Empathy: Austrian Short Films
Dec 4 Tue 2 p.m.

15 Years and No Answer
Gita Ferlin
2015 | Documentary | 7 min | Austria
“Somehow human” is how the male protagonist describes his dream of an official life, with “normal work” and a “normal home.” He now lives (and probably has for several years) in a small, sparsely furnished room, most likely in a home for refugees, and is not allowed to work or move freely. He tells of the awkward feeling, the “embarrassing” situation of not being able to decide anything for himself, living with the uncertainty of an unsecured residency status and having to wait. The title reveals that this waiting has already gone on for fifteen years, a scandalous example of the failure of the Austrian asylum administration. After fifteen years of torturous waiting, there is no tolerance for, or understanding of this situation. Remaining are the simplest, smallest, and most normal wishes: those of a life worthy of a human, an existence.

Uncanny Valley
Paul Wenninger
2015 | Narrative | 13 min | Austria, France
In Uncanny Valley, we are at once bombarded by the psychological and physical intensity of a battle fought between desperate soldiers during the First World War. Within the horizon of a physiological apparatus and a gaze towards war, Uncanny Valley develops a dramaturgy of the image interrupted, a stuttering picture that interrupts the narrative structure of the scenic sequence. Each frame of this animated live action piece reveals its own painful yet detailed moment, resistant to the synthetic image of history. The culminating effect of the narrative performance reveals numbing futility of war, the agony of conflict and survival, the discovery of brotherhood, and madness of it all.

A Letter to Mohamed
Christine Modemacher
2013 | Documentary | 35 min | Austria, Belgium, Tunisia
Lettre à Mohamed is a cinematic letter to a friend in Belgian, to Mohamed, who left Tunisia. “Fleeing” and “self-immolation” have the same word root in Arabic—fire. Christine Moderbacher thus connects her letter to Mohamed with the name with which the Tunisian revolution began: with Mohamed Bouazizi, who set himself on fire. This film takes place against the backdrop of disillusionment, yet in the images is the trace of a fire that can be sparked at any time.

Passages
Lisl Ponger
1996 | Experimental | 12 min | Austria
Lisl Ponger creates an imaginary map of the twentieth century on which the stories of emigration are engraved like well-worn tracks of occidental memory. The pictures, made by observant tourists, are revealed, in their tensile relationship to the soundtrack, as a post-colonial journey. A journey through exactly those countries which long ago have been shrunk together in space and time. Finally the wonderful neon signs of the “Hotel Edison” and “Radio City” remind one of the origins of this form of appropriation of the world, of the time of great expeditions, of Benjamin´s shop-windows and passages, and of the time when technical apparatus and means of transportation fundamentally altered the perceptions of modern man.

A White Substance
Maria Arlamovsky
2008 | Experimental | 21 min | Austria
It´s March 2006, we´re in Bunia, the capital of Ituri, an eastern province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Ten years have passed since the First Congo War, six since the beginning of the UN mission there. Rape is still being employed as a weapon. In A White Substance everyone involved is given an opportunity to speak: the victims and the perpetrators, and also the individuals in-between. Roles are assigned, postures are assumed.

Ticket Price: FREE ADMISSION