In its early decades, the cinematic gaze was strongly linked to the view from a train. Since the 1980s, (digital) cinema has increasingly adopted an "airborne" point of view, akin to a flight simulator. In between lies modern cinema, an era whose visual and narrative strategies were greatly influenced by a third mode of locomotion: the automobile and its relatives. Road movies from the 1940s to the 1970s reflected profound social changes in the wake of the global economic crisis and World War II. They also expressed the attendant cultural shifts: a more open and fluid relationship to time, space, and identity. Being on the road always means: to be unstable, away from (the idea of) home, ready for encountering other ways of living. Leslie Dick: "On the road nobody knows you, you can be anybody, become anything."

This first major Filmmuseum program following the summer break is dedicated to the intimate relationship between "automobility" and cinema. The selection of 50 features and shorts is framed by American car culture and a wider historical perspective on what is commonly called the genre of "road movies." Next year's sequel to this series will mainly focus on the "nomadic" European films made since the late 1970s and on the postmodern road movie. Part one, however, is centered on films from the U.S., especially from the New Hollywood moment of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Driving, drifting, fleeing, and racing are the preferred modes of transportation in this era-from its breakout successes such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Easy Rider (1969) through the modernist-existentialist narratives created by Barbara Loden (Wanda), Monte Hellman (Two-Lane Blacktop), Bob Rafelson (Five Easy Pieces), Daryl Duke (Payday), and Sam Peckinpah (Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia) to the "cult films" obsessed by demolition and speed (Vanishing Point, Gone in 60 Seconds or Death Race 2000). It was often early on in the careers of major directors that they tried their luck on the road, or on the run: alongside Loden, Rafelson and Dennis Hopper, this is the case with Terrence Malick, Francis Ford Coppola, James William Guercio, H.B. Halicki, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas.

The "culture of change" that this new, post-classical generation of filmmakers laid claim to is often allegorized in a (rather vague) "quest for freedom" undertaken by their protagonists. Yet the settings chosen for these new Iliads and picaresque adventures were familiar: the road usually led into the vastness of the American continent. Road movies are thus often seen as an extension of the Western, not only due to the similar landscapes but also because of a shared skepticism towards modern civilization ("A man went looking for America and couldn't find it anywhere," as the tagline for Easy Rider has it). It may be no coincidence, then, that the earliest film in this program is by a director known for his Westerns: Like Stagecoach the year before, John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath (1940) is very much a road movie-and a strong record of the social upheavals that accompanied the dustbowl migration and the new forms of "social" crime that marked the Great Depression.

The romantic-existential drive into wide open spaces and, at the same time, into the innermost recesses of the displaced subject is foreshadowed in various examples from film noir (Detour, They Live By Night, Gun Crazy) and in the confessional, autobiographical literature of Thomas Wolfe (You Can't Go Home Again and A Western Journey, both published posthumously around 1940) and Jack Kerouac (On the Road, 1947-1957). "The hipster's journey was the pleasure principle on wheels," writes Manohla Dargis about Kerouac's beat hero, Dean Moriarty. Around the same time, another Dean, given name: James, fell victim to his own "death drive on wheels." Their modern form of masculinity is founded on speed and those fragmentary, fleeting images produced by the "visual apparatus" of man, car, and windshield.

Even before it became fully acknowledged in cinema, this archetype manifested itself in television, for example in the widely discussed series Route 66 (1960-64). Thus, the oil and auto industries not only found willing accomplices in politics (U.S. Congress passed the Interstate Highway Act in 1956), but also established long-term "media partnerships"-for a product that in itself functioned as a mass medium. Baby boomers, raised on the declarations of independence that teen culture provided, were more than willing to adopt the corresponding consumer behavior, chauvinism included: "Get in this large, sexy car, drive fast; seduce women, gain freedom; be a hero whatever the odds." (Mark Williams)

The retrospective highlights many other aspects of car culture-from hot-rod aficionados (Ingenuity in Action) through demolition derbies and stunt shows (Steel Arena) to the NASCAR circus (The Last American Hero). This culture is just as diverse and impure as the road movie itself. More than a distinct genre, the term represents a "patchwork concept," with several specific strands that are also included here, such as biker films, trucker and racing movies, and above all the "couple on the run" films. Nicholas Ray's They Live By Night (1948) is the archetypical example, and Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou (1965) delivered the definitive European response to the form.

Godard is part of a lineage without which the American road movie of the 1960s and 1970s would not have been possible: the modernist European cinema, with its new conception of movement and time. From Antonioni to Bergman and Boorman, from Rossellini's Viaggio in Italia (1954) to Matthias Weiss's radically minimalist Blue Velvet (1970), a completely different kind of "Auto-Kino" opened up, one which, out of necessity, pursued an expanse located more in the film experience itself than in the landscape outside. As Dietrich Kuhlbrodt wrote about Blue Velvet, a film in which the notion of drama becomes fully suspended: "What's important is only the state of mind: travelling. The film itself is on the move."

Featured Works:

More than 50 films

Program information:
Auto-Kino: Road Movie: 1940 to 1976

Catherine Breillat is one of the most original filmmakers in contemporary French cinema. From her first film, adapted in 1976 from her novel Une vraie jeune fille to Bluebeard in 2008, the writer-director has been ceaselessly interrogating male/female relationships conceived as a battlefield where desire intertwines with hostility, and attraction with repulsion. Breillat's cinema undermines the usual clichés that condition the representation of sex in film and delivers a crude, truthful image in works such as Tapage nocturne, Romance, Anatomie de l'enfer or Une vieille maîtresse. She also describes with unique acuity the troubles of adolescent girls in 36 fillette and A ma sœur !. For the occasion of the retrospective, the Cinémathèque française will present an exclusive screening of Catherine Breillat's latest film, Sleeping Beauty.

Featured Works:

Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972); Une vraie jeune fille (Catherine Breillat, 1975); Dracula and Son (Edouard Molinaro, 1976); Bilitis (David Hamilton, 1977); Tapage nocturne (Catherine Breillat, 1979); Police (Maurice Pialat, 1985); 36 fillette (Catherine Breillat, 1987); Zanzibar (Christine Pascal, 1990); Sale comme un ange (Catherine Breillat, 1991); À propos de Nice, la suite (Catherine Breillat, Costa-Gavras, Claire Denis, Raymond Depardon, Abbas Kiarostami, Pavel Lungin, Raoul Ruiz, 1995); Parfait amour! (Catherine Breillat, 1996); Romance (Catherine Breillat, 1999); Selon Matthieu (Xavier Baeuvois, 2000); À ma soeur! (Catherine Breillat, 2001); Brève traversée (Catherine Breillat, 2001); Sex Is Comedy (Catherine Breillat, 2002); Anatomie de l'enfer (Catherine Breillat, 2003, pictured); Une vieille maîtresse (Catherine Breillat, 2007); Barbe Bleue (Catherine Breillat, 2008); Sleeping Beauty (Catherine Breillat, 2010)

Program information:
Catherine Breillat

Featured Works:

Tempo massimo (Mario Mattoli, 1934); Allegri masnadieri (Marco Elter, 1937); Imputato alzatevi! (Mario Mattoli, 1939); Non ti pago! (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1942); Tutta la città canta (Riccardo Freda, 1943-1945); Botta e risposta (Mario Soldati, 1950); È arrivato il cavaliere! (Mario Monicelli and Steno, 1950); Guardie e ladri(Mario Monicelli and Steno, 1951); L'eroe sono io! (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1952); Un giorno in pretura (Steno, 1954); Lo scapolo (Antonio Pietrangeli, 1955); Cinque ore in contanti (Mario Zampi, 1961); Il mantenuto (Ugo Tognazzi, 1961); L'onorata società (Riccardo Pazzaglia, 1961); Le pillole di Ercole (Luciano Salce, 1962); Le quattro verità ("La lepre e la tartaruga", Alessandro Blasetti, 1962); I cuori infranti ("La manina di Fatma", Vittorio Caprioli, 1963); Il giovedi (Dino Risi, 1963); I crudeli (Sergio Corbucci, 1967); Lo scatenato (Franco Indovina, 1967); Io non spezzo... rompo (Bruno Corbucci, 1971); Il domestico (Luigi Filippo D'Amico, 1974); Profumo di donna (Dino Risi, 1974); Febbre da cavallo (Steno, 1976); Casotto (Sergio Citti, 1977); Fracchia la belva umana (Neri Parenti, 1981); Eccezzziunale... veramente (Carlo Vanzina, 1982); Vacanze di Natale (Carlo Vanzina, 1983); Il ragazzo di campagna (Franco Castellano and Giuseppe Moccia, 1984, pictured); Il commissario Lo Gatto (Dino Risi, 1987); Compagni di scuola (Carlo Verdone, 1988)

Program information:
Italian Comedy-The State of Things

Nobody probes deeper into the ways that men and women misread each other's feelings than Hong Sang-soo. Claire Denis, head of the jury that gave him the Prix Un Certain Regard in Cannes this year, once described seeing a Hong Sang-soo film as feeling like being hit on the head by a rock while out walking. His films certainly have the power to shake up perceptions, but he's never as aggressive as Denis implies. Most of the time, in fact, his approach is humorous, satirizing male self-delusions and female insecurities with delicious candor.

Hong arrived out of the blue (actually, from film schools in California and Chicago) just as the Korean film renaissance was getting under way in the mid 1990s. But his films were quite unlike anyone else's. The first three were tightly scripted gardens of forking paths: interlocking puzzle narratives focused as much on what could or should happen between the characters as on the socially embarrassing things that they do. Fro Turning Gate onwards, though, he's preferred to use less forward planning: he and his collaborators work from a broad outline and he writes the scenes from day to day as they go along. Since his male leads (especially the ones played by Kim Sang-kyung and Kim Tae-woo, both invariably excellent) often seem like surrogates for Hong himself, there must be some confessional side to the stories he tells. But the films are fictions, not chunks of autobiography, and the many pleasures they offer include seeing how narratives twist, turn, become echo-chambers... and then end up somewhere entirely unexpected.

There are obvious parallels between Hong's methods and those of his contemporaries Wong Kar-Wai and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, both of whom also love to explore recurring emotional "syndromes" and regard films as voyages of discovery. Another reference point is the late Eric Rohmer, since both directors are fascinated by methods of seduction and the tricks and traps of the libido. Hong, though, is a better drinker than any of them, and very much his own man. His rueful self-awareness makes it easy for viewers to get caught up in the predicaments faced by his characters. The results are touching, thoughtful, sometimes startling... and often laugh-out-loud funny.

Featured Works:

The Day a Pig Fell into the Well (1996); The Power of Kangwon Province (1998); Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (2000); On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate (2002, pictured); Woman Is the Future of Man (2004); Tale of Cinema (2005); Woman on the Beach (2006); Night and Day (2008); Like You Know It All (2009); Hahaha (2010)

Program information:
Hong Sang-soo

In search of ways out of this mess we've gotten into, the 2010 Festival for Art, Technology and Society turns to the pioneers of our age. Not the adventurers who've sailed forth because they wanted to find out what awaits them on the other side, but rather the visionaries who are bringing expertise as well as a great deal of creativity and idealism to bear in their work on an alternative future. Repair is the title of a festival designed to pursue the paths opened up by these trailblazers and to show why it's imperative for us to follow their lead.

Program information:
Ars Electronica Festival 2010: Repair

Featured Works:

Hell of a Reporter (Ernst Laemmle, 1929); Menschen am Sonntag (Curt Siodmak, Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer, Fred Zinnemann and Rochus Gliese, 1930); Der Mann, der seinen Mörder sucht (Robert Siodmak, 1931); Emil und die Detektive (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1931); Her Grace Commands (Hanns Schwarz, 1931); A Blonde's Dream (1932); Ein Mädel der Strasse (Hans Steinhoff, 1932); The Blue from the Sky (Victor Janson, 1932); Mauvaise graine (Alexander Esway and Billy Wilder, 1934); Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (Ernst Lubitsch, 1938); Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939); Midnight (Mitchell Leisen, 1939); Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks, 1941); The Major and the Minor (Billy Wilder, 1942); Five Graves to Cairo (Billy Wilder, 1943); Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944); Die Todesmühlen (Hans Burger, 1945); The Lost Weekend (Billy Wilder, 1945); A Foreign Affair (Billy Wilder, 1948); The Emperor Waltz (Billy Wilder, 1948); Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950); The Big Carnival (Billy Wilder, 1951); Stalag 17 (Billy Wilder, 1953); Sabrina (Billy Wilder, 1954); The Seven Year Itch (Billy Wilder, 1955); Love in the Afternoon (Billy Wilder, 1957); The Spirit of St. Louis (Billy Wilder, 1957); Witness for the Prosecution (Billy Wilder, 1957); Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959); The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960); One, Two, Three (Billy Wilder, 1961); Irma la Douce (Billy Wilder, 1963, pictured); Kiss Me, Stupid (Billy Wilder, 1964); The Fortune Cookie (Billy Wilder, 1966); The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (Billy Wilder, 1970); Avanti! (Billy Wilder, 1972); The Front Page (Billy Wilder, 1974); Fedora (Billy Wilder, 1978); Buddy Buddy (Billy Wilder, 1981)

Program information:
Billy Wilder: The Romantic Cynic

A wide-reaching retrospective devoted to contemporary non-fiction cinema. Contemporary documentary cinema is so incredibly varied and versatile that even the classic notion of the term has to be questioned. Requirements traditionally associated with the documentary (like objectivity, a serious tone, and lack of expressiveness) are no longer considered essential and can even be deliberately avoided. Rather than documentaries, it seems more fitting to talk of non-fiction cinema, a term with the virtue of encompassing this new heterodoxy of the genre, rich in multifarious expressions, alternative paths, and unexpected solutions. The new cinema based on real materials shuns the reporting format and seeks other forms of recording the world around us and our relationship with it. The .doc - New paths of non-fiction cycle aims to show some of the most suggestive proposals to have appeared the world over in the last decade.

Featured Works:

Mysterious Object at Noon (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2000); The Filth and the Fury (Julien Temple, 2000); En construcción (José Luis Guerin, 2001); Le souvenir d'un avenir (Chris Marker and Yannick Bellon, 2001); Auge/Maschine- Parts 1, 2, 3 (Harun Farocki, 2002-2003); Los rubios (Albertina Carri, 2003); S-21, la machine de mort Khmère rouge (Rithy Panh, 2003); The Five Obstructions (Lars von Trier and Jorgen Leth, 2003); Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks - Parts 1,2,3 (Bing Wang, 2003); The Devil and Daniel Johnston (Jeff Feuerzeig, 2005, pictured); The Wild Blue Yonder (Werner Herzog, 2005); Más allá del espejo (Joaquim Jordá, 2006); Lucio (José María Goenaga and Aitor Arregi, 2007); My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, 2007); Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind (John Gianvito, 2007)

Program information:
.doc - New paths of non-fiction

Other retrospectives at the Festival include:
Don Siegel

Featured Works:

Living Russia, or The Man with a Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929); À propos de Nice (Jean Vigo, 1930); Orson Welles' Sketch Book III (Orson Welles, 1955); The Fountain of Youth (Orson Welles, 1958); Viva Italia (Orson Welles, 1958); Die Parallelstrasse (Ferdinand Khittl, 1962); Notes Towards an African Orestes (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1970); De Verliefde Camera (Ed van der Elsken, 1971); London (Orson Welles, 1971); La Soufrière (Werner Herzog, 1977); Le camion (Marguerite Duras, 1977); The Camera: Je or La Camera: I (Babette Mangolte, 1977); Das Todesmagazin oder: Wie werde ich ein Blumentopf? (Rosa von Praunheim, 1979); Reverse Angle (Wim Wenders, 1982); Sans soleil (Chris Marker, 1983); Tempo di viaggio (Tonino Guerra and Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983); The Assault of the Present on the Rest of Time (Alexander Kluge, 1985); Routine Pleasures (Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1986); Das Kino und der Tod (Hartmut Bitomsky, 1988); The Last Clone (Vlado Kristl, 1988); Blue (Derek Jarman, 1993); JLG/JLG - autoportrait de décembre (Jean-Luc Godard, 1994); Lorraine! (1994); Middle of the Moment (Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel 1995); De grote vakantie (Johan van der Keuken, 2000); The Gleaners & I (Agnès Varda, 2000); The Sea That Thinks (Gert de Graaff,  2000); Elegy of a Voyage (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2001); The Sweetest Sound (Alan Berliner, 2001, pictured); From the Other Side (Chantal Akerman, 2002); War at a Distance (Harun Farocki, 2003); My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, 2007)

Program information:
I and the Camera

Twenty years after her death, Delphine Seyrig is remembered as someone with a rich, multiple, combative, and open-minded personality. She was an actress, filmmaker, and activist, the icon of a particular modernity in the films of Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad, Muriel), François Truffaut (Baisers volés), Marguerite Duras (India Song, Baxter, Vera Baxter), and Chantal Akerman (Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du commerce, 10800 Bruxelles). With her non-naturalistic acting style and with her singular voice, she was a unique symbol of elegance and distinction. She was involved in the defense of women's rights; she directed the film Sois belle et tais-toi and co-directed with Carole Roussopoulos Maso et Miso vont en bateau and Scum Manifesto.

Featured Works:

37 films

Program information:
Delphine Seyrig

Ten outstanding documentary films from Austria, made between 1979 and 2006, selected and presented by ten curators from Austria and abroad - with this attenuated portrait of a rich film culture the Austrian Documentary Film Association dok.at celebrates its ten-year anniversary. Each curator was invited to choose one feature film which for them, personally or culturally, marks an extraordinary moment in the history of Austrian documentary cinema.

Although the selection was guided by subjective preferences rather than any critical orthodoxy, the filmmakers in this program represent the key figures who have contributed to the international success of the Austrian documentary: Michael Pilz, Ruth Beckermann and Peter Schreiner (the generation in Austria, which, around 1980, first expressed a modern approach to documentary); Ulrich Seidl, Egon Humer, Michael Glawogger and Nikolaus Geyrhalter (who in the 1990s explored new and controversial working methods); Gerhard Friedl, Arash T Riahi and Anja Salomonowitz (three examples of the enormous formal variety seen in the past decade). Despite this broad thematic and stylistic spectrum, the program makes clear that the Austrian documentary is essentially an auteur cinema - in combination with numerous outstanding craftspeople and supportive producers. It is a cinema of constant self-questioning and border-crossing which often denies a rigid separation between "poetry and truth"; a cinema which is interested in alternative ways of describing and imagining the present and the recent past.

A joint presentation of the Austrian Film Museum and dok.at. Q & As with the filmmakers and curators will be offered at each screening. On September 26, the projection of Michael Pilz' epic "Himmel und Erde"/"Heaven and Earth" (1979-82) will be accompanied by the launch of a new Film Museum DVD, dedicated to this landmark in modern Austrian film history.

Featured Works:

Himmel und Erde [Teil 1] (Michael Pilz, 1979-1982); Himmel und Erde [Teil 2] (Michael Pilz, 1979-1982); Kinderfilm (Peter Schreiner, 1985); Postadresse: 2640 Schlöglmühl (Egon Humer, 1990); Tierische Liebe (Ulrich Seidl, 1995); Jenseits des Krieges (Ruth Beckermann, 1996); Megacities. 12 Geschichten vom Überleben (Michael Glawogger, 1998); Pripyat (Nikolaus Geyrhalter, 1999); Hat Wolff von Amerongen Konkursdelikte begangen? (Gerhard Friedl, 2004); Exile Family Movie (Arash T. Riahi, 2006); Kurz davor ist es passiert (Anja Salomonowitz, 2006, pictured)

Program information:
Imaginations: 10 Austrian Documentaries