Center for Austrian Studies sponsors opening night film at Black Europe Film Festival
The Center for Austrian Studies, along with on- and off-campus partners and sponsors, co-sponsored the Black Europe Film Festival, which took place from January 30th to February 2nd, 2025. CAS was proud to support the opening-night film, Edelweiss (2023; Dir. Anna Gaberscik), and its post-film Q&A with the director.
The film, a documentary that includes oral histories, montage, and avant-garde performance, was shown at the Main Cinema in Minneapolis. Edelweiss grapples with Austria's present as a multiethnic, multiracial, but white-majority country, which also has a history of sweeping its horrific past under the rug. The film explored what it meant to be Black in Austria today. The film was shot in a variety of locales, from the Vienna Ringstraße, to social and gathering spaces founded by People of Color, to the Austrian countryside. The film centers Black subjects who were born in Austria and have Austrian citizenship, as well as those who call Austria their home (Heimat), and yet must grapple with belonging in a country that doesn't acknowledge the vital contributions of People of Color.
Professor Jamele Watkins led the post-film Q&A with Gaberscik. Although the film centered on contemporary experiences in Austria, and Gaberscik stressed this was intentional to avoid the need for viewers to come to the film with prior knowledge of Austrian history, the discussion opened up into a larger conversation about Austria's past, and how it continues to inform the present, notably with the country's recent national elections that took place in Fall 2024.
Gaberscik, an Austrian-American filmmaker, was born in Brooklyn and lives in Vienna. She is the founder of Through Our Eyes, an interdisciplinary project that explores anti-racism, intersectionality, and empowerment in various creative forms. Through Our Eyes was one of the producers of the film.
More about the Black Europe Film Festival (from its website): The Black Europe Film Festival of Minneapolis/Saint Paul (BEFF MSP) is a celebration of Afro-European cinema, with screenings at the Main Cinema, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Capri, and the Cedar Cultural Center. Built on principles of community co-planning and anti-racist organizing, BEFF MSP showcases documentaries, fiction films, and shorts by Europe’s most renowned Afrodescendant filmmakers, offering artists a platform to share their work and foster networks of support within the global Black diaspora and the international film community. Confronting the enduring legacies of racism, colonialism, and displacement, Black filmmakers channel a distinctive energy, creativity, and resilience into their work. They not only reframe dominant narratives but also transcend the paradigms of whiteness, cultivating spaces of possibility and fostering new ways of being and belonging. This festival amplifies their non-stereotypical vision of Black Europe and Black European identity, challenging racialized regimes of visibility that disempower and devalue Black lives across the globe.
The Black Europe Film Festival of Minneapolis/Saint Paul was supported by a generous grant from the University of Minnesota Imagine Fund. Other partners included the Liberal Arts Engagement Hub, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Center for German and European Studies, The Main Cinema, MSP Film, Capri, Cedar Cultural Center, Minnesota Historical Society, the Qalanjo Project, American Swedish Institute, Italian Cultural Center, Italian Film Festival, and Cinema in the Cities.
