Moving Picture

V ienna
from 18 to 30 October 96

With 54,000 admissions - up 6% from the previous year - Austria's leading film event, the 34th Viennale (18-30 October), established a new record. Both the 70-film strong main non-competitive programme, put together by outgoing festival director Alexander Horwath, and the efficient organisation received the thumbs up from 230 foreign guests, including the record number of 100 international and 150 domestic journalists, as well as 53 filmmakers and numerous actors accompanying their films.

Among the highlights of the festival were the special tributes paid to Olivier Assayas, André Téchiné, Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, as well as the 'Twilight Section', a series of midnight screenings featuring contributions to the sex, action and horror genres, registering a 66% attendance.

The Fipresci Award went to Sandrine Veysset's Y'aura-t-il de la neige à Noël?, while an Austrian documentary Jenseits des Krieges, by Ruth Beckermann, was awarded the US$7,050 Vienna Film Award. Gustav Deutsch shared the New Cinema Award for his Film ist mehr als Film and Taschenkino with Christian Berger for Landleben.

As in 1995, documentaries ranked very high in this year's audience charts. The winners, Freedom On My Mind and Jenseits des Krieges were closely followed by Carla's Song and Raining Stones.

Although there is no film market attached, some Italian, Swiss and German distributors, including TiMe, Kinowelt and Pandora, attended the event.

Programming next year's Viennale (19-31 October, tbc) is Hans Hurch, a former film critic who is expected to continue Horwath's festival concept. Gabrielle Schultz

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