New World

Colour, 35 mm
Austria, 2005, 103 min
WP – World premiere
Section: Documentary Films in Competition
Oficiální stránky: www.rosdyfilm.com

Synopsis

A nostalgic road movie that wanders from country to country, town to town, from old times to new, through the greater part of central Europe, territory that for nearly four hundred years boasted the name Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Documentarist Paul Rosdy set out on a trip from Sarajevo to Vienna and on to Romania, from Trieste to the Bay of Kotor, across the Hungarian puszta and on to Ukraine. Using music, stories, anecdotes and legends, travel guides and newspaper clippings from the turn of the 20th century, Rosdy has created a fascinating journey through time built upon the juxtaposition of archive footage and photographs with contemporary shots of the same places. Great historical moments are overshadowed by ordinary life, everyday events and simple pleasures, like the singing of Gipsy musicians in Hungary or forest workers taking their meals together in Romania’s snow covered Carpathian mountains.

About the director

Paul Rosdy (Vienna) has been involved exclusively in film since 1990, though before that he worked at other jobs, including a stint as a tour guide. He studied filmmaking in Vancouver, Canada and then produced short documentaries and educational programs in Austria, Canada and the United States. In 1994 he and Joan Grossman founded Pinball Films, under whose auspices they shot the feature-length documentary The Port of Last Resort, which focuses on the little-known story of 20,000 European Jews who fled Nazism for Shanghai. Rosdy began working on New World in 1999. Filmography: You Don’t Look for Street Signs When You’re in a Jungle (1991), Release Day (1992), Matzo Balls (1994), The Port of Last Resort (1998), New World (2005).