Viennale 1: Selected short films

Running time: 87'

Como Fernando Pessoa salvou Portugal, Eugène Green, Portugal-France-Belgium, 2018,  27' DCP, OV, Sub ES
There are traces of a deep and ironic love for saudade and the city of Lisbon in the work of Eugène Green. Yet, even after writing a book on the country’s great modernist poet Fernando Pessoa, a film dealing with the man and one of his heteronyms comes as a mild surprise from the artist who is usually drawn to baroque remains in the present. In funny and sublime movements the film captures a struggling artist between his business aspirations and poetical principles as well as being a witty portrait of Portugal in 1927, a country torn between the seductions of American soft drinks and catholicism. (Patrick Holzapfel)

Les discours dácceptation glorieux de Nicolas Chauvin, Benjamin Crotty,  France, 2018, 26' DCP, VO, Sub ES
Historians have no doubt, the famous, brave French soldier, humble peasant Nicolas Chauvin never lived, but became a national myth. Out of his name grew a worldwide known notion: Chauvinism, disrespectful and gleeful nationalism. Benjamin Crotty awakes the phantom on screen, switching between night club stage and outdoor Monty Python surrealities. Trapped by memories of Bonaparte times and Macron’s attempts to reestablish La grande nation, Chauvin stumbles through histories and times. At the same time funny and sad, depending which way your brain leads you ... (Otto Reiter)

Gertrud & Tiederich, Josef Dabernig, Austria, 2018, 10' DCP, VO, Sub ES
It is common among artists to look at the relation between history and present of a place. Josef Dabernig proposes a new, typically self-aware approach to Buchberg Castle which has been serving as a site for art installations since 1979. Accompanied by monotonous church music the mechanics of art writing its own history are laid bare as the filmmaker reads out the titles and dates of the permanent installations at this anti-museum. Filming details of the interior in brutal black-andwhite creates a tension beyond convention. It is not necessarily art interacting with the place, it is also the place becoming art. (Patrick Holzapfel)

Sabaudia, Lotte Schreiber, 2018, Austria, 24' DCP, VO, Sub ES
Sabaudia in Italy, created by Mussolini’s architects as a model “new fascist city”, was supplied with extensive farm lands converted from marshes. Yet, despite its undeniably “brutal” architecture, creators including Alberto Moravia and Pier Paolo Pasolini subsequently found Sabaudia to be a wonderful, hospitable place – the sign of a genuine, traditional Italy, and its resistance to all modern ideologies. Lotte Schreiber constructs a multi-faceted, documentary view of Sabaudia, inspired by but going beyond Pasolini, portraying it as a paradoxical mixture of social class separation, nostalgia, and everyday whimsy. (Adrian Martin)