Generations of Images 

Generationen von Bildern / Generations of Images 

Johannes Gierlinger, Albania, Austria, 2025, 103’

Research into Albanian film archives reveals images of the regime and the regime of images to explore how much history still resonates in the Albanian present.  

“We sing a lullaby, not to lull to sleep,
this giant baby of iron and concrete.
We sing a lullaby so it grows stronger and upon it,
incessantly the revolution can walk.” 

A poem as a wake-up call for revolution, or rather a regime-compliant lullaby? Generations of Images embarks on a search for traces through the profound transformation processes of Albanian history. In the archives, forgotten places, and memories of different generations, ruptures and continuities become visible, left behind by the transition from communist dictatorship to capitalist democracy. Generations of Images finds its own language to analyse regime images and image regimes. It is the language of poetry that rejects the logic and linearity of conventional historiography, allows for contradictions and expresses itself as both thought and action. It makes it possible not only to look at images, but to let them speak for themselves, to find new meanings and to create underlying narratives. In this way, generations of images form a multi-layered and polyphonic picture of history, which often tells less about the past than about an ambivalent relationship to it and shows how deeply the traces of history are inscribed in the fabric of the present. 

Johannes Gierlinger was born in 1985 and studied Digital Media & Art in Salzburg, Istanbul and Vienna. In his work, he deals with forms of memory, remembrance and perspectives of resistance, exploring traces, constellations and connections between different eras and political systems. In a poetic-essayistic form, he examines their visual forms of representation as well as historical layers and contemporary patterns and asks to what extent their structures and effects are interwoven, visible and perceptible in today’s societies. His work has been awarded numerous prizes and grants, including the BMKÖS Outstanding Artist Award for Film and the Diagonale Documentary Short Film Award. 

The screening will be followed by a discussion with Johannes Gierliner and Mira Klug.

With the support of Austrian Cultural Forum.