AMATEURINNEN* is a collaboration between the Austrian Filmmuseum and the Art and Digital Media Department of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

Within the context of exploring questions of feminist aesthetics, especially with regards to the topic of the visibility of female work, previous semesters have focused on engaging with very special items in the collection of the Austrian Film Museum: namely, films by women* that were not produced for the cinema or the public, but mostly emerged in private contexts. We asked ourselves how something that has commonly (and often pejoratively) been labeled as amateurism, dilettantism and a hobby can henceforth be understood as an artistic strategy and a political, feminist position.

Starting from this question together with fragments from a history of female image production that was almost lost, students in the Art and Digital Media Department have developed under the title AMATEURINNEN* films, filmic installations and performative interventions that will be accompanied by a publication (Kelly Ann Gardener, Leonie Huber, Eszter Kallay). Anna Barbieri, Kristina Cyan, Marzieh Emadi/Sina Saadat, Hicran Ergen/Sebastian Meyer, Nils Gabriel, Djoana Gueorguieva, Pille-Riin Jaik, Selin Karaman, Nazira Karimi, Hans Kjær-Hansen, Jonida Laçi, Marie Luise Lehner, Vitória Monteiro, Anvar Musrepov, Lia Sudermann/Simon Nagy, Kervin Saint Pere, Huda Takriti, and Pia Wurzer draw on films by Elisabeth Gaidos, Elfriede Irrall, Adele Kraft, Siglinde Kurz, Leopoldine and Georg Passecker, Rita Porsch, Renate Schweiger, Annemarie Vavricek and Margret Veit.

(Katharina Müller, Constanze Ruhm)