Bellaria: As Long as We Live!

Behind the famous Volkstheater in Vienna stands the repertory cinema Bellaria, where films from the good old UFA period are screened. Every afternoon at four, many senior citizens shuffle in. In Bellaria, they relive their childhood and the morals and taste of olden days. They also imbibe the once charming manners between the sexes and the generally respected bourgeois values. Here, they cherish the illusion that nothing has changed since 1940. Wolfsperger visualises the Bellaria universe exhaustively and affectionately: the history of the movie theatre, the film screenings that have now become rites, the private lives and film preferences of some habitués, their – not very correct – political inclinations, and the ins and outs of the UFA films themselves. The feeling gradually arises that these people are all patients of Sigmund Freud. Indeed, all regular visitors to Bellaria bend over backward in their private lives to keep the evil modern world outside. They are all living dead, who have stopped the clock of their consciousness more than half a century ago. Because they consider their insanity the most natural thing in the world and regard it with mild humour, these Viennese film fans seem perfectly ordinary people. Partly because of this, this documentary repeatedly makes you wonder to what extent every film and every film fan has a touch of this so-called typically Viennese lunacy. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)