Linda Christanell
When I open the camera, it is red

Linda Christanell, born in Vienna in 1939, belongs to the Third Generation in Austrian avant-garde cinema - a group of filmmakers who staged a kind of "new beginning" at the close of the 1970's mostly using Super-8 film as medium. Unlike Dietmar Brehm, Lisl Ponger, Peter Tscherkassky and Mara Mattuschka, who are also part of this new generation, Christanell was active in the arts scene long before she made her first films: after studying painting in Vienna and Paris, she exhibited photographs, installations, textile objects and performance work. In her films, this background remains very present: her own and found photographs, performative acts and fetishized objects play an essential role.

In connection with the launch of a new book on her work, the Film Museum will screen a selection of Linda Christanell’s films made from 1978 to 2002, followed by a discussion between her and fellow filmmaker Michael Pilz. The films shown trace an arc from early black and white work (i.e., Change and Fingerfächer) to Christanell's disturbing NS-Trilogie from the 1990's and the complex layers of images in more recent films such as Carrousel deux and Picture Again. The words of Brigitte Mayr lend a clue to the mysterious beauty Christanell's work is striving towards: "Snow falling upwards. A deep woman's voice in dark blue. Barbara Stanwyck's face. Memory spreads across a face drowning in red. Fade out. The secret will not be revealed."

To kick off the event, Brigitte Mayr will present the new, richly illustrated book, "Linda Christanell – When I open the camera, it is red" (SYNEMA-Publications, Vienna 2011).