Published: July 05, 2019| 08:02 PM

The non-conformist Argentine filmmaker Gastón Solnicki paid tribute to his long-time friend and admired director of the cult Viennale film festival Hans Hurch through a cinematic obituary entitled Introduzione all'oscuro. Solnicki’s idiosyncratic 67-minute portrayal of friendship refrains from capturing specific people and depicts Hurch’s life through a series of subjects and music.

Solnicki reminisced much about the time when Hurch helped him develop his previous documentary, Papirosen. Much like that film about family relationships, which the director shot more than twelve years ago, Introduzione all'oscuro is a highly personal, subjective work without a homogenous structure. “I didn’t have a script or funding ahead of time. I made the film more out of a sense of urgency – a strong emotion. I don’t like a pre-planned approach, but prefer a non-linear plot and departure from the storyline. In my opinion this approach has potential both for film and for music,” said the member of this year’s documentary jury about the film shot in Vienna, in the filmmaker’s mind a necrophilic city that honours the dead.

According to the director, however, this subjective approach did not appeal to everyone. “The people who knew Hans don’t like it, because it doesn’t correspond to their idea of him. But the rest of the world liked it,” said Solnicki, and in conclusion offered the audience that if they are interested in seeing his previous film Papirosen, they should write him on social networks asking for a link.