"Invisible Adversaries"
1977
Directed by Valie Export

"A winning combination of sexual frankness and visual wit," wrote J. Hoberman in The Village Voice; "Funny, violent, sexual…It makes you reconsider what you and everyone else is doing in life and in art,"said Amy Taubin in Soho Weekly News. Set in contemporary Vienna, Valie Export's controversial feature has been called a feminist Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Anna (Susanne Widl), a Viennese photographer, discovers that extra-terrestrial beings are colonizing the minds of her fellow citizens by raising the human aggression quotient. The outer world immediately becomes disjointed, but the inner world does too, as Anna and her love (Peter Weibel) try to hang onto their deteriorating relationship. A unique and totally original work by Austria's foremost filmmaker, Invisible Adversaries is at once philosophical and funny, psychologically revealing and sexually frank--"a witty and visually brilliant essay on gender and experience, culture and environment" (National Film Theatre, London). German with English subtitles. 112 minutes.