As a first initiative of the kind in Romania, the Austrian Cultural Forum together with the Transilvania International Film Festival have organized a spectacular retrospective, from 19th to 23rd of May, at Cinema ARTA, presenting eight film productions directed by Michael Haneke.
Best known for his bleak and disturbing films, constantly awarded at the most important international film festivals, Michael Haneke is a famous Austrian director who has tried to draw the audience's attention to the various roles that the mass-media fulfills in our times, or how much we are manipulated by means of image and story and how hard it is today to discern between reality and fiction. At the same time, Haneke's films have the intention of aiming the audience's sensibility at the indifference and coldness that too often describe the core problems of our society.
The eight film selection of the Austrian filmmaker's career is meant to be a gesture of reverence towards an artist whose work has indisputably marked the history of cinema: familiar images have the tendency to turn upside down and become delirious scenes of an apocalypse, for an audience experiencing deep confusing feelings; this is a director masterfully playing with his audience's reactions, with a spectator frequently revolted of the way he himself is reacting at Haneke's films. But Haneke's films are not meant to show the violence in itself, but rather to reveal the audience the very origins of violence.
Within the retrospective held at Cinema Arta the public will be able to enjoy several productions such as: Funny Games, Benny´s Video, Der siebente Kontinent / The Seventh Continent, Le temps du loup / Time of the Wolf or La pianiste/ The Piano Teacher.
