NEWSHelnwein

For the past twenty-four years the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Academy Foundation, in association with the UCLA Film and Television Archive, has presented a series of film programs featuring the outstanding documentaries of the previous year. The film, NINTH NOVEMBER NIGHT, was considered by the Academy’s Documentary Screening Committee to be one of the outstanding documentaries of 2004. It is our wish to include a screening of "Ninth November Night" in this prestigious series on the evening of Wednesday, November 30, 2005.

one man show

Gottfried Helnwein is best man and Hamish Bowles reports exclusively about this event in VOGUE, March 2006.

Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times writes: "Gottfried Helnwein's wondrous staging of "Der Rosenkavalier" is eccentric and anachronistic — yet utterly faithful to its spirit. The thing you should know about this "Rosenkavalier" is that it is terrific. Helnwein's vision of "Rosenkavalier" is monochromatic and a riot of color. It is updated but couldn't be more 18th century. And none of those opposites contradicts."

The Visions Of Lewis Carroll, consists of four short films, followed by a feature length film.

The film, NINTH NOVEMBER NIGHT by Henning Lohner, was considered by the Academy’s Documentary Screening Committee to be one of the outstanding documentaries of 2004.

At German Protestant Church Day ("Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag"), the annual convention of the German Protestant Church, Chair of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany, Bishop Dr. Margot Käßmann referes in her opening sermon to the images of suffering children in the art of Gottfried Helnwein.

"In einer fotografischen Inszenierung Gottfried Helnweins erhebt sich der Künstler, fäulnisschwarz und monumental wie das Mahnmal einer letzen Einsicht: 'So ist Verweiflung, diese Krankheit im Selbst, die Krankheit zum Tode. […]. Der Tod ist nicht das letzte der Krankheit, aber der Tod ist in einem fort das Letzte. Von dieser Krankheit erlöst zu werden durch den Tod ist eine Unmöglichkeit, denn die Krankheit und deren Qual und der Tod ist gerade, nicht sterben zu können.”

The show is seen by almost 130,000 visitors and the San Francisco Chronicle quotes it the most important exhibition of a contemporary artist in 2004. Steven Winn, Chronicle Arts and Culture Critic, wrote: "Helnwein's large format, photo-realist images of children of various demeanors boldly probed the subconscious. Innocence, sexuality, victimization and haunting self-possession surge and flicker in Helnwein's unnerving work"

"The Times"(UK) comments on the show:"...these photo-paintings appear even more real than a photograph: they are hyper-real, super-saturated depictions of the world that surrounds us, as we would like to see it. Helnwein’s landscapes offer us the world as we see it in our mind’s eye, our memories. What is certain is that with these works Helnwein has raised the bar for artists to come with art that is groundbreaking in terms of scale, skill and vision. Painted mountains, fields and sky can never be the same again."