The Radiance of a City: An Evening for Siegfried Mattl

June 1, 2016

Siegfried Mattl (1954–2015) was one of the Austria’s most renowned contemporary historians and Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for History and Society. And he was a cinephile: films in all their variety presented him with new approaches in the study of the dynamics of urban experience and historical reality. Mattl’s writings on film and history have now been gathered in a new volume in the FilmmuseumSynemaPublikationen, published under the title The Radiance of a City. With humour and a critical eye cast on power relations, these texts explore the full spectrum of colours in cinema – from Red Vienna to Haneke’s white to the cinematic blues of Bob Dylan. From Austrian comedies of the interwar period to the pointed re-evaluation of avant-garde, amateur and other ephemeral films to the staging of history as enacted by Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott or Todd Haynes.

 
The book launch on June 1 will bring together a number of films Mattl was engaging with as well as many of his friends and colleagues. Drehli Robnik, editor of the new book and Mattl’s longstanding comrade-in-arms, will be moderating: film fragments, text excerpts, reminiscences.

1 Euro Solidarbeitrag für Aktion Kulturpass