Films by Sakamoto Junji and Gerhard Friedl

May 10 and 13, 2005

Two outstanding examples of contemporary cinema will receive their Vienna premieres in the Film Museum's May programme. Both are stories of crime; one of a sudden "private" murder, the other of systematic white-collar crime. 
 
Kao (The Face)

May 10 sees the screening of the crime melodrama Kao (The Face) by the Japanese "maverick" director Junji Sakamato. Designated "Film of the Year 2000" by the Japanese Film Critics Association, Kao tells the story of an innocuous housewife who becomes a murderess, and follows her plight as she flees across Japan after the crime.

Hat Wolff von Amerongen Konkursdelikte begangen?
Austrian filmmaker Gerhard Friedl's masterpiece Hat Wolff von Amerongen Konkursdelikte begangen? (Did Wolff von Amerongen Commit Bankruptcy Crimes?) had a triumphant success at the Diagonale in Graz in March; it will be screened at the Film Museum on May 13. Friedl, who studied filmmaking in Munich and now lives in Berlin, describes a network in which nonchalant crime is the norm, and presents his theme in a film essay which is irresistible both in visual and literary terms. The film treats the rise, fall and ridiculous private life of German scions of industry from 1930 to the present. Their “stories” are combined with images of urban life and strange rural settings, of factory work and the streets of Monte Carlo.