Christanell Linda

Linda Christanell was born in 1939 in Vienna. She studied painting at the Academy of fine Arts in Vienna and at the École des Beaux-Artes in Paris. After her return to Vienna she turned to create objects, photographs, texts, slide sequences and performances.1965 -1974 she was a teacher of creative education. Her way of working became even more complex by making experimental films. Since 1966 she took part in many exhibitions and film-screenings in Austria and abroad and at international filmfestivals for experimental film. 1987 she was asked for jurymember at Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Westgermany. In 1993 she held workshops and lectures at the institute for filmsciences of the University of Zurich. In the course of 2002/03 she was a guestlecturer at the Universties of Vienna, Liverpool and Dresden. She revieved several prices and awards for her work. Her films are distributed by sixpackfilm and Medlienwerkstatt Vienna, Light Cone Paris, Kinothek Asta Nielsen Frankfurt and Friends of the German Kinemathek Berlin.
In 2011 a complete biography including analytical essays on her films and a list of her works has been published by Synema, Vienna titeld “Wenn ich die Kamera öffne ist sie rot“.
She is a lid of the Austria Filmmakers Cooperative (1982) of the Künstlerhaus Vienna (1980) and became founding member of IntAkt – (Internationale Aktionsgemeinschaft bildender Künstlerinnen) in 1977. Since 2011 she is a member of FLUSS.
In 2011 her published biography was presented together with the screening of a selection of her films at the Diagonale Festival of the Austrian Film in Graz and at the Filmuseum, Vienna. Firther screenings of her films took place at Medienwerkstatt Vienna, at the show Double Take: MedienkunstpionierInnen in Austria and at the Viennale Special. In 2012 her films will be shown at the filmfestival in Buenos Aires.

About her work: Already in the 1960ies Christanell’s work started to become more and more complex, using all new media like performance, artobjekts and combining slideshows with the spoken word. During the last decades she turned mainly to photography and experimental film. Her films are showing very dense images, setting into motion photographs and objekts. She is investigating the various possibilities of media-transfer that should lead her to a new vision of contens and complexity of imagematerial. For her films she uses verious 16 mm and super 8 mm filmcameras, makes her own storybords, is her own cutter and sound manager.
Linda Christanell is considered an important austrian avant guarde artist and filmmaker.