New Films by Matteo Garrone, Norbert Pfaffenbichler, Philip Scheffner and Nik Thoenen

In late April and early May, the Film Museum continues its intermittent series of Viennese and Austrian premieres of outstanding contemporary films.

 

The new feature film by Norbert Pfaffenbichler, whose latest work, Conference, was shown at the Venice Film Festival, will be screened on April 25: A Messenger From the Shadows (Notes on Film 06-A) pays tribute to a legendary performer in horror films – Lon Chaney, "the man with a thousand faces." In connection with this screening, Pfaffenbichler and composer Bernhard Lang will also show a preview of their upcoming project, related to Boris Karloff. The evening will kick off with another premiere: Nik Thoenens short, highly compressed "lettrist film," Korpus Grotesk.

On April 28th the Film Museum presents Philip Scheffner's enthralling documentary-thriller, Revision. This investigation into the mysterious death of two Romanian men on the German-Polish border in 1992 was the subject of intense discussion at last year's Berlinale and secured Scheffner's reputation as one of Germany's most important essay- and documentary filmmakers.

 

This program's fourth premiere, screening on May 2nd and 4rd, is dedicated to one of Europe’s great contemporary auteurs. Matteo Garrone, whose study of the Neapolitan Camorra – Gomorra (2008) – attracted worldwide attention, was previously represented at the Film Museum with his early works such as Ospiti (1998) and L'imbalsamatore (2002). His latest film, Reality (2012), is a dark, emphatically sarcastic fable of a nation in the grip of commercial television – and stands in line with such Italian classics as Visconti's Bellissima and Fellini's The White Sheik.