60th Anniversary of the Austrian Film Museum
Cinema is More Than a Dark Room!
March 14, 2024
"The task of the Austrian Film Museum will be to collect and show works from film history. A library, photo collection, and a collection of exhibits for the screen shall be created. The main exhibition space of the Film Museum is the screen. The exhibition object is film."
An undated, typed sheet of paper signed by Peter Konlechner, Peter Kubelka, and the Austrian Student Union in early 1964 designates the location for a new film museum to be founded in Vienna. The rest is history – as we explored (and continue to do so) on the occasion of our 50th birthday ten years ago in the form of a book and online. What should we do for our 60th birthday? Today, the Austrian Film Museum is the most internationally renowned curatorial and research institution in Austria with the task of collecting, preserving, researching, and educating about the medium of "film." While the exhibition space of the screen continues to remain central, the idea of what "film" is as well as our curatorial and scholarly activities have for a long time now been more diverse than the founders could have imagined six decades ago.
On the afternoon and evening of March 14th, you can get a picture of the diversity of our collection, our curatorial work, and our research projects in 2024: entrance is free for thirty-minute presentations, film programs, lectures, and readings providing insights into our activities. Friends of the Film Museum will contribute greetings, music, and film improvisations. And although it is not in the spotlight this time, our history will also be present in the form of a literary collage from the past six decades.
In a certain sense, film museums are Atlantises of human sensitivities, of the animate and inanimate things of our recent past and fleeting present. In our 60th year, our care (in the original Latin sense of "curare" – "to attend to oneself") for the past still counts – our growth in the present still counts – our heart is still focused on the creation of a possible (better!) future. Here's to another 60 years of a Film Museum utopia! (Michael Loebenstein / Translation: Ted Fendt)
Free admission to all events
"The task of the Austrian Film Museum will be to collect and show works from film history. A library, photo collection, and a collection of exhibits for the screen shall be created. The main exhibition space of the Film Museum is the screen. The exhibition object is film."
An undated, typed sheet of paper signed by Peter Konlechner, Peter Kubelka, and the Austrian Student Union in early 1964 designates the location for a new film museum to be founded in Vienna. The rest is history – as we explored (and continue to do so) on the occasion of our 50th birthday ten years ago in the form of a book and online. What should we do for our 60th birthday? Today, the Austrian Film Museum is the most internationally renowned curatorial and research institution in Austria with the task of collecting, preserving, researching, and educating about the medium of "film." While the exhibition space of the screen continues to remain central, the idea of what "film" is as well as our curatorial and scholarly activities have for a long time now been more diverse than the founders could have imagined six decades ago.
On the afternoon and evening of March 14th, you can get a picture of the diversity of our collection, our curatorial work, and our research projects in 2024: entrance is free for thirty-minute presentations, film programs, lectures, and readings providing insights into our activities. Friends of the Film Museum will contribute greetings, music, and film improvisations. And although it is not in the spotlight this time, our history will also be present in the form of a literary collage from the past six decades.
In a certain sense, film museums are Atlantises of human sensitivities, of the animate and inanimate things of our recent past and fleeting present. In our 60th year, our care (in the original Latin sense of "curare" – "to attend to oneself") for the past still counts – our growth in the present still counts – our heart is still focused on the creation of a possible (better!) future. Here's to another 60 years of a Film Museum utopia! (Michael Loebenstein / Translation: Ted Fendt)
Free admission to all events
Related materials
Photos 2024 - 60 Jahre Filmmuseum
For each series, films are listed in screening order.
