25.04. – 30.04.2019; Linz
Permanent alert causes obedience to authorities. The Crossing Europe Film Festival Linz takes a look behind the facades of artificially created states of emergency.
Prepare for an emergency. The instructions of the cabin crew are to be followed without resistance. Young Upper Austrian fi lm maker Leni Gruber made the festival trailer for this year’s Crossing Europe Film Festival: In “BRACE FOR IMPACT”, she shows footage of a flight safety training in a passenger plane simulating an emergency landing. The situation is dominated by urgent commands. The passengers who take part in the training smile anxiously and obey willingly. The cabin crew must know what is best for all. Within a few seconds, the trailer condenses the central staging element of post-democratic forms of rule: We are permanently threatened by something. But the authorities know what to do.
For this year’s Crossing Europe Festival, Christine Dollhofer and her team put together a programme that looks behind the staged alarmism of populists. And in the year of the EU election, also consciously beyond the borders of the European Union.
Within six days, the Crossing Europe Film Festival off ers a cross-(EU) border programme including more than 170 current European productions.
The programme series SPOTLIGHT presents Albanian film maker and film conservator Iris Elezi. Among other films, her first feature length film “BOTA“ will be shown. Bota (meaning “the world”) is a café in a small, isolated village at the edge of a swamp in Albania. Three young people and their families were forced to come here during Communist rule. The director skilfully draws attention to the bleak landscape of the swamp and shows a place where the past still affects the people.
The world premiere of the movie “ELFIE SEMOTAN, PHOTOGRAPHER” by Austrian director and cameraman Joerg Burger will open the festival. It is an homage to the grande dame of Austrian photography and to the passion of photography itself. For his film, Burger accompanied the 77-year-old photographer for several weeks in her work in Europe and the US. Furthermore, the film shows what can be seen when you look closely. On this occasion, the exhibition STANDING/ WAITING by Elfie Semotan, for which she took photographs of salespeople in shops in Linz, will also be shown at the OK – Oberösterreichisches Kulturquartier.
“To look closely” is also the motto of the YAAAS! Youth Programme. In addition to youth screenings, it also offers a workshop rally where you can enhance your video- and filmmaking skills in several stages. Because: If you learn to look closely, you cannot be deceived so easily
Crossing Europe Filmfestival
25.04.2019 – 30.04.2019
Various locations
Linz
www.crossingeurope.at
