COME AND SHOOT IN THALIWOOD

Prämien auf den Tod, Curd Jürgens © Filmarchiv Austria

With the film program COME AND SHOOT IN THALIWOOD, the Festival of Austrian Film extends the exhibition “Film and Cinema in Styria” onto its screens. The exhibition can be viewed from March 11 until January 8, 2023, at the History Museum Graz. The special, conceived by SYNEMA – Gesellschaft für Film und Medien includes three films from Graz’s dream factory Thaliwood, the “film city” built on the grounds of the Thalerhof airport, where the Alpenfilm Austria Association initiated a prosperous studio in British-occupied Styria. At any rate, seventeen major films were shot from 1947 to 1953. As complement, during the Diagonale, Styrian filmmakers have been invited to put together guided tours through the exhibition at the History Museum. The tours will take place on April 8, 9, and 10 at 3 p.m. The tour guides will be announced shortly.

The historical specials RAUSCH and COME AND SHOOT IN THALIWOOD can be seen from April 6 to 10 as part of the Diagonale in Graz and offer the rare occasion to see works, some specially restored, from Austria’s film archives away from the capital.

Film program COME AND SHOOT IN THALIWOOD
— Prämien auf den Tod (D: Curd Jürgens, AT 1949)
— tracing THALERHOF (D: Lotte Schreiber, AT 2014)
— Schuss durchs Fenster (D: Siegfried Breuer, AT 1949)
— Die Vier im Jeep (D: Leopold Lindtberg, CH/AT 1951)

After 1945, the British Film Section of the Psychological Warfare Branch in Styria controlled the distribution of foreign productions and approved “tainted” German films for screening only on the condition that all scenes referring to national socialism were removed. In Graz, with the “film city” on the grounds of the Thalerhof airport, a flourishing studio emerged, affectionally dubbed “Thaliwood.” After all, seventeen major films were shot between 1947 and 1953 on the initiative of the Alpenfilm Austria Association.

At the Diagonale’22, the murder mystery Prämien auf den Tod (AT 1949) – Curd Jürgens’s directing debut with the leading actor Siegfried Breuer – will be shown together with the short film collage tracing THALERHOF (AT 2014) by Lotte Schreiber. Added to that is Siegfried Breuer’s strange film noir Schuss durchs Fenster (AT 1949), a sibling film to Prämien auf den Tod, as it were, in which the two stars Curd Jürgens and Siegfried Breuer have switched places in front of and behind the camera. The program will be supplemented with Die Vier im Jeep (CH/AT 1951) by Leopold Lindtberg, which was screened in the competition in Cannes and honored with the Golden Bear at the Berlinale. After the realization of seventeen major films, operations ceased at the Thalerhof studio in 1945, for mainly financial reasons. Film torn. Blackout.