Press release, 22 March 2022
International short film festival presents its motif and first program highlights two months before its 19th edition – From May 25 to 30, 2022 in cinemas and until June 30 online.
Dive in, hold your breath—and for a moment, time stands still. A legendary still from the film Taris (1931) by French director Jean Vigo adorns this year’s motif of Vienna Shorts and refers to the archival focus of the 19th edition which takes place from May 25 to 30, 2022 in Viennese cinemas and until June 30 online. Under the title We’ve Come A Long Long Way Together, the international short film festival looks into (film) history to learn more about the present and for the future.
Not closing one’s eyes to the present also means dealing with the call for a boycott of Russian culture. “In light of the circumstances and in full solidarity with Ukraine, we have decided not to allow any state-funded films from Russia and Belarus to be shown at the festival this year, as well as any films that represent the official Russian state doctrine,” said festival directors Doris Bauer and Daniel Ebner in a statement on the current situation.
Solidarity with Ukraine—platform for independent artists
“While we are finalizing the competition selection for the festival in Vienna, we are worried about our friends and colleagues in Kyiv, Lviv and other cities of Ukraine,” added Bauer and Ebner. “Our thoughts are with them and their families and we unconditionally support those who are currently resisting and denouncing the unacceptable attack by Russia.”
The boycott is accordingly directed against Vladimir Putin’s regime and against those films that have been financed by public bodies in Russia and supported by the official side. On the other hand, we do not want to reduce independent artists from Russia to their passports and will offer them a platform at the festival. The full statement can be found at viennashorts.com.
Focus: we’ve come a long long way together
This year’s focus indirectly refers to the current situation. “We look around us. The world, a mess. Dedicated efforts for a future worth living on the one hand, apocalyptic clinging to fossilized ideas of yesteryear on the other––and we wonder where all this will lead,” reads the text for this year’s focus on film archives. In order to clear the “fog of the present”, the focus programs look back at the common history and the collective wealth of experience reflected in older and more recent film history: We’ve Come A Long Way Together / Through The Hard Times And The Good …
For this focus, Vienna Shorts has looked through the archives of the Austrian Film Museum and curated three programs from the collection. The films in these programs date from 1903 to 2003 and can all be seen at the festival in their original format, mostly on 16mm and 35mm. In addition to the Film Museum, the Filmarchiv Austria, the film festival Il Cinema Ritrovato from Bologna and other partners will be contributing to the focus—“so that together we can make sense of the world”.
Laura Huertas Millán: telling history differently
An exceptional personale at this year’s festival is dedicated to Laura Huertas Millán and her work between film, contemporary art and research. The Colombian-born filmmaker chooses the term Ethnographic Fiction for her working practice, placing exoticism, ethnography and anthropology in a dynamic interrelation. “Her films can be read as a multifaceted challenge to question or readjust conventional patterns of observation,” said Dietmar Schwärzler, managing director of sixpackfilm and curator of the two-part program. The guiding principle in Millán’s work is thus to “tell history differently”. In cooperation with sixpackfilm and the Austrian Film Museum, two programs will be screened at the festival on Saturday (May 28) in the presence of the filmmaker.
About the festival
Vienna Shorts is the international short film festival in Vienna and one of the world’s most renowned events for films up to 30 minutes in length. The festival is Austria’s only qualifying event for the Oscars©, the European Film Awards, the British Film Awards BAFTA and the Austrian Film Awards.
After an online-only edition in 2020 and a hybrid edition in 2021, Vienna Shorts is set to return to its regular cinemas Gartenbaukino, Stadtkino im Künstlerhaus, Austrian Film Museum and METRO Kinokulturhaus from May 25 to 30, 2022. Until June 30, the festival’s film portal will offer the opportunity to catch up on what was shown in cinemas and to access exclusive programs that are not available at the cinema. Tickets will be available from mid May.
