Inspired by Urania, the muse of the heavens, her avatar descends from the Bardo plane to earth in the most unlikely guise of Gina Lee, an alienated and disaffected American girl. Disenchanted with hometown strip malls, sleaze bars, and rides along the river-side in her BMW. Impulsively she buys a discount airline ticket in a shopping mall travel agency. Destination: Vienna, the merry/sinister imperial city on the Danube. Gina Lee quickly slips into discreet, yet decadent dalliances at Cafe Central and at the notorious Hotel Orient, where she becomes embroiled in an intrigue to uncover buried Nazi plunder. Her liaison with rakish Karl Heinz Von Riegl builds to a furtive denouement at the Klimt Villa on the alpine shores of Lake Atter. Her fate remains unresolved - until we embark on the newly completed Parts II & III of the troika. The movie then reaches its fatal climax on the grand canal of Venice. This is a black & white filmic poem infused with metaphor and mood, where the past overtakes the present, and the present overtakes the past - now to be seen as one feature film of intrigue, compulsion, and enigma.
THE URANIA TRILOGY
2014-23, 140 min, digital (16mm original) b&w
In 2017, a selection of key cinematheques hosted musician, actor, filmmaker, and photographer Tav Falco, who presented a selection of his short films, as well as his feature-length work, URANIA DESCENDING, a sui generis work inspired by the silent screen tradition of serial cinema pioneered by Louis Feuillade and others. URANIA DESCENDING was conceived as the first in a triptych of episodes – and now, six years later, the trilogy has finally been completed.
Raised in Arkansas and Memphis, but based in Europe since the late 1990s, he is now residing in Bangkok. Falco was mentored by noted Memphis photographer William Eggleston. After a 1978 musical performance involving the chain sawing of a guitar that caught the attention of Big Star’s Alex Chilton, the two teamed up musically and evolved into the self-styled “art damage” band, Tav Falco’s Panther Burns. Falco continues to lead the group to this day, while also focusing on his films and photography.
Channeling silent movie stylistics and old-world atmospherics, THE URANIA TRILOGY follows a disenchanted American girl, Gina Lee, who impulsively travels to Vienna, the imperial city on the Danube. Quickly slipping into discreet yet decadent dalliances at Cafe Central and at the notorious Hotel Orient, she becomes embroiled in an intrigue to uncover buried Nazi plunder.
“THE URANIA TRILOGY is a filmic poem infused with metaphor, mood, and Stimmung, where the past overtakes the present and the present overtakes the past. The film flickers with the fateful caprice of tarot cards fingered in a Viennese bordello. It emerges as a corporeal fable and offers cabalistic hygiene for a vital elegance.” –Tav Fal