Johannes Hammel

The Lovers is the second part of a small trilogy, dealing with the extinction of memories. In the first part, The Bathers, the two protagonists were subject to the chemical decomposition of the film material. The Lovers, on the other hand, transforms an old Super8 porn film into both a tragic love story and a horror movie, and finally into a memory, that is being destroyed in the inner world. (Viennale 04)

It’s not uncommon for a film to have a moving love story at its core. Yet this particular set-up is unusual. The lovers here are Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan, both important representatives of post-war German-language poetry. The story of the relationship between the Austrian and the Jew from Czernowitz is told through their nearly 20-year correspondence (1948–1967). Or, more precisely, by a young woman and a young man reading from their letters in a studio in Vienna’s venerable Funkhaus.

Favoriten is one of the most culturally diverse neighborhoods in Vienna and the starting point of Ruth Beckermann’s latest documentary, in which she accompanies a class of pupils from the age of seven to ten. Their ambitious teacher, Ilkay, is determined to create an inclusive, supportive and safe environment for the kids. The majority of children don’t speak German at home, some families are wounded by war experience and many face discrimination. Despite few resources from the educational system, Ilkay gently navigates her class through daily adventures, defeats and victories. The result is an astonishingly cheerful portrait of a small community mirroring the complexities of contemporary European society. The film is an ode to childhood, celebrating the work of educators and lifelong learning in and outside the classroom.

An audition for men aged between 16 and 99. There are no props nor make-up, just pure improvisation. All that is required is the willingness to engage openly with the topic and language of the words on the page. No small challenge, since the text in question is the scandalous novel published anonymously in 1906 “Josefine Mutzenbacher, or the Life Story of a Viennese Whore, as Told by Herself” which, as this film confirms, continues to be the subject of passionate and controversial discussions about desire, even today. What might be world-class pornographic literature for some is seen by others as an abusive depiction of child sexuality.

This classic motif of a still life is followed by a home movie from the 1960s: A man and a woman are eating and drinking?a normal everyday activity, though there is nothing natural about it. Their movements are slowed down, the gloomy soundtrack accompanying these scenes implies a threat in the near future.

Air raid bunkers represent the architecturally intact remains of World War II. The film looks into their ideological as well as their material texture and puts them into the context of the urban infrastructure of the nineties.

Rather than focusing on the monuments and representational architecture of the Plaza, Tlatelolco concentrates on the neighboring residential high-rises. Built in the 1960s under the supervision of modernist Mario Pani, Unidad Habitacional Nonoalco-Tlatelolco is the largest apartment complex in Mexico City. Realized at the zenith of Mexico’s economic boom, Pani’s vision of a “vertical city” beyond class distinctions has itself been shaken up on multiple occasions. Schreiber and cameraman Johannes Hammel capture the fading of an urban architectural utopia.

"Cosmodrome" (= Launch pad for space rockets) is a film about the connection between cinema and cosmos. A revolving globe; the distribution logo of the Universal film studio shows the viewer an act of "initiation" taking place in the cosmos - a key image between cinema architecture and cinematic space.