Schiele and the Mechanical Landscape of Experience in Early Austrian Cinema

Cassius Matthias, Founder, YES & NO Magazine

In 1909-10, Egon Schiele and his close friend Erwin Osen rented an apartment on Alserbachstrasse in Vienna’s 9th district. The apartment was next to a movie theater, one of many that started appearing all over the city from 1906. This gave Schiele and Osen convenient access to the emerging art form of cinema. During this time, the fledgling Austrian film industry was still evolving, investigating different themes ranging from genres like erotic shorts ("Herrenfilme") to other innovative shorts and travel stories. The "mechanical landscape" of this new cinematic era reflected the technological advances and broader cultural context in which Schiele created his own work as a painter.

Join Cassius Matthias for a presentation on the topic of Schiele and cinema. The event is part of the celebration of a special edition of the latest, two-part edition of the magazine YES & NO: Kino+Film Austria, which charts more than one hundred years of the little-known history of Austrian cinema.