A film about news, life and death. Before the media became so prevalent, we were concerned about our immediate neighborhood. At the end of the day, news was the subject of our conversations, but now it's possible to converse with someone at the other end of the globe. We do it all the time. It's simple. The world has become one big neighborhood. Now Headline News has replaced the back fence. That's the news service of the eigthies. It's a new idea and a new approach.
In the beginning is the sea. Night over the harbour. Then a plane takes off. Dana, the friend, leaves the airport building. Dana, the milliner, leaves the millinery. Dana, the traveller, sits in the train.
Somewhere in America, some time in the thirties, a gangster is fighting for his life, an Italian is fighting for his money, and an Asian is fighting for recognition. Raw fish and seaweed, and Lizzy in the midst of it all...
A petrol pump attendant falls in love with a waitress of the service station restaurant. He manages to get the relationship started and even goes as far as buying her a new pair of shoes, but in the end fails to win her heart.
A man reads a book. Ordinary enough, except that he is sentenced to death and scheduled to be shot in ten minutes. Obviously, he will not get to the end of the story. Based on an unfinished short story by Arthur Schnitzler.
Emil is an elderly circus director. His pleasant and all-too-frequent duty is to greet people from every village in the land. Again and again the tired old fighter refuses to stop and wonder whether it is worthwhile - though this is the question foremost in his mind.
Two women in two different countries leading different lives. One lives in Austria, one in Yugoslavia, yet their lives become strangely entangled for a moment in time. What if you wake up in somebody else's head and the city around you isn't the one you used to know?
A cheerless petrol station buffet. A woman creates for herself her own dream world, far away. A stranger only wants some petrol.
O snail Climb Mount Fuji But slowly, slowly! ― Kobayashi Issa
America 1988. After more than 40 years the elderly widow Braine is unexpectedly confronted with her past. She returns to the village of her youth. - Austria 1988. The Border.
A man wakes up and doesn't know what has happened. Moments of memory and traces, which seem to fall in place, lead him to believe that he has murdered a woman.
A travelling salesman attempts to cross a vast, dark forest in his old medium-range car, an Opel "Berlina". Suddenly, however, something happens... And then there is nothing.
A sketch: Observation of everyday life of people and situations in Vienna. "Visual art is an excellent way of observation in our culture. The everyday situations are seen briefly, continously but rarely as perceived and consciously experienced." (Michael Kreihsl)
Merab, Nino, Levan and Ludmila talk about their town, Tbilissi, the capital of Georgia, in a film both tragic and beautiful. Tbilisi in the first year after independence and shortly before the civil war, Sarajevo at the end of the war in what once was Yugoslavia. In Goran Rebić’s DURING THE MANY YEARS, people tell of the changes experienced since the breakaway from the Soviet Union.
A gasman at work. A couple who go big-game hunting have a collection of trophies. Daily life in the jungle of the city, biding time and drinking tea.
All are waiting everywhere
Shifting between a suburban hostelry, domestic harmony and the idyllic setting of the Prater funfair, Johannes Holzhausen's documentation is a respectful and sympathetic observation of the long-term relationship between two people leading an unspectacular existence on the edge of society. A retrospective view of an unhappy life from the perspective of happier times.
A documentary look behind the scenes at dubbing voices and sound effects. A scene is filmed and then copied three times with different sound effects and dialogues, thereby telling thre different stories.
The film tries to retain the memory, the compulsion and the nostalgia of a text by Marguerite Duras.
"Studio Schönbrunn" is an ironic play with quotations. Paula Wessely in the Nazi-Wien-Film-production "Heimkehr", Leni Riefenstahl's biography, as well as Nestroy, Mozart, Marx, Frank Sinatra, Jandl. The text is adapted, de-familiarized and de-subjectivized. Consequently, the leading actor shoots the film's author.
