The Circuit

by Lisa Nesselson
Continuing Vienna's unabashed love affair with iconoclastic American filmmakers, on Nov 1 the Archive began a complete month-long retrospective of the films of James Benning, whose faith in both 16mm and the power of a well-framed landscape has attracted a near-rabid following in Austria and Germany.  The series is accompanied by a lovely book in German and English, examining Benning's oeuvre from 1971 to the present.

As a fitting finish to an event that treats the margins with no less deference than it does the mainstream, the Viennale hosted the world premiere of a specially commissioned muti-media experience called "Evening's Civil Twilight in Empire of Tin," in which films by Jem Cohen (including images recorded in Vienna in the ten days preceding the live performance) were accompanied by nine musicians led by singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt.

The city's gorgeous Gartenbaukino -- a free-standing cinema whose proud mid-20th century architecture elevates almost any film that graces its pleasantly huge screen --  resonated to Cohen's visual meditation on the folly of dying empires.  Cohen explained that Joseph Roth's "Radetzky March" was a major inspiration in channeling his anger at the pointless horrors initiated by the Bush administration.

Next year's Viennale runs Oct 17 - 29.

by Lisa Nesselson
Many festivals revel in late night screenings that last until reveille, but far rarer is the under-exploited idea of showing films at 6:30 in the morning (with coffee and pastries thrown in).  Well over 200 people showed up for the Viennale's crack o' dawn weekday showing of "The U.S. vs John Lennon," which they watched attentively without subtitles before heading off to work.

A 6:30 a.m. showing of "Paranoid Park" was just as successful. 

Although many foreign journalists make Vienna an annual stop (including hardcore film buffs who segue from the Silent Film Fest in Pordenone, Italy), the Viennale is first and foremost an event for local audiences.

This year set new attendance records, with an all-time high tally of 91,700 fest-goers, up from 88,900 visitors in 2006.  One hundred and twenty six screenings out of a total of 321 sold out, for a figure of 79.2 percent capacity.

This would be impressive in almost any context, but the Viennale is very strong on non-traditional documentaries, flat-out experimental work and previously unheralded films from ultra-indie helmers.  The polyglot Viennese don't blink at un-subtitled prints of slangy French films and show a grasp of colloquial English that can only leave the native speaker in awe.  (Frederick Wiseman's riveting 217-minute-long procedural docu "State Legislature" held an audience rapt. And "George A. Romero's Diary of The Dead" had viewers rolling in the aisles.)

In recent years, Vienna has shone a generous spotlight on distaff American legends from the late Fay Wray (who watched herself in Erich von Stroheim's "The Wedding March" on her first late-in-life trip to Austria) to the ever-feisty Lauren Bacall.  This year's guest, Jane Fonda, was enthusiastically welcomed in conjunction with a well-curated retrospective of her film work.

Her compatriots Haskell Wexler, Hal Hartley, Tom Kalin and Todd Haynes were on hand during the fest as were retrospective honorees Nina Menkes and Pascale Ferran.  A space alien arriving during the Viennale could be forgiven for concluding that women make just as many films as men do.

The Austrian Film Archive collaborated with the Viennale on an ambitious sidebar, "The Way of the Termite - The Essay in Cinema 1909 - 2004" curated by bracingly cranky and always enlightening filmmaker and critic Jean-Pierre Gorin.

Gorin was bemused to be in town at the same time as Fonda, who co-starred (with Yves Montand) in "Tout va bien" the Jean-Luc Godard film Gorin co-wrote and co-scored in 1972.

If "Termite..." -- which drew 4,000 paying customers -- isn't a daunting enough title for a film series, consider surprise hit  "Proletarisches Kino in Österreich" ("Proletarian Cinema in Austria"), many of whose offerings sold out.

by Lisa Nesselson
In the 10 editions of the Vienna International Film Festival this American has attended, there has always been a sidebar or retrospective that illuminates some unjustly obscure corner of Yank filmmaking.  When the programming truly clicks, it feels like a missing nutrient has been added to one's filmgoing diet, the way a dose of magnesium or zinc can repair a listless demeanor.

This year's thematic treat was a retrospective of the low-budget features Stephanie Rothman (the first woman ever to win the Directors Guild of America Fellowship) co-wrote and directed for Roger Corman's New World Pictures and under her own Dimension Pictures banner between 1970  and 1974.

Rothman, trim and dry-humored, read a clever context-tailored speech prior to each screening of "The Student Nurses" (pictured right), "The Velvet Vampire," "Group Marriage" (pictured above, a 1973 opus that almost certainly features the first matter-of-fact betrothal on film of two men), "Terminal Island,"and "The Working Girls," films that proudly incorporate feminist musings into a narrative landscape peppered with gratuitous nudity. Although the films ARE dated (in not-unpleasant ways), Rothman's tuning fork took the then-measure of social and political conflicts with admirable pitch. 

In a time when a woman was more likely to land a job "directing" toddlers not to eat their Play-Doh than directing a full-fledged film crew and a handsome cast, Rothman proved that she could tell a story on film with punch and flair -- and the results made money.  Ironically, where having made celluloid confections that contributed to Corman's coffers worked just fine for the likes of a Martin Scorsese or a John Sayles, exploitation roots (unfairly) proved detrimental to Rothman's subsequent career.