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DIAGONALE 2018

Sebastian Höglinger and Peter Schernhuber • Directors, Diagonale

“‘Dialogue by chance’ would be a good tagline for the Diagonale”

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- In Graz, we sat down with Sebastian Höglinger and Peter Schernhuber, the young, dynamic co-directors of the Diagonale, to discuss their approach to the Austrian gathering

Sebastian Höglinger and Peter Schernhuber  • Directors, Diagonale
Peter Schernhuber (left) and Sebastian Höglinger

In 2016, Sebastian Höglinger and Peter Schernhuber took over from Barbara Pichler as co-directors of the Diagonale (13-18 March), Austria’s principal film festival focused chiefly on local productions and co-productions. We talked to them about their tenure so far and their future ambitions for the Graz-based gathering.

Cineuropa: Could you explain a little about your backgrounds and how you came to be working together as co-directors of the Diagonale?
Peter Schernhuber: We started working together seven years ago; before the Diagonale, we ran an event together in Upper Austria, called the YOUKI Festival, the International Youth Media Festival, which was focused more on pop culture and music, but also film. But actually, we met during Crossing Europe eight years ago because we had both started working there, and then a year later, we started working for the YOUKI Festival.
Sebastian Höglinger: We met again at the Diagonale. That’s always the way – you meet over a beer and find you have similar interests, so we started to work on the same projects. When this opportunity came along, we thought, “Ok, we have to apply,” and to be honest, we were surprised to be invited along for a hearing, but it all worked out in the end. We were quite young when the decision was made back in 2014, and Austria isn’t a country for young people in official positions, so to speak, if you look at other festivals or big cultural or art institutions, so it was a surprise not only for us, but also for the industry and the community of the city of Graz to have these two young guys who were supposed to take over.
PS: It’s not really normal for two people to be in charge of an event like this – we’re unusual because as well as being the artistic directors, we are also in charge of the economic side of the festival. When you’re talking about bigger institutions here in Austria, you have one artistic director, and then you have a manager, and it’s very unusual to have one person – or two people, in our case – fulfilling both roles.

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How would you say your approach differs from that of the previous head, Barbara Pichler?
SH: We didn’t have a concept where we wanted to do everything in a new way; it was already a functioning festival, which is not typical for a gathering that focuses on the domestic film landscape. There’s a huge audience interest and also an international interest, which isn’t usual, so we just wanted to keep the standards high and to make some small changes. We had both been working for the Diagonale for about ten years in different departments, so we knew most of the team and were very happy that they wanted to work with us. It was important to think about what Austrian cinema is and how you can create a dialogue between the domestic film landscape and world cinema. That’s also the plan for this whole festival: to have an atmosphere where it’s possible to bring people together in dialogue.

What makes Graz the ideal city for this festival?
SH: Graz is the perfect place for this festival and the dialogue we want to promote because it’s small and has this kind of parochial charm, and it has these functioning cinemas. Outside Vienna, it’s the only location in Austria where it’s possible to watch 16 mm, 35 mm and even 70 mm prints in the cinema, so it was also important for us to go and work together with the archives and unearth the big gems and bring them to the people.

Would you consider sacrificing the huge number of films in competition in favour of narrower thematic focuses?
PS: To be honest, we try to avoid thematic focuses because the character of the festival is that we show documentaries and feature films, movies of any length and any genre. But of course, there’s always the question of, on one hand, trying to mirror one year of Austrian cinema during the festival year in Graz; but on the other hand, the competition gets much more interesting if you have a more focused selection, especially for the international community. So we try to find a balance between those two approaches.
SH: But it’s also for historical reasons, because the Diagonale started off as a typical industry event, a kind of conspiratorial meeting between producers and filmmakers, discussing and arguing about their movies, back in the late 1970s. For 21 years now, the Diagonale has been in Graz, and here it started to open up to the audience and become this mixed festival. It caters to the public interest in filmmaking, but the industry still has this feeling that it’s their festival, which is good in a way because there are other national film events where it doesn’t work that way, and at least people really feel connected to this festival.

Do you have any ambitions to expand the Diagonale’s size, or are you content with it as it is?
PS: Yes and no, because we have a really packed programme, so we would really love to have one extra day. It started on Monday ten years ago, then changed to Tuesday for the opening ceremony and the start of the programme. So to be honest, one more day would be great, but for financial reasons, we only have five days.
SH: We can’t complain about the length of the festival as it is now, but sometimes it would be good to have second or third screenings of films that were really of interest to people, or just to have some space to breathe without necessarily watching movies. For the Graz audience, five days is a really short length of time to give them the opportunity to encounter films within the festival and to explore the event because on the Monday after the festival, you bump into people and they tell you, “Oh my God, I missed this film from yesterday – I just read about it,” and the festival’s over already.

How is the funding situation looking for the Diagonale?
PS: To tell you the truth, we are fine on the funding front because our budget is ok to run a five-day festival, but on the other hand, it’s getting more and more complicated because we’re funded by the City of Graz and also by the Austrian government and the local government, so it’s a really complex procedure to have to rebuild a stable financial architecture from year to year. There are a couple of contracts for two or three years, but most of them are just for one.
SH: The golden years when you had these big, loyal partners who would stay with you and invest a large sum of money are over, but on the other hand, that’s good because if someone tells you they can’t support you any more this year, then it’s not such an important part of the whole structure. So it’s really a lot of small partners with a lot of loyalty, showing a lot of interest. We’ve had a new main sponsor since last year, so we’re really happy with that. Some withdraw their support, but then others come along. It would be going too far to say it’s easy.
PS: It’s really important to have different kinds of support. Sometimes it’s not money, but rather offering a presence in the city, for instance, and the cooperation we have with all the little shops and restaurants in town. All those little parts of our funding structure are really important in order to generate the entire image of the Diagonale. We are really happy and proud to have a 50/50 public-private funding model.

What is the biggest highlight for you at this edition?
SH: For me, a very special highlight in the film programme is  by Johann Lurf, because it’s a really special movie, one of the most interesting works from the last few years, and I’m really happy that it can be shown in a city where experimental cinema isn’t showcased throughout the year. It’s a 99-minute “searched footage” film that consists only of shots of the firmament from throughout film history, so you always see the sky, and what is special about it is that it does something to your body, so it’s a very physical cinematic experience, and when you’re talking about what is the future of the moving image and cinema, this is an example of why screenings in the dark room still have some kind of magic to them.
PS: Yesterday, Shirin Neshat paid a visit to the festival, and we had a talk in the cinema where she chatted to Martin Gschlacht, the DoP on her film, and to have those dialogues between international artists and Austrian artists is one of the aims of the festival. I was really happy to listen to this talk and to see that there was a lot of interest among the audience. It’s really exciting to have an idea like that a month before the gathering starts, and then you come here and the festival begins, and they really do pay us a visit, and in the end it works out well. It’s a little magic moment in the festival.
SH: There was also this moment when Katrina Daschner, who did our festival trailer, had a small exhibition here at an art gallery. Shirin Neshat visited yesterday, and it was also the reception for Katrina’s exhibition, so two artists came into dialogue by chance. Shirin Neshat is a very special character, very warm, clever and sophisticated, so that was a great moment.
PS: Maybe “dialogue by chance” could be a good tagline for the Diagonale, as this is what the festival is more or less about.

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