"Because No One Else Would Do It!"
Peter Konlechner and the 1962 International Short Film Festival

May 28, 2014

The "International Short Film Festival" organized by Peter Konlechner in Vienna in 1962 was a pioneering event where many of the most important artists in this field were shown for the first time in Austria. 52 years later and in collaboration with today’s Vienna Short Film Festival, the Film Museum presents two compilation programs which demonstrate the astonishing quality and variety of the 1962 event.

 
The cross-section of works selected for this purpose also evokes an era which alternated between moments of freedom and repression: Arthur Lipsett's sweeping collage of modern urban chaos (Very Nice, Very Nice); sensual explorations of the city on the eve and at the end of existence (L’Opéra-mouffe by Agnès Varda and Peter Pewas' wise miniature Vormittag eines alten Herrn); a life in fast-forward, drawn by Bruno Bozzetto, and the social changes during Italy’s "boom" and on Denmark's road to the welfare state (as documented by master filmmakers Ermanno Olmi and Henning Carlsen); animated attempts at escape by the anarchist Vlado Kristl and the duo Borowczyk/Lenica; cosmopolitan contrasts in Jean-Daniel Pollet’s exquisite dance-romance Gala and the comical juxtaposition of humans and animals in Bert Haanstra's Zoo; and, finally, the construction-cum-demolition of a house in Louis van Gasteren's time-vortex The House, a story of two generations of inhabitants.
 
Curated by Christoph Huber, this program is a joint effort by the Austrian Film Museum and VIS Vienna Independent Shorts