20 Little Films

Each year since 1995, the Viennale has asked a great, international director to make his or her own personal contribution to the festival: a contribution in the form of a small, approximately one-minute film, which is used as a kind of introduction to the festival. The concept of this "little films" (as Jonas Mekas once called them) is more to create a short, autonomous work, a cinematic moment that stands alone and for nothing and no-one else. Over the years this has resulted in a series of absolutely unique, exceptional works. Each director has created his/her own cinematic world between home movie and political essay, music film and minimal étude, mysterious story and radical, aesthetic abstraction on those little films, that will now be shown together for the first time on the occasion of the Viennale’s great 50th anniversary, premiering at the Locarno Film Festival.