Production

Vento Film
Leitermayergasse 33/20
1180 Vienna
Austria
Tel.: +43 1- 40 60 392
Fax: +43 1- 40 60 392
e-mail: moc.mlifotnev@tcatnoc
Homepage: www.ventofilm.com

Notes From The Underworld

Summary

In black and white pictures, smoking, sitting at the table in inns and barren rooms, "Wienerlied" - singer Kurt Girk and his friend Alois Schmutzer, the "King of the Vienna Underworld", tell of their eventful lives. With just a few, but precise questions, Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel get the two friends and some companions to talk. Concentrated, anecdotal episodes paint the picture of a bygone era, in which men like Loisl and Kurtl wrote town history. Namely the unofficial version, which is about shootings, gambling debts and unbelievable conditions in jail and in the courtroom. Oral history, which neither romanticizes nor judges morally, and generates respect for the fearlessness of the two impressive protagonists. With its description of Vienna in the 1960s, the film fills a gap in terms of content, formally it shows what contemporary cinema can do.