“Hunger” by Steve McQueen is the kick-off screening for the KunstFilmbiennale 2009
Retrospective with rarities by the jury chairman, Gus Van Sant, in Cologne

Cologne, 22 July 2009 – On September 18 at 8 p.m., the complete programme of the KunstFilmBiennale 2009 will be publicly presented at the Filmforum in Museum Ludwig in Cologne.
To set the mood for an exceptional festival line-up, there will be a screening of “HUNGER”, the first movie of Steve McQueen, the Turner Prize winning star of British media art.

“HUNGER” is an exciting, profoundly disturbing drama about the historic hunger strike in 1981 by imprisoned IRA activists associated with Bobby Sands. Steve McQueen was awarded the “Camera d’Or” for the best first feature film at the Cannes Film Festival for his artistically uncompromising debut as director.

Also in the run-up to this year’s KunstFilmBiennale, there will be a presentation of selected works, rarely to be seen in the cinema, by Gus Van Sant at the Filmpalette cinema in Cologne, shown in cooperation with the Kino Gesellschaft Köln and the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. They include, as the opening film on 29 August at 9 p.m. at the Filmforum, the drugs drama “Drugstore Cowboy” of 1989, which brought stardom to actors like Matt Dillon and Kelly Lynch, as well as Van Sant’s first film, “Mala Noche”, set in the gay milieu, and “Last Days”, about the final days of rock star Kurt Cobain.

The KunstFilmBiennale will take place from 28 October to 1 November 2009 in various cinemas and museums in Cologne and Bonn.