See also the Museum of Modern Art's has regular avant garde cinema program called Cineprobe. Below is some information about the Austrian Avant Garde series produced in 1995.
Also check out the beautiful Austrian Avant-Garde Photo Gallery, containing stills from the films and videos from this series.
This 7-program series offers an in-depth look at one of the world's great and renewing avant-garde film communities. Curated by San Francisco Cinematheque Director Steve Anker, the retrospective is organized around themes and works which have shaped Austrian film art for nearly 40 years: confrontations with conservative attitudes toward the human body and sexuality; aggressive, physical explorations of the materiality of the medium; the Viennese genius, familiar in music and architecture, for radically transforming form and structure; and a systematic fusion of art, ideology, and personal life. This series, including 64 films by 23 artists, concludes its 10-city American tour this June at New York's Museum of Modern Art. A handsome catalogue is also available. Co-produced by the San Francisco Cinematheque and Sixpack Film of Vienna, the series is made possible through the support of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education and the Arts and the Austrian Cultural Institute, New York.
Saturday, June 10
2:30 pm
Introduced by Steve Anker and Peter Txcherkassky.
This afternoon we take the opportunity to present Peter Kubelka's complete films, shown together for the first time in the United States in their original formats: Mosaik im Vertrauen(1955, 35mm), Adebar (1957, 35mm), Schwechater (1958, 35mm), Arnulf Rainer (1960, 35mm), Unsere Afrikareise (1966), and Pause! (1977). Totaling only 50 minutes, each is a marvel of precision, concentrated cinematic energy and formal audacity; the power of Kubelka's films only becomes clearer as time moves on.
Saturday, June 10
5:00 pm
Filmmakers Martin Arnold and Peter Txcherkassky present.
Introduced by Steve Anker.
This stunning overview introduces nine filmmakers whose other films appear in later programs. Beginning with Peter Kubelka's groundbreaking, beautiful first-film, Mosaik im Vertrauen (1955), the program continues with local premieres of Valie Export's sexual manifesto Man Woman Animal (1973), and films by Ernst Schmidt Jr. (Body-building, 1966, recorded during an Otto Muehl Materialaktion), Peter Tscherkassky, Hans Scheugl, Dietmar Brehm, Kurt Kren, Martin Arnold and Mara Mattuschka.
Sunday, June 11
2:30 pm
Filmmakers Ferry Radex, Johannes Rosenberger, and Angela Hans Scheirl present.
Five films that tear at the placid fabric of Viennese domestic life. The beautifully photographed Sonne halt! (1959-62) by Ferry Radax is a fractured poetic narrative following late beat-era teenagers; Ernst Schmidt Jr.'s P.R.A.T.E.R. (1966), a caustic portrait of Vienna's historic amusement park; Subcutan (1988), Johannes Rosenberger's subversive dissection of Viennese culture; 5/62: Fenstergucker, Abfall, etc. (1962), Kurt Kren's rigorously understated peephole of squalid street life; and Angela Hans Scheirl Dietmar Schipeck's The Abbotess and the Flying Bone (1989), an outrageous fantasy set in an imaginary psycho-sexual landscape.
Sunday, June 11
5:00 pm
Filmmakers Angela Hans Scheirl and Ursula Purrer present.
The postwar climate encouraged direct physical confrontation by many Viennese performance and visual artists. Shocking uses of the body in Materialaktions by Gunter Brus and Otto Muehl (footage included in several films tonight) and performances and films by Valie Export, Peter Weibel, Kurt Kren, Ernst Schmidt Jr., Hans Scheugl and others had a notorious word-of-mouth influence on underground culture in 1960s Europe. Included here are incendiary films by Export, Kren, Schmidt Jr., Rudolf Polanszky, Moucle Blackout, Renate Kordon, Mara Mattuschka, and Dietmar Brehm.
Monday, June 12
3:00 pm
Filmmakers Ferry Radex, Johannes Rosenberger, and Angela Hans Scheirl present.
See Sunday, June 11 at 2:30 for details.
Monday, June 12
6:00 pm
Filmmakers Martin Arnold and Peter Tscherkassky present.
Tuesday, June 13
3:00 pm
Filmmakers Angela Hans Scheirl and Ursula Purrer present.
Subversive visions of sexuality and home life. Valie Export's feature-length Invisible Adversaries (1977) horrified the authorities with its feminist position, visceral sexual imagery and critique of Vienna. Blending stylized drama and expressionistic visuals, it portrays the psychological breakdown of a young woman striving to have an artistic career. Followed by four short films by Scheirl Ursula Purrer which reflect the vibrant Austrian super-8 movement of the 1980s. With rude spontaneity, their Body-building and Super-8 Girl Games parody and radically upend male-dominated body ritual performance art.
Tuesday, June 13
6:00 pm
Filmmakers Thomas Korschil, Lisl Ponger and Peter Tscherkassky present.
Cinematic responses to the characters of private and open spaces. Sunset Boulevard (1991) by Thomas Korschil offers a formalist view into the isolated world of commuters; Lisl Ponger's Semiotic Ghosts (1991) creates a tapestry of symbolic meaning from images recorded in wildly different locations; Hans Scheugl's The Place of Time (1985) is an elegant meditation on our ephemeral grasp of objects and places; 31/75: Asyl (1975) is Kurt Kren's magical fragmentation of a bucolic scene; and Peter Tscherkassky's Motion Picture (1984) and Sabine Hiebler Gerhard Ertl's General Motors (1993) explore distinctive flavors of old movie images.
Friday, June 16
3:00 pm
Friday, June 16
6:00 pm
Saturday, June 17
2:30 pm
Filmmaker Thomas Korschil present.
Saturday, June 17
6:00 pm
Sunday, June 18
2:30 pm
Sunday, June 18
5:00 pm
Filmmaker Valie Export present