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Austrian filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky Laureate of the Underground Spirit Award of the 32 nd European Film Festival Palić

01.07.2025.

Peter Tscherkassky, an Austrian filmmaker, is this year's laureate of the Underground Spirit Award, presented at the European Film Festival Palić for outstanding work in independent filmmaking and distinct authorial poetics outside the mainstream film industry. The award honors filmmakers whose work demonstrates a unique voice and vision.

Tscherkassky has been making films since 1979. His work has received more than 50 awards, including the Golden Gate Award (San Francisco), the Main Prize at Oberhausen and Best Short Film at the Venice International Film Festival. He studied philosophy, and his dissertation was titled “Film as Art” (1986). He has organized several film festivals, curated countless film programs, and since 1984 has published numerous essays on avant-garde film. He is the editor of the book “Peter Kubelka” (1995) and co-founder of the film production company sixpackfilm (1991).

Instructions for A Light and Sound Machine had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005. Since 2006, he has exhibited his “Film Strips Light Boxes” installation series in multiple countries. In 2010, Coming Attractions premiered at Venice. He also edited the book “Film Unframed: A History of Austrian Avant-Garde Cinema”, published in 2012.

In the 2012 edition of “Sight & Sound”, the British Film Institute’s film magazine which publishes its “Greatest Films of All Time” list every ten years, Outer Space was ranked 322 nd in the Filmmakers’ Poll and 377 th in the Critics’ Poll. These rankings were based on 846 top-ten lists submitted by directors, academics, distributors, curators, and writers from 73 countries, collectively citing 2,045 different films. Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine was also included, ranked 894 th in the Critics’ Poll.

His film The Exquisite Corpus had its world premiere at Cannes in 2015. Between 2018 and 2021, Ensemble Nikel performed a series of concerts featuring newly composed soundtracks for his CinemaScope trilogy, with shows in Darmstadt, Utrecht, Graz, New York, Tel Aviv, Paris, Metz, Brussels, and Copenhagen.

In 2019, he received the Golden Cross of Honor from the City of Vienna, and in 2021, Train Again premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. That same year, the double vinyl LP Dirk Schaefer: Peter Tscherkassky, All the Soundtracks (2005–2021) was released by the label purge. In 2024, he was awarded the Grand Medal of Honor from the Province of Lower Austria.

Peter Tscherkassky’s appearance at the 32nd European Film Festival Palić is supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum Belgrade.

The 32nd European Film Festival Palić will be held from July 19 to 25, 2025, in Palić and Subotica.

The European Film Festival Palić has been supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia, the Provincial Secretariat for Culture, Public Information and Relations with Religious Communities, the City of Subotica, the European Union through the Creative Europe MEDIA program, as well as numerous friends and media partners.

Gorky List has been a sponsor and supporter of the European Film Festival Palić for more than 20 years, both as an indispensable part of our artistic scenography and a partner that encourages the audience to delve into the experiences of the showcased films through the Gorky List Audience Award.