiere of VON HIER AUS / Beyond Elsewhere (AT, FR, PT 2014) by the Austrian directors Johanna Kirsch and Katharina Lampert, who set out in search of counter-proposals to their own utopia-free lives, encountering three people who live a “drop-out” life.

// Johanna Kirsch, Katharina Lampert (Directors) and Lina Dinkla (Curator) are present. //
Architecture & Society (in cooperation with afo Architecture Forum Upper Austria)

In cooperation with afo Architecture Forum Upper Austria, now for the sixth time, the Crossing Europe Film Festival Linz presents the program section “Architecture and Society”, this year with the title “Gimme Shelter!” – RIGHT TO HOUSING and taking a look at European housing conditions. Four remarkable documentaries and a short film approach the theme of housing from different directions, casting a light particularly on its political dimension. Housing, as an indispensable basic need of all human beings, is increasingly becoming a luxury, living space is becoming a popular object for speculation. The films also include two world premieres: in A quién conmigo va / Those who go with me (DE, ES 2014) the young Spanish filmmaker Amparo Mejías accompanies women who have had to occupy a residential building as victims of the financial crisis. In Forms in Relation to Life – CINEMATIC FRAGMENTS ABOUT THE VIENNA Werkbundsiedlung (AT 2014) the Austrian artist Heidrun Holzfeind shifts the eponymous residential complex into the center.

From the beginning the OK | Offenes Kulturhaus in the Upper Austrian Culture Quarter has been an important event partner and originator of ideas for CROSSING EUROPE. The festival profits not only from the spatial expansion across the entire area of the Upper Austrian Culture Quarter, but also and especially from the strong collaboration in terms of content. The OK as an exhibition house contributes again to the crossover between film and visual art with its own projects.

Since 2013 artistic projection works have been presented during CROSSING EUROPE on the outside facade of the Upper Austrian Culture Quarter, which is thus expanded into an art space. Starting this year, this fascinating engagement with film/light in public space is to be further developed and strengthened with the new direction of the Energie AG Art Prize. Under the motto “the best idea wins”, in 2015 this prize, awarded for the third time to students and graduates of the Art University Linz and funded by the Energie AG, is announced as a NEW project scholarship for an outdoor projection in the Upper Austrian Culture Quarter during CROSSING EUROPE with prize-money amounting to € 4,000. As the third partner the Upper Austrian Culture Quarter provides production means and technical assistance.

The winning project CODED INTIMACY is by Nathan Guo (CN), who studies at the Institute of Interface Culture of the Art University Linz, and was created in collaboration with Mihaela Kavdanska (RO/BG). In this work he translates film into text and code by translating the moving film image into ASCII code. This code, developed in the 1960s, is not only a reference to an early computer language, by also transfers the films of the festival as moving images into public space.
OK | Extra Uni: Film Installation in the voestalpine open space

Anyone who was not able to manage to visit the EXTRA UNI (https://extraunilinz.wordpress.com), the public teaching program in the OK, can now view one of the final works in the voestalpine open space during the festival. The masters course Time-Based Media of the Art University Linz relocated during winter semester 2014/2015 to the OK and became the publicly accessible “Extra Uni”. The program comprised workshops, lectures, guest speakers. In regular lab sessions works were developed, produced and presented. For all of this, the public was invited to participate in the work of the students and their guests. The work originally conceived as a three-channel film installation, THE CLOUDS ARE NOT LIKE EITHER ONE – THEY DO NOT KEEP ONE FORM FOREVER (2014) by Viktoria Schmid (*1986), adapted as a video for public space, can be experienced in the voestalpine open space, thus also opening the season of the roof of the Höhenrausch pathway.

The British artist Ryan Gander (*1976) is an artist just bursting with ideas, a provocative master of the art of narrative, irony and wordplay. In the art field he is in high demand as a shooting star, because of his convincingly clever conceptual explorations of art. At the same time, the immediacy of his work and his method of stimulating story-telling are also accessible to a broader public. As the central European partner in an international cooperation of art institutions in Europe, North America and Asia, with “Make every show like it’s your last” the OK shows the first major survey exhibition of Ryan Gander in the German-speaking region.

Absence, memory, but also imagination are central themes of his strongly autobiographical work. In his videos, each created by professionals in their field, the tremendous scope of his media-referential work is evident: from a TV ad for daydreaming and creativity, through a cryptic documentation of a fictive film, all the way to an appropriated and revised BBC portrait of the artist.
New: The CROSSING EUROPE Program Release Party in Linz

This year, for the first time, the festival will celebrate the start of ticket pre-sales on Thursday, 9 April, with a program release party in the popular “festival bar” Solaris in the Upper Austrian Culture Quarter. Starting at 8:00 pm the festival team will be there to provide the best film tips, real good music from Europe, and the official festival drink can also be tested.

“GOLDEN BAG” Display Window Competition CROSSING EUROPE 2015

For the second time now, CROSSING EUROPE invites participation in a competition, in which the most creative design of a display window in Linz will be awarded a prize. The theme of film in general and the film festival in particular are to provide inspiration. There are no limits set for creativity and decoration motifs; all the CROSSING EUROPE promotion articles can be used, for example – from the popular festival bags to the highly coveted beer mats. The display windows will be judged by the shopping public of Linz, by online users via nachrichten.at and by a jury. Not only participating Linz businesses and shops, but also the public can win numerous material prizes. All the details and participation conditions for the “GOLDEN BAG” display window competition can be found on www.crossingeurope.at/goldenBag2015.

Festival newspaper and website www.crossingEurope.at with the complete festival program and screening times.

PHOTO MATERIAL & UPDATES

Regular updates and current information on CROSSING EUROPE 2015 can be found as always on our website www.crossingEurope.at and our social media channels Facebook, google+, Flickr, Twitter and Instagram.