A Visit from the Duisburger Filmwoche

The Duisburger Filmwoche documentary film festival considers the rigor of the festival format as an invitation to collective looking and speaking. Entrusting films to dialogue, surrendering images to different viewpoints, archiving debates and keeping them alive – this aspiration is the motivation behind the Duisburger Filmwoche's second visit to the Austrian Film Museum. Films from the festival’s most recent edition will be paired with older selections from past Duisburger programs. 

 

We begin at Berlin's Urban Hospital in the early 1980s and Franzensfeste in present-day South Tyrol: Conversations and observations in places where people – injured, fleeing – arrive; people for whom society has, at most, planned niches. Then we see two attempts at filmic observations of nature, exercises in interpreting light and landscape. Queer, divinatory readings of the Sicilian sky meet the technical and philosophical endeavor of capturing on film the natural wonder of the Northern Lights. Finally, we see people glancing expectantly at screens: Some talk via video call to their loved ones in Iran or Europe about love, protests, and toast recipes; others look at screens in 1988 and still touch them with timid skepticism: What if computers one day influence our communication?

 

These films communicate over temporal and spatial distances and even relate how distances may be bridged and relationships established. The directors of the newer works will be present as guests. (Alexander Scholz / Translation: Ted Fendt)