Diagonale in Graz

At the 2014 festival, the Diagonale – Austria’s annual celebration of locally produced cinema – will present a five-part “Anniversary Special” jointly developed with the Film Museum. For this program, the three parts of the museum’s name are used as open questions: Austria? Film? Museum? The only pool from which the works are being selected is the Museum itself: a collection of moving image artworks and documents, built over the course of 50 years according to certain criteria, but also through many unplanned acquisitions. Secondly, and logically, it is mostly Films that are being held there, but do these holdings also express a principal idea of the medium itself? And, finally, what is the notion of Austria that could be gleaned from a collection that has followed decidedly non-nationalistic considerations?

In short: What will this triple filter throw up against the big screen in Graz? Something totally foreign – or something as familiar (shady, virtuosic, degenerate, endlessly enchanting) as the place on earth where this festival and this museum have chosen to exist? Like the past, like cinema, like all real or imaginary museums, the result will certainly be Another Country.

Projects in the framework of the Film Museum’s 50th anniversary are supported by the Austrian Film Institute, the City of Vienna and the Austrian Federal Chancellery.