The annual festival trailer has been one of the Viennale’s special features for quite some time now. This is not a commercial trailer as such, but rather a small, autonomous piece of cinema, standing on its own and for the festival alike. At the Viennale’s invitation internationally renowned directors have created these one-minute films for the festival in the last few years, among them Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Leos Carax and Agnès Varda.
Festival director Hans Hurch has been trying for quite some time now to win director Jean-Luc Godard for such a trailer – and it was worth the effort. Jean-Luc Godard has kept the promise he made this summer and sent us a short one-minute film, which, as the filmmaker emphasizes, he has created especially for the Viennale at the festival’s invitation.

This is all the more noteworthy, as it is the director’s first work for the screen since his last film, Notre musique, from the year 2004.

Une catastrophe
Entitled Une catastrophe, the film is a kind of cinematographic poem about violence and love, conceived in Godard’s characteristic montage and combination of cinematic material, sounds, language and music. It includes short excerpts from Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) and the collective film People on Sunday (1930), accompanied by a Low German 18th-century poem from Western Pomerania with the lines: Kumm du um Middernach / Kumm du Klock een / Vader slöpt / Moder slöpt / ik slap alleen. Klopp an de Kammerdör / fat an de Klink. / Vader meent / Moder meent / dat deit de Wind
“With Jean-Luc Godard’s wonderful work for our festival, a dream has come true for me,” says festival director Hans Hurch, “and at the same time I consider it as a token of high esteem and a symbol for the importance the Viennale has meanwhile gained in the film industry.”

The festival trailer Une catastrophe will be screened from September 18 in 100 selected Austrian cinemas as well as during the course of the Viennale program from October 17 to 29 and displayed on fest21.com
click to start the video.