Monday | January 7 | 2008 | 6 pm
Monday | January 14 | 2008 | 8 pm
RUMI - POETRY OF ISLAM
Directed by Houchang Allahyari | Documentary, 2007
This film examines the life, philosophy, and poetry of one of the most important poets and mystics in the Islamic cultural sphere, Djalleledin Maulana Rumi (1207 to 1260). His philosophy revolves around the concept of a love that leads to awareness and binds people of all religions and races. The film accompanies Vahid, a Bosnian who is in search of his cultural identity and an Islam that he can accept, as he travels into Anatolian Konya to participate in the festivities commemorating the anniversary of Rumi's death. Theologians, Imams, and Rumi scholars are interviewed to explain the phenomenon of the current popularity of this 13th-century poet, not only among mystics and in the Islamic world, but internationally, including in the United States, where a translation of his poems is a bestseller.
Monday | January 7 | 2008 | 8pm
Monday | January 14 | 2008 | 6pm
BORN IN ABSURDISTAN
Directed by Houchang Allahyari and Tom Dariusch Allahyari, | Fiction, 1999
Irony both subtle and obvious abounds in Born in Absurdistan, a dramatic-satiric attempt to turn the tables on Austrian racism. In a hospital in Vienna, the newborn babies of an Austrian couple and a Turkish immigrant family are mistakenly sent home with the wrong families. When the authorities act to rectify the mistake, it turns out that the Turkish family has been deported with the baby. The desperate Austrian couple follows the unsuspecting Turkish couple to their village in Turkey to get their child back, with unexpected results.
Monday | February 18 | 2008 | 6pm
Monday | February 25 | 2008 | 8pm
CACHÉ
Directed by Michael Haneke | Fiction, 2005
Life seems perfect for Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche), a bourgeois Parisian couple who live in a comfortable home with their adolescent son, Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky). But when an anonymous videotape turns up on their doorstep, showing their house under surveillance from across the street, their calm life begins to spiral out of control. Subsequent videotapes arrive, accompanied by mysterious drawings, and gradually Georges becomes convinced that he's being tormented by a figure from his past. But when he confronts him, the man assures Georges that he is innocent. A growing sense of guilt begins to rise in Georges as he recalls his less-than-angelic childhood, yet for some reason he's unable to be completely honest with Anne. Soon, their happy home is an emotional battleground, leading to a climax that is breathtaking in its ferocity and ambiguousness.
Monday | February 18 | 2008 | 8pm
Monday | February 25 | 2008 | 6pm
THE TIME OF THE WOLF (Wolfzeit)
Directed by Michael Haneke | Fiction, 2003
Georges (Daniel Duval), Anna (Isabelle Huppert), and their children Eva (Ana?s Demoustier) and Ben (Lucas Biscombe) - a typical bourgeois family - arrive at their holiday house in the woods, only to find that another family has taken up residence there. Within the space of a few minutes, Georges has been shot dead, their car and supplies seized, and Anna and the children have been forced out into the night to fend for themselves. In the darkness they find unfriendly locals, dead livestock, and a larcenous teenager (Hakim Taleb), before joining a fragile group of people holed up in a station in the hope that a train may pass through bringing salvation.
For all its drab realism, the film never bothers to explain what has gone wrong in society, or how such a catastrophe has taken hold so quickly, and this lack of any rationalized frame makes it clear that The Time of the Wolf is not so much a speculative documentary as a modern fable.
Wednesday | March 5 | 2008 | 6pm
Wednesday | March 19 | 2008 | 8 pm
Maybe I was Lucky
Vielleicht habe ich Glück gehabt
Directed by Kathe Kratz | Documentary
Prior the first screening at 6.00pm a short indroduction will be held by Ms. Lucy Benedikt, one of the main characters portrayed in this movie.
Non one leaves his or her home country lightheartedly, not the children at the Kindertransport, who were able to escape to England in 1938/39, nor the young people who flee to Austria from around the world today. The former, at the end of a long life, take a look back at the childhood experiences which have left a lasting mark on them. The latter are at the beginning of their journey, though they have already traveled halfway around the Earth in trucks and cargo containers, in airplanes and on nighttime marches.
Wednesday | March 5 | 2008 | 8pm
Wednesday | March 19 | 2008 | 6 pm
The End Of The Neubacher Project
Directed by Marcus J. Carney | Documentary
The End of the Neubacher Project tells the story of filmmaker Marcus J. Carney and his mother`s family. At the outset all characters portrayed seem like mostly healthy, regulary neurotic members of an average family. The filmmaker tries to come to terms with family's Nazi past, but step by step he encounters greater entanglements and deeper levels of denial. The main relationship in the film develops between the filmmaker and his mother, who is diagnosed with cancer during principal photography.
Tuesday | April 15 | 2008 | 6pm
Tuesday | April 22 | 2008 | 8pm
PRYPIAT
Directed by Nikolaus Geyrhalter | Documentary, 1999
This documentary is named after the city where many of the workers of the Chernobyl nuclear plant lived. In the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident, more than 100,000 people were evacuated from the immediate area and resettled, while a two-mile heavily restricted zone was set up around the power plant. Yet, ten years later, people have begun to return.
Mr. Gayrhalter seeks out some of these returnees, explores their reasons for coming back and their attitudes towards living with a constant, potentially lethal health threat.
The film was described by the New York Film Festival as "a remarkable, at times surreal look at a real-life ghost town, a place haunted not by spirits but by radiation that has poisoned the land, water, and even the air... The film's elegant black and white cinematography provides an interesting counterpoint to the tranquil landscapes that have come to symbolize a kind of living death."
A photographer and filmmaker, Mr. Geyrhalter was born in Vienna in 1972. His films includes Eisenherz (1992), Washed Ashore (1994), and The Year after Dayton (1997).
Tuesday | April 15 | 2008 | 8pm
Tuesday | April 22 | 2008 | 6pm
ABOUT WATER (Über Wasser)
Directed by Udo Maurer | Documentary, 2007
A film about places where water is interwoven with the fate of people. The film portrays this most important topic of our time, allowing a different view on the eternal coexistence of water and human beings.
As effective as An Inconvenient Truth was, it only described a situation - it didn't actually show it. About Water is (yet another) superb Austrian documentary that transports the viewer to far-flung parts of the globe and immerses them in environments they may never forget. Remarkable for the clarity of its images and sound, About Water is also clear on its intentions: simply to show what life is already like in places that have either too much, or too little, water.
