Queer Austrian avant-garde cinema may not be something you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, but the 8th XPOSED International Queer Film Festival in Berlin wants to change that, as it’s chosen that as its focus.
Short films by Austrian artists such as Mara Mattuschka, VALIE EXPORT, Peter Tscherkassky, Dietmar Brehm, Maria Lassnig, Albert Sackl, A. Hans Schierl, Kathrina Daschner and many others will investigate the interplay of human bodies and cinematic form. Many of these cinematic experiments have been rarely shown in the past. Alongside that will be a selection of Austrian queer feature films, which you can see details of below.
Also screening will be a program of German shorts from Ralf Schmerberg, Matthias Müller, Diane Busuttil, Jan Soldat and others, exploring fantasy worlds and unthinkable acts, along with an exciting and eclectic range of international shorts.
With parties, as a well as a look at some of the rediscovered films of Avery Willard – the filmmaker whose homoerotic, x-rated works were talked about in Ira Sach’s Keep The Lights On – it’s going a packed schedule.
XPOSED runs from May 30th-June 1st 2013. The full program will be announced on May 2nd on www.xposedfilmfestival.com
Here’s the info on the Austrian feature films:
Hans Fädler’s WIENER BRUT (1984) depicts a side of Austria we’ve never seen before. Princess Maria Caroline – narcissistic, lustful and always on the hunt for her next hit of cocaine – is the niece of the former Empress of Austria. Lyn, a young gay squatter and outsider, becomes the Princess’ butler as she plans to purge the Austrian elite and seize power for herself. An audacious and brazenly disrespectful farce that could only come out of Austria.
DANDY DUST (1998) by A. Hans Scheirl tells the adventures of the gender-ambiguous cyborg Dandy Dust. While exploring the galaxy, he/she lands on a planet called 3075 where cyber-dykes drink vital fluids in a giant neon bladder. After having his memory disc removed by identical twins, Dandy has a sexually liberating and stimulating experience which doesn’t end too well when he comes across Sir Sidore and his drill penis. Trashy but enormously creative set designs and the use of materials for special effects/make-up pay a juicy homage to Austrian activists like Otto Mühl, Günter Brus and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. These elements make Scheirl’s film an uncompromising mishmash of diseased colour and vivid moistness.
FLAMING EARS (1991) by A. Hans Scheirl, Ursula Pürrer and Dietmar Schipek is a pop sci-fi lesbian fantasy feature set in the year 2700 in the fictitious city of Asche. Through endless darkness, rain and war the film follows the tangled lives of three women: Sy, comic book artist; Volly, a performance artist and sexed-up pyromaniac; and Nun, an amoral alien with predilection for reptiles. It’s a story of love and revenge, and an anti-romantic plea for love in its many forms. It’s also a story laced with sex, violence and a pulsating soundtrack – a cyberdyke movie, stimulating both the body and the brain.
While LGBT film festivals often include a couple of films about transgender subjects, they often feel like an afterthought, as if at the end of organising things, they suddenly remembered they ought to feature something from the ‘T’ of ‘LGBT’.
Normally Roland Emmerich only seems to like to make movies if he gets to blow everything up, but it appears he’s considering something a little smaller and more personal. It won’t involve the destruction of the whole of New York – as in Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and Godzilla – instead focussing on the civil disobedience of the Stonewall Riots in the city, which helped kick off the modern gay rights movement.
