Urbanize! Filming the City – from below

October 11 to 14, 2012

Like no other medium, film has shaped and dominated our notion of the modern city. Its dynamic mode of perception is a rehearsal for urban life. Beyond commercial cinema, however, there is a wide range of independently made, non-industrial works such as amateur, experimental and documentary films which bear witness to the obstinate and contradictory potential of this medium – through the contingency of cinematic images, the extreme crystallization of form, or by focusing on new political communities. The five programs in this series offer a cross-section of such alternative ways to experience the city – from the children's games in Jacques Rivette's Le Pont du Nord to the urban expeditions of Viennese amateur filmmakers, from the phantom rides of early cinema to the agitprop cinema of the "ARENA" occupants in 1976.

urbanize! is Vienna's "International Festival for Urban Exploration" and is being held for the third time in October 2012. This year, a major part of the program – jointly organized by the Film Museum and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for History and Society – is dedicated to film. The screenings will be complimented by discussions with scholars and filmmakers; in addition, the cultural theorist Klaus Ronneberger will give a lecture on Jacques Tati and the Situationist International.