How Long Is “Viennale Walzer”?

An exhaustive, deceptively simple essay on the complex relationship between cinema and the real world in one-and-a-half minutes. Colorful spinning tops rotate on a reflecting surface, the sounds of a merry-go-round give way to familiar music. The camera pans upwards, revealing Agnès Varda’s motionless face. From off-screen, her thoughts contradict the sounds of Strauss: “Ah no, not those Viennese waltzes … I’m thinking about film, about what happens every day. I’m thinking about bread, salt, earth, corn, bread, the sea, salt.” What follows are images (and sounds) of these essential things, a brief digression, with a musical transition between one take and the next, where there is time to take a closer look at things.