Navigator Film

Documentary about the life of avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren, who led the independent film movement of the 1940s.

This feature documentary portrays one of the most important museums in the world, the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien. It presents a unique look behind the scenes of this fascinating institution and encounters a number of charismatic protagonists and their working fields unfolding the museum’s special world – as an art institution as well a vehicle for state representation.

Director Thomas Heise picks up the biographical pieces left by his family, and composes an epic picture of four generations of his family, of a country, of a century.

In Comparison revisits issues explored in the director's 2007 two channel installation Comparison Via a Third. Spanning continents and cultures, the film focuses on the brick in its many contexts, from the collective efforts of a community building a clinic in Burkina Faso, through semi industrialized moldings in India, to industrial production lines in Germany, France, Austria and Switzerland. Through its notable structure and its captivating rhythms, In Comparison presents various methods of labor production, allowing for an assessment that changes with every layer and goes well beyond a simple binary divide.

This film journeys deep into the heart of Austria’s favorite daily newspaper, the Kronen Zeitung, the most widely-read paper per capita in the world. The “Krone’s” 2.7 million readers represent 43% of the Austrian press market. A reflection of the Austrian soul, this newspaper serves as a prism through which we can understand the rise of the populist Right in this country and examine the dangerous flirtation between media and politics.

At the Natural History Museum in Vienna, everything that is found on earth and in outer space and that humans can get their hands on, is collected, archived, and studied in the name of evolutionary research. Archiv der Zukunft captures the aesthetic appeal of the natural-history collection and its working process, illuminating the mammoth project of knowledge preservation and production hidden behind the building’s imperial façade.

The film presents artists from the Sinti and Roma minority who shape the trauma of persecution and very personal experiences in their works.

The simple staple bread has become a branded product with an increasing number of varieties and providers. The film provides authentic impressions in today’s world of bread. We encounter small craft bakers as well as corporate CEOs whose professional work is our daily bread and ask the question: how do you see the future of our bread? And: what are we actually eating?

For more than eight decades, German Sinti and Roma experienced injustice. The film tells of the family of activist Romani Rose, their resistance and insistence on justice. The painful story of a minority between trauma and self-assertion. The two-part film deals with various forms of resistance by German and Austrian Sinti and Roma over eight decades. It is about rebellion against injustice and the insistence on dignity and justice.

"Ceija Stojka" is a portrait of 64-year-old Austrian Rom Ceija Stojka, who, after a nomadic childhood, settled in Vienna many years ago. In the recent past, Ceija Stojka’s fame as an author, painter and singer has spread outside Austria. She represents the opening of Rom and Sinti society to the world of the "gadje." This process and all the difficulties it involves is unique in the history of the Rom in Central Europe. The central theme of this documentary is the fusion of two extremely different worlds in this fascinating woman. Beginning with Ceija Stojka’s present life, her biography is reconstructed in this film portrait. At the same time, a critical chronology of images portrays the common associations with the "gypsy," examples of which pervade Ceija Stojka’s life. A comprehensive consideration of the gypsy’s image, from romanticized projections to images of exclusion, discrimination and destruction, and finally the present ambivalent relationship between Rom and non-Rom.

This cinematic portrait shows the Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl at work. The much-discussed ‘Seidl method’ is conveyed here vividly and directly: The camera watches over Seidl’s shoulder during the filming of his new production IM KELLER, and observes him at the rehearsals for his latest theatre production ‘Böse Buben / Fiese Männer’. The film paints the picture of a fascinating and exceptional artist using a combination of extensive interviews and excerpts from earlier works.

Based on Samuel R. Delany’s short novel ‘Aye, and Gomorrah...’, where the sci-fi premise of radiation-resistant state-neutered space travellers allows the author to explore androgyny, sexual identity, etc. Hammel uses Delany’s story to create a spookily beautiful world where asexual bodies live in the contradiction between their unarousable loneliness and desire for intimacy and contact.

Since the 1980s, Elfie Semotan, born in Upper Austria, has been one of the most sought-after and also idiosyncratic fashion photographers in the world. For more than half a century the now 77-year-old Semotan has been successful at the intersection between art, fashion and commercial photography, with many of her sophisticated arrangements having become legendary. Semotan's sometimes controversial oeuvre is characterized by her strong personality and a continuous opposition to anything mainstream. Elfie Semotan, Photographer is an hommage not only to a great artist but also to the passion of photography itself.

In 1942 Anna and Wasyl Major were sent from Galicia to Lungau and forced to work on farms. Only after the war's end brother and sister heard from each other. Both are staying in Austria and hard work on other people's farms still shapes their life.

For years the warships of the Soviet navy have been on sale. The destination of these ships on sale is Alang, a beach near Bombay. The cinematographic voyage shows a part of the last voyage of the cruiser "Admiral Fokin".

After "Ringel" (1972) and "M.J.J. Ringel" (1981), this portrait of the artist is Wilhelm Gaube's third visit to the studio of Franz Ringel, the painter. We see him at work and as a great master of Viennese sentimentality.

Against the background of current Austrian politics, the film reconstructs the history of the Carinthian minority conflict. The focus of this documentary is the eventful 1970s, when a young generation of Carinthia's Slovenes took up the fight for their rights laid down in Austria's State Treaty of 1955. With Haider as provincial governor, it is a fight fought until today.