Description of the attraction
The Austrian Film Museum is located in Vienna, in the Albertina district. The museum considers its main mission to preserve and research significant film collections that have been collected by the museum since its foundation.
The Vienna Film Museum was established as a non-profit organization in 1964 and within a short span of time established itself as the leading international film center in Austria. Only a year later, in 1965, the International Federation of Cinematic Archives (FIAF) accepted the Film Museum as a new member.
The Cinema Museum soon made a name for itself thanks to its interesting programs. Retrospectives from the 1960s and 70s made the museum popular among German-speaking countries. The programs were created with an emphasis on such areas as avant-garde film, comedies of the 1920s and 30s, revolutionary Soviet films, classics of American cinema, propaganda films, and Japanese cinema. Since 1965, all films have been shown in the museum's own cinema. Since November 2002, the equipment of the museum has been completely renewed, the screens and sound system have been expanded, which now allows to play films of all formats in the history of cinema, and also supports modern sound and digital video systems.
On January 1, 2005, renowned filmmaker Martin Scorsese agreed to become the honorary president of the museum. Apart from his work as a legendary artist, Martin Scorsese has been an ardent advocate of film preservation for nearly three decades.
The collection currently includes about 25,500 films. They span the entire cinematic era, from 1893 (Edison's films) to the present, all genres and types of cinema, from classic feature films to science films, trailers and commercials. The museum includes four special collections among the most significant collections: the international heritage of independent, avant-garde films; independent cinema in Austria since 1950; the so-called Films in Exile: the international work of emigrants from Central and Eastern Europe; films from Soviet Russia made between 1918 and 1945.
The museum constantly hosts film screenings.
