The decisions on this year's Austrian Art Awards and Outstanding Artist Awards have been announced. It is a particular pleasure to specifically highlight the filmmakers and artists among the honorees who have been associated with sixpackfilm for many years:
Wilbirg Brainin-Donnenberg (photo) will receive the Austrian Art Award 2023 for Film – for her diverse work as a film mediator, curator, feminist networker and mentor (amongst others as current director of drehbuchFORUM Wien, former employee of sixpackfilm and founding member of FC Gloria) and, last but not least, as a filmmaker (e.g., Dirndlschuld, 2021).
The award for Artistic Photography goes to Claudia Larcher, who "has developed her own formal vocabulary from photographic views and fragments of architectural and organic bodies, cultural and natural landscapes, which she dissects, twists, mirrors, re-dimensions and assembles."
The Outstanding Artist Award for Experimental Film honors performer and stop-motion artist Anna Vasof, who "deconstructs cinematic effects with the help of analog animation", constructing her own machines and mechanisms. Jola Wieczorek (most recently: Stories from The Sea, 2021) receives this distinction for her documentaries, which "speak their own artistic language of experiencing, remembering, reflecting." Manu Luksch, who has "achieved an outstanding international position in the artistic-activist exploration and critical reflection of new technologies," is awarded in the genre of Media Art.
Heartfelt congrats to you and to all award winners!
Photo: Anna Brainin