Here you can find a first glimpse of our upcoming events in October / November 2025. The full program with all details and dates will be published around October 8, 2025.
Program Preview October / November 2025
(October 17 to November 27, 2025)
Jean Epstein
Starting October 17, 2025
Jean Epstein
A joint retrospective of the Viennale and the Austrian Film MuseumJean Epstein (1897–1953) was a French filmmaker, critic, and theorist whose work bridged avant-garde experimentation and poetic realism. Born in Warsaw to a Polish-Jewish father and a French mother, he grew up in Switzerland and France, studying medicine before turning to cinema in the early 1920s. Often associated with the French Impressionist movement, Epstein developed an intensely lyrical style, blending visual innovation with philosophical reflection, and subjective perception with complex rhythmic editing. His enormously diverse body of cinematic works is today perhaps best remembered for a series of films (both shorts and features, documentaries and fiction) that channel his lifelong fascination with the harsh, rugged beauty of Brittany's landscapes, seascapes, and human inhabitants, resulting in certified masterpieces like Finis Terrae (1929), Mor'Vran (1930), or Le Tempestaire (1947), while his La chute de la maison Usher (1928) remains the most hauntingly beautiful and poetic rendition of Edgar Allan Poe's eponymous story. Epstein's theoretical writings, especially on the concept of "photogénie," argued that cinema could reveal hidden aspects of reality.
The Austrian Film Museum has staged its first Jean Epstein retrospective exactly 20 years ago and published a book of his writings at the occasion, but thanks to preservation work of the past two decades several more films became available, thus prompting our current tribute to this giant of cinematic modernism. We have strived to present works by Jean Epstein from the finest surviving and available screening formats. Ten 35mm prints, all still in good condition, are supplemented by thirteen DCPs, all recent digitizations and restorations undertaken primarily by Cinémathèque Française, but also by Fondation Jérôme Seydoux – Pathé, Gaumont, and Cinémathèque de Bretagne. All silent films will be accompanied by live music performances by Elaine Brennan, Meg Morley, Maud Nelissen, Billy Roisz, Ingrid Schmoliner & Alexander Kranabetter.
Special ticket regulations apply during the Viennale.