ESIOD 2015 (AT/GER 2016, Clemens von Wedemeyer) / WINWIN (AT, 2016, Daniel Hoesl)
…BUT!—let’s not forget about the endless possibilities of FICTION! On April 07 at Schaubühne Lindenfels we will see two contemporary cinematic statements showing how the fiction film can be a vehicle for revealing
political and economic relations and structures of society. The works shown are Clemens von Wedemeyer’s recent sci-fi parable ESIOD 2015 and Daniel Hoesl’s capitalist play WINWIN. We are more than happy to have director Daniel Hoesl as well as Stephanie Cumming, who’s starring in both of the films coming to the screening for a Q&A. April 07 also marks the day of the opening of our TRUE POLITICS exhibition at Schaubühne Lindenfels’ ballroom. More infos on that will soon follow.
07 April, 9pm – Schaubühne Lindenfels
€ 8 (6 red.) for a double ticket incl. WinWin
Actress Stephanie Cumming will be present.
ESIOD 2015
AT/GER 2016, D: Clemens von Wedemeyer, A: Stephanie Cumming, Sven Dolinski, English OV, 39’ DCP
Vienna 2051. After years, Esiod returns to the city to terminate her bank
account. Not only is there financial data on that account, but also memories and personal information are digitally stored in it. Esiod is not recognised by the computer system. She has to undergo a memory check, whereby her reactions to the account’s data, videos and pictures are observed. Identity verification is strict and contains, among other things, a record of movements, in which the motoric patterns of a human being are, in every detail, recorded in the register. Shooting location of ESIOD 2015 is the half-finished „Erste Campus“ of the Austrian savings bank in Vienna, a construction project whose parts of the building seem like leftovers of a post-apocalyptic, deserted area. Director Clemens von Wedemeyer creates layers of dystopian science fiction and projects the current financial crisis and the virtualization of work, life and capital onto the architecture temporaily set in a not all too distant future. His protagonist increasingly gets lost in the boundaries between real and virtual space, and likewise the film itself disintegrates more and more into transparency, turning into a pixel cloud.
Director Daniel Hoesl and actress Stephanie Cumming will be present.
WINWIN
AT 2016, D: Daniel Hoesl, A: Christoph Dostal, Stephanie Cumming, Jeff
Ricketts, Nahoko Fort-Nishigami, OV/English subtitles, 84’, DCP
WINWIN, these are four smart investors, a group of cosmopolitan itinerant
preachers jetting around inside a world beyond risk. Every time they are on firm ground again, they lead companies to a still even better future. They are networking, challenging, eating, stretching, expanding, downsizing. Their clothes fit perfectly, everything they say is intonated pleasantly. They talk to us directly from the screen, their words are diconnected, floating in the room, are not directed at any reality and still affect us all. However, the film’s dialogues are based on facts, taken from personal meetings with investors, executives and other members of the superrich. WINWIN is an aesthetically consistent, ambiguous reflection on mechanisms of the postmodern, global financial capitalism—the caustic humor of the film begins where fun has come to an end. Straight from the parallel universe of power, the pictures appear like an absurd dream, a jazzy roundelay of pictures from a mostly low-noise, superficial world. Director Daniel Hoesl, the “Bertolt Brecht of the techno generation” (Wroclaw International Film Festival) and his production collective European Film Conspiracy frame a severe comment on a world by using this world’s own weapons to level them at it. Everything is elaborately choreographed, digital and vigorously thought-out, everything is clean, polite and, all the same, somehow repulsive. It is a world where everyone is preaching love and is earning gold.
