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The label INDEX was founded in 2004 by sixpackfilm (sixpackfilm) and Medienwerkstatt Wien (medienwerkstatt Wien). Its aim was to make available, for private use, hard do find works.
Similar to a small publishing house for quality literature, INDEX releases and distributes audiovisual publications relevant to the history of international and Austrian film, video and media art. For the label's launch 15 DVDs were initially published with a further 12 in 2006/2007.
Although the label's main focuse is the work of Austrian artists, it has been expanded to include works by Marina Grzinic and Aina Smid, Jan Peters and Józef Robakowski, as well themed compilations such as SONIC FICTION and AS SHE LIKE IT.
Information about the film- and videomakers and their production methods as well as analyses of the works are provided in a bilingual (German/English) booklet. INDEX DVDs are available to schools for educational use, as well as university institutes and libraries.
Forthcoming releases Spring 2008: :
Ladislav Galeta
Hans Scheugl
Martina Kudlacek NOTES ON MARIE MENKEN
Site :
www.index-dvd.at
Adresse/contact :
INDEX DVD EDITION
Neubaugasse 45/13
1070 Vienna
Autriche
+43 1 526 09 90 - 16
office@index-dvd.at
ANIMATION FILMS
Maria Lassnig
Austria, 1970-1992
avant-garde
Lassnig trained at the academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, and then spent several years in Paris in the 1950s and 60s, where she was exposed to Art Informel and Surrealism. From 1968 to 1980, she lived in New York, where she did pioneering work in film, producing a series of remarkably inventive animations all presented here for the first time on DVD.
Drawing on some of the same themes and subjects as her paintings, the narratives are profound and astute observations of the complexities of male-female relationships and of the experience of being both a woman and an artist. Her most celebrated film - Kantate - was produced later, in 1992, when Lassnig was 73. It presents her life story in a 14-verse song performed by the artist in a variety of costumes and accompanied by animations that are filled with humour and wit.
Films :
BAROQUE STATUES (1970-74, 15'), IRIS (1971, 10'), CHAIRS (1971, 2'), SELFPORTRAIT (1971, 4'30), SHAPES (1972, 9'), COUPLES (1972, 9'), PALMISTRY (1973, 10'), ART EDUCATION (1976, 8'), MARIA LASSNIG KANTATE (1992, 8 min, réalisé avec Hubert Sielecki)
FILMS FROM A DARK ROOM
Peter Tscherkassky
Austria, 1985-2002
experimental
Peter Tscherkassky’s filmic work coincides with a turning point in audiovisual culture, spanning a transition from the photographic to the electronic. The self-image of the avant-garde filmmaker has also undergone numerous changes over the course of the same quarter century. A precarious balance is reached between the analytic and the sensuous in the discovery of found footage and the reworking of existing film material. The film theoretician meets the film buff in the darkroom. Film historical argumentation and meticulousness are conjoined with the pure pleasure of a visceral ‘hit’. This synthesis is most clearly evident in the CinemaScope Trilogy made between 1997 and 2001: L’Arrivée, Outer Space, Dream Work. (Alexander Horwarth)
Peter Tscherkassky’s OUTER SPACE (1999) has received 19 awards
L´ARRIVÉE 1997/98, 2:09 min
OUTER SPACE 1999, 9:58 min
DREAM WORK 2002, 11 min
MANUFRAKTUR 1985, 2:54 min
MOTION PICTURE (La Sortie des Ouvriers de l´Usine Lumière à Lyon) 1984, 3:23 min
GET READY 1999, 1:04 min
Suppléments :
MINIATUREN-VIELE BERLINER KÜNSTLER IN HOISDORF, 1983, 15 :45 min
FLAMING EARS
Rote ohren fetzen durch asche
ROTE OHREN FETZEN DURCH ASCHE
Ursula Pürrer, Angela Hans Scheirl, Dietmar Schipek
Austria, 1991
fiction, experimental
FLAMING EARS is a pop sci-fi lesbian fantasy feature set in the year 2070 in the fictive burnt out city of Asche. It follows the tangled lives of three woman: Spy, comic book artist; Volly, a performance artist and sexed up pyromaniac; and Nun, an amoral alien with a predilection for reptiles.
It’s a story of love and revenge, and an antiromantic plea for love in its many forms. It’s also a story laced with sex, violence and a pulsating soundtrack, a cyberdyke movie, stimulating both the body and the brain.
With: Susanna Heilmayr, Ursula Pürrer, Angela Hans Scheirl, Margarete Neumann, Gabriele Szekatsch, Anthony Escott, Luise Kubelka
NOTES ON MARIE MENKEN
Martina Kudlácek
Austria, 2006
documentary, avant-garde
NOTES ON MARIE MENKEN explores the almost forgotten story of the legendary artist Marie Menken (1909-1970) who became one of the New York’s outstanding underground experimental filmmakers of the 1940s through the 1960s, inspiring artists such as Stan Brackage, Andy Warhol, Jonas Mekas, Kenneth Anger, and Gerard Malanga. She was a probable role model of Edward Albee’s “Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and ended up as a Warhol Superstar. The documentary allows a glimpse into her social artistic struggle and radical integrity, drawing the picture of a modern myth in personal diary style.
With: Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakage, Peter Kubelka, Alfred Leslie, Gerard Malanga, Jonas Mekas, Joseph J. Menkevich, Billy Name, Mary Woronov. Original music: John Zorn
http://www.notesonmariemenken.org
Suppléments :
4 films of Marie Menken:
VISUAL VARIATIONS ON NOGUCHI USA 1945, 4 min
GLIMPSE OF THE GARDEN USA 1957, 5 min
ARABESQUE FOR KENNETH ANGER USA 1958-61, 4 min
LIGHTS USA 1964-66, 6:30 min
OBSESSION : STRUCTURING TIME AND SPACE
Ivan Ladislav Galeta
Austria, 1972-1998
expérimental, avant-garde
Ladislav Ivan Galeta from Zagreb is the neo-Platonist among European experimental film directors. Galeta hides a true chamber of wonders behind the clear, mathematically abstract structure of his films and videos, meticulously compiled rhythmically frame for frame, each work likewise presenting an analysis of the film medium. Concealed therein, culled from deep in the medium’s prehistory, are hermetic parallel universes in whose number ranges and symbolic spaces, Galeta’s precisely constructed film compositions find a formalist anchor.
Film is but one of the media in which Ladislav Galeta displays his artistic work. Galeta was also a pioneer in Croatian media art, and in 1977 co-founded Croatia’s first center, the MM-Centar for Film/Video/Multimedia. Until today he works in a multitude of installative and conceptual aesthetic formats – from object art, literary texts, and musical composition through to performance and net art and the Gesamtkunstwerk of a garden.(Georg Schöllhammer)
TV PING PONG 1976-1978, 2 min
TWO TIMES IN ONE SPACE, 1976-1984, 12 min
SFAIRA 1985-1895, 1984, 10 min
WATER PULU 1869 1896, 1987-1998, 9 min
WAL(L)ZEN, 1989, 6 min
PIRAMIDAS 1972-1984, 1984, 12 min
THE CINESEIZURE
Martin Arnold
Austria, 1989-1998
experimental
Arnold has constructed, in his films PIÈCE TOUCHÉE (1989), PASSAGE À L’ACTE (1993) and ALONE. LIFE WASTES ANDY HARDY (1998), a cinema machine - not simply a custom optical printer or recycling system, but a kind of mnemographic machine, an apparatus that writes and rewrites memories on the surfaces of film. (Akira M.Lippit)
The cinema of Hollywood is a cinema of exclusion, reduction and denial, a cinema of repression. There is always something behind that which is being represented, which was not represented. And it is exactly that that is most interesting to consider. (Martin Arnold)
PIÈCE TOUCHÉE 1989, 16 min
PASSAGE À L ACTE 1993, 12 min
ALONE. LIFE WASTES ANDY HARDY 1998, 15 min
Suppléments :
DON´T - DER ÖSTERREICHFILM 1996, 3:41 min
TRAILER - JESUS WALKING ON SCREEN 1993, 1:11 min
TRAILER - KUNSTRAUM REMISE 1994, 1:06 min
TRAILER - PSYCHO / VIENNALE SPOT 1997, 48 sec
3 EXPERIMENTAL SHORT FILMS
Valie Export
Austria, 2004
Avant garde
Collectively we find three of EXPORT’s boldest works, at once essential viewing for the newcomer and an essential purpose for the more seasoned follower.
They also share a similar thematic ground, each short being autobiographical in nature and concerning itself with the representation of the self. Of course, given that EXPORT is one of the foremost feminist artists of recent times, considerations also extend beyond this to encapsulate the whole female experience. The films are deeply, shockingly personal on the one level, yet also marked by a certain anonymity on another, one renders the onscreen activities less immediately exclusive to EXPORT’s own experiences. Moreover, these are also incredibly intense works, ones which are often difficult to sit through and come to terms with. There’s an aggressive, almost militant quality at play as she sets about asserting herself in (seemingly) the fiercest manner possible. Anthony Nield
Suppléments :
Also available
VALIE EXPORT – INVISIBLE ADVERSARIES (INDEX021)
ACTION FILMS
Kurt Kren
Austria, 2004
Avant-garde
Kurt Kren and his films had considerable influence on the production of avant-garde films in Austria. His editing style of using short shots in particular, which he employed in 1964 and 1965 while filming actionbs by Otto Mühl and Günter Brus, had an extremly long-term effect on the filmic thought. In contrast to Kubelka, Kren entered into direct and aggressive competition with the subject, which could honestly claim to possess more independence as an art form than some interchangeable segments of reality.
Apart from the formal intensity, there is also a ‘documentary’ dimension in Kren’s films that cannot be discounted. In terms of creating lasting and quite moving image-crystals from fleeting, everyday moments, he has few peers among filmmakers. Peter Tscherkassky