In the years around World War I, the need to defend oneself from the ugliness of a dramatic present and to try to keep every slightest hope for the future was felt more strongly than ever. The seventh art did not remain indifferent and in these years took a totally new direction, becoming the voice of every human being, his weaknesses, his fears, his desperate desire for happiness.
The Breitenseer Lichtspiele is the oldest cinema in Vienna still in operation and one of the oldest cinemas in the world, still showing films for viewers of all ages. Founded in 1905 – ten years after the invention of cinema by the Lumière brothers – this small cinema has often risked closure, but still continues its activity today.
Alongside documentaries that showed us coronations of sovereigns or cities destroyed by bombing, numerous feature films were also produced during World War I to tell us about the war experienced away from the front.
During World War I, numerous documentaries and fictional feature films with a propagandistic character were made, and each of them is distinguished by a different approach and a marked personality.
After the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, the election of Charles I of Austria to the throne was a completely unexpected event for the Austrian people. What was to be done, then, to make the people begin to trust him and start considering him as a kind of reference point at such a difficult time? Here, then, cinema came into play.
Reality, the everyday and human bodies take on completely new and unexpected forms in the works of Viennese Actionism. New forms, new colours, disturbing images, animal entrails and organic substances express a new way of rebelling and conceiving art, mocking the consumerist and conservative society and that dangerous latent fascism that, despite the end of the war, still seems to be alive and pulsating.
With a career that began already in the silent era, Gustav Machaty maintained forever – even once sound film had taken over worldwide – his marked aesthetics, an image of constant topics such as the loneliness of the human being, the desperate need for happiness and death.
In 1906, photographer and chemist Johann Schwarzer founded Austria’s first production company: Saturn-Film, which was boycotted, however, from its foundation. For what reason? Simple: because it specialised exclusively in the production of short erotic films.
As essential meeting point for film enthusiasts from Austria and abroad, the Diagonale screens roughly 100 current Austrian feature, documentary, and short films in its competition and awards Austria’s most highly endowed film prizes. From March 24 to 29, 2020 in Graz.
The exhibition ‘Special Effects – Die Interaktive Ausstellung für Filmfans’ (‘Special Effects – The Interactive Exhibition for Film Fans’) – in Vienna from the 18th of October 2019 to the 5th of July 2020 – does not only aim to make people see and experience various film techniques up close, but above all to make visitors of all ages critical and active spectators.