Jakob Brossmann is the co-recipient of the Erste Bank's MoreVALUE Film Award, which he received for Lampedusa in Winter at the 2015 Viennale. On the occasion of his one-month residency at Deutsches Haus at NYU, we co-present together with Anthology Film Archives, Erste Bank, and the Austrian Cultural Forum three screenings of Lampedusa in Winter (2015) starts on Friday August 19, through Sunday, August 21, at 7:30 p.m. Jakob Brossmann will be present for an audience Q&A and to discuss his work. 

Jakob Brossmann was born in 1986 in Vienna. He studied Stage and Film Design at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. His work alternates between theater, photography, fine arts, and documentary film. In 2010, he directed the short film call back, followed by A Day’s Work in 2011.

Since 2011, each annual edition of the Viennale (Vienna International Film Festival) has featured the presentation of the MoreVALUE Film Award to one or more Austrian filmmakers whose films are included in the festival. Designed to showcase the best of Austrian cinema, the award was founded by Erste Bank, the Viennale’s main sponsor, and is awarded by an independent jury. The award brings a cash prize as well as a one-month residency as a visiting film scholar hosted and organized by the Deutsches Haus at NYU. The screenings are co-organized by the Deutsches Haus at NYU and the Austrian Cultural Forum New York. Anthology Film Archives has presented the award-winning films in the past, and they continue the tradition this year with special screenings of both of the 2015 winners: Jakob Brossmann’s Lampedusa in Winter and Claudia Larcher’s video work Self.

Lampedusa in Winter, in Italian with English subtitles, 2015, 93 min, DCP.

A radio distress call from a refugee boat: the passengers haven’t eaten for three days and are exhausted. It’s winter on Lampedusa. The tourists have all gone home and it’s cold on the windy Italian island, which, lying some 68 miles from the coast of North Africa, is the first port of call for African migrants striving to reach Europe. Brossmann’s documentary feature reveals the numerous crises besetting the residents – both temporary and permanent – of Lampedusa. While the migrants protest the poor treatment they receive, the local fishing community is also restless. The cargo capacity of the new ferry – the only way onto and off of the island for its 5,000 inhabitants – isn’t sufficient to transport their catches to the mainland. Angry, the fishermen block the arrival of the boat. Stocks on the island are slowly running low, and store shelves are frighteningly bare. There’s division among the inhabitants of the island, and the garbage is piling up – as are the leaky, abandoned immigrant boats in the harbor. In the meantime, a lawyer from Palermo is trying to arrange a place of burial for those who have died, and the mayor is trying to keep everyone calm. Vitally important and skillfully constructed,  Lampedusa in Winter is an elegant documentary portrait of a tiny community at the edge of Europe that’s engaged in a desperate fight for dignity, and for solidarity with those who many consider the cause of the ongoing crisis: the African boat people.

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