About Celluloid

Celluloid

Celluloid is an Austrian film magazine published every two months in Mödling, Lower Austria, by the Verein zur Förderung des österreichischen und des europäischen Films, the Association for the Promotion of Austrian and European Film. It first appeared in June 2000 and reports on cinema films, directors and actors with a specifically European and Austrian focus. It was founded by the film journalist and filmmaker Matthias Greuling, who remains its editor-in-chief. In Austria the magazine is distributed by PGV Austria. Written in German and catalogued in the Zeitschriftendatenbank under ZDB number 2184834-8, Celluloid — its name styled in lowercase as celluloid in reference sources — has been published continuously since 2000, making it one of the longest-lived printed film magazines in Austria in an era when film criticism has largely moved online.

Founded in June 2000

Celluloid first appeared in June 2000. The timing is part of its identity: the magazine was founded at the very end of the twentieth century, when Austrian cinema was entering the period that would bring it renewed international attention, and when print film magazines across Europe were beginning to feel the pressure of the internet. That a new printed film magazine could be launched at all in 2000, and could still be appearing a quarter of a century later, is the central fact of Celluloid's story. Its founder, Matthias Greuling, is documented both as the magazine's founder and as its editor-in-chief, giving the title a continuity of editorship from its first issue to the present that few comparable magazines can claim.

The founding publisher was not a large media house but an association — the Verein zur Förderung des österreichischen und des europäischen Films. That structure, a non-profit association created to promote Austrian and European film, explains the magazine's editorial priorities and its survival strategy: Celluloid exists to serve a film culture, not only to sell copies.

A European and Austrian focus

Reference descriptions define Celluloid's field precisely: it reports on cinema films, directors and actors with a special European and Austrian focus, and its subject area is catalogued as film and television. In practice that positioning distinguishes it from film magazines built around Hollywood releases. Austrian cinema — from festival successes to domestic productions that struggle for screens — receives sustained attention, and European arthouse cinema forms the other main pillar. For Austrian filmmakers, actors and distributors, a domestic magazine that reviews and interviews with that emphasis provides coverage that international titles cannot.

The magazine's title itself is a statement of allegiance. Celluloid was for a century the material of cinema, and naming a magazine founded in 2000 — just as digital production and projection were beginning to displace film stock — after that material signalled a commitment to cinema as a craft and an art form, whatever technology carries it.

Matthias Greuling

Matthias Greuling is documented as a film journalist and filmmaker who founded Celluloid and edits it as editor-in-chief. Founder-editors shape magazines in their own image, and Celluloid's long consistency of focus — Austrian and European cinema, directors and actors, the bimonthly rhythm — reflects a single editorial hand over more than two decades. Beyond that documented role, detailed biographical information about Greuling is not set out in the sources used for this profile, and no filmography or career claims are added here that cannot be verified.

The association publisher and the founder-editor together give Celluloid the character of a project rather than a product line. Readers of Austrian film magazines will recognise the type: a small, committed editorial operation whose authority comes from accumulated knowledge of its field rather than from the size of its staff or budget.

Bimonthly rhythm and distribution

Celluloid appears every two months — zweimonatlich — giving six issues a year. That rhythm suits a magazine of essays, interviews and considered reviews rather than weekly news: Austrian and European releases can be covered in depth, festival reports can be written with hindsight, and a small editorial team can sustain quality across the year. The magazine is published in Mödling in Lower Austria, just south of Vienna, and is distributed in Austria by PGV Austria, the press distribution company named in reference sources.

Print distribution through PGV places Celluloid in the Austrian press trade alongside general magazines rather than confining it to subscription-only circulation among specialists. No audited circulation figure for Celluloid is given in the sources used for this profile, and none is invented here; small cultural magazines in Austria commonly appear without published ÖAK figures, and readers should treat any unsourced number for this title with suspicion.

The association behind the magazine

The Verein zur Förderung des österreichischen und des europäischen Films — the Association for the Promotion of Austrian and European Film — is both publisher and, in reference listings, the body standing behind the editorship. Association publishing is a familiar structure in Austrian cultural life, used by film, literature and music magazines alike: it allows a publication to pursue a cultural mission, to be eligible for the kinds of public cultural support available to associations, and to involve its community in its governance.

For Celluloid the association's name is also its programme. Promotion of Austrian and European film is not a slogan added to the magazine; it is the stated purpose of the body that publishes it. That alignment between owner and editorial line is one reason the magazine's focus has not drifted toward more commercial territory over twenty-five years.

Celluloid in the Austrian film-magazine landscape

Austria's film culture is served by a small number of dedicated periodicals, festival catalogues, the publications of film institutions and the film pages of newspapers and cultural magazines. Within that landscape Celluloid's claim is longevity and independence: an association-published, founder-edited bimonthly that has covered Austrian and European cinema since 2000. Film magazines elsewhere in the German-speaking world have closed or moved online in that period, and Austria's own earlier film periodicals are largely historical — the Austrian Film Museum's periodicals collection preserves hundreds of titles, many of them short-lived.

Celluloid also differs from institutional publications. It is not the organ of a funding body, a festival or an archive, and its judgements are its own. For readers who want Austrian film criticism written from inside the country's film culture but outside its funding institutions, that independence is the magazine's value.

Coverage: films, directors, actors

The documented scope of Celluloid's reporting is cinema films, directors and actors. Interviews with directors and performers, reviews and essays on current releases, and attention to the people who make Austrian and European cinema form the core of the magazine. Its European emphasis means that festival cinema — the films that travel from Cannes, Venice, Berlin and Austria's own Diagonale festival in Graz — sits naturally within its pages alongside domestic releases.

Because the magazine appears every two months rather than weekly, its coverage can assume a reader who follows cinema seriously. That readership — cinephiles, film professionals, students and culturally engaged general readers — is small by the standards of consumer magazines but influential within Austrian film life, and it is the readership the magazine's association publisher exists to serve.

Print survival in the digital era

Celluloid maintains an official web presence at its own domain, and its reference listings carry the website as the magazine's online address. Like most surviving print cultural magazines, it operates in a hybrid environment in which the printed issue remains the defining product and the website serves as its public face and archive point. The magazine's continuation in print since 2000, through the entire period in which film criticism migrated to blogs, databases and social media, is itself the strongest evidence about its model: a loyal niche readership, an association structure and a clear editorial territory can sustain a printed film magazine long after general predictions of print's death.

That said, this profile makes no claims about Celluloid's digital reach, print run or finances, none of which are documented in the sources used. The verifiable claims are the durable ones: founded June 2000, bimonthly, association-published, founder-edited, Austrian and European in focus, distributed in Austria by PGV.

Cataloguing and reference record

Celluloid is recorded in the Zeitschriftendatenbank, the German-language periodicals database, as ZDB 2184834-8, with its field given as film and television, its language as German, its publisher as the Verein zur Förderung des österreichischen und des europäischen Films, its first issue as June 2000, its frequency as bimonthly and its editor-in-chief as Matthias Greuling. Library and database records of that kind are the backbone of a small magazine's public documentation, and they corroborate the publisher's and reference sources' accounts on every point where they overlap.

Researchers should note the styling of the name: reference sources write the title in lowercase, celluloid, while the magazine is commonly cited with a capital C. Both refer to the same Mödling magazine founded in 2000, not to any of the other film or photography publications worldwide that have used the evocative name.

Significance and current status

Celluloid's significance is that of a survivor with a mission. For a quarter of a century it has given Austrian and European cinema a dedicated printed forum in Austria, edited by its founder and published by an association whose sole purpose is the promotion of that cinema. In a small national film culture, such continuity matters: directors' early work is reviewed, careers are followed across decades, and a written record of Austrian film life accumulates issue by issue.

The magazine remains in publication on its bimonthly schedule, published in Mödling and distributed across Austria. Readers wanting the current issue's contents should consult the magazine's own website, which is the authoritative source for its present programme, since the reference record documents the magazine's structure and history rather than its changing contents.