The Winners of the Short Film competition „The Rhythm of Vienna“
Susan Young (UK) & Paul Wenninger (AT)
Paul Wenninger is a freelance dancer and author of choreographical works as well as a filmmaker with a focus on pixilation and animation. Since 1999, he has been the artistic director of Kabinett ad Co., a working platform for artists of various disciplines. In his technically impressive real-animation "Trespass" (2012), an avatar of the director crosses one border after another. In the pixilation short film "Uncanny Valley" (2015), he deals with the First World War using the stop-motion technique. "Uncanny Valley" was nominated for the 2016 Austrian Film Prize in the Best Short Film category.
Susan Young, a director of animation films, was nominated for an award of the "British Academy of Film and Television Arts" (BAFTA) and lives in London. "Carnival", her graduation film at the Royal College of Art, is noted for its flowing, metamorphic line and has defined her work ever since. Young's projects include the production of animated films for musicians such as David Byrne (Beleza Tropical: Umbabarauma).
Her joint film project for the competition "The Rhythm of Vienna" is a rhythmic photographic and comic strip animation of Vienna’s cityscape. A dancer and graphically architectural lines will form the constants of this film.
Franziska Pflaum (GER/AT)
The filmmaker Franziska Pflaum, who was born and grew up in Vienna, studied Visual Art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and film direction at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf. During her studies, she completed several documentary and fictional short films, which were invited for screening at national and international film festivals. Her graduating film "So schön wie du" was awarded the 2014 German Short Film Prize. In this coming-of-age drama, Pflaum tells the story of a friendship between girls in Brandenburg in barely 30 minutes.
Franziska Pflaum now lives in Berlin and looks longingly to Vienna - a place that has grown over time, pervaded by hate, love and lots of ironic humor. Her planned film for "The Rhythm of Vienna" is a view from afar - of a city that she knows very well and is a part of her. Franziska Pflaum would like to present Vienna in all its diversity in her project. She and her film team follow several protagonists through Vienna and discover the city with them.
Wolfgang Matzl (AT)
Wolfgang Matzl studied graphic design in Vienna and puppet animation in Bristol and worked for several years at advertising agencies in London and Vienna. For a number of years, he has worked as a freelance graphic artist, illustrator and animator. In recent years, he has completed projects for clients including ZDF, Sony Pictures, Römerquelle, Vogue and Salzburger Nachrichten.
In his animated film planned for the short film competition "The Rhythm of Vienna", he tells the adventures of a small man in big Vienna. The man is made of paper, 20 centimeters (8 inches) tall and is animated directly on the streets of Vienna using the stop-motion technique.