Slash Filmfestival in Vienna

The second edition of the Austrian /Slash Filmfestival will take place this year September 22–30 at the Viennese Filmcasino, a beautiful old cinema characterized by its lavish '50s-interior-design and a patina-laden atmosphere.  

/Slash Filmfestival was conceived as a film festival organized and programmed by young genre enthusiasts. Its premier edition last year was extremely well attended and instantly became one of the events to go to for Vienna's cinephile community and hipster crowds alike. We've decided to go against the grain with our filmfestival, moving away from the cineplexes and instead giving our audience a chance to absolutely immerse themselves in a universe filled with the very best of international genre cinema. 

Films screening at this year's /Slash include Kevin Smith's RED STATE and the Guillermo del Toro-produced chiller DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK. Other highlights include titles like John Carpenter's THE WARD, THE WOMAN, THE RABIES, COLD FISH, A HORRIBLE WAY TO DIE, KILL LIST, STAKE LAND, THE INNKEEPERS… The full program can be seen here: http://slashfilmfestival.com/programm-2011/

 

Apart from Joe Cornish, who will present his movie ATTACK THE BLOCK, other guests of the festival are Portuguese avantgarde-genre-auteur Edgar Pera as well as Hollywood's most daring character actor Crispin Glover who will present Crispin Hellion Glover's Big Slide Show and his film It is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE.

Apart from screening films we are well connected with magazines like VICE with whom we're working together on our festival parties, this year including a superhero drag ball and a pop-up party in the breakfast room of a small Vienna boarding house. Already last year we did a Zombie flashmob in Vienna, which will happen again during this year’s edition. 

There will also be two panels on the 26th. Their overall subject is "The (utopia of) subversion in genre-cinema". The question to be discussed is, whether modern genre cinema can still be subversive and political. Before the discussion, the Austrian short film DIENSTAG (1993) will be screened in presence of the director Franz Berner and cameraman Robert Angst. It is a film that had its premiere 18 years ago at the DIAGONALE (Austrian Film Festival) to great controversy and has never been shown again since. Panel 1 is about "Genre cinema in Austria", while Panel 2 is about "Porn and Politics".

Dejan Ognjanovic will participate in the second panel and will announce the showing of Serbian distaster/horror film VARIOLA VERA.

All artwork used in this article is done by Andre Breinbauer for the Festival's booklet.

Further details on the festival's site.