Empires Of Tin is a multi-media film event commissioned by the Vienna International Film Festival (Viennale) and directed by American filmmaker Jem Cohen.

Inspired by Joseph Roths novel The Radetzky March, Empires Of Tin is a meditation on the decline of empires, juxtaposing the twilight stages of the Habsburg empire with those of the current American one, using archival imagery, footage shot by Cohen in Vienna and New York, live readings from the texts of Joseph Roth, and a live musical score.

Cohen calls this multi-media performance “a documentary musical hallucination”. It represents a further extension and synthesis of Cohens critically-acclaimed and fiercely independent filmmaking, which has always had one foot in music documentary -- Benjamin Smoke, Instrument (Fugazi), Building A Broken Mousetrap (The Ex) and recent short film collaborations with Patti Smith -- and the other in what Cohen calls city portraits (Lost Book Found, Blood Orange Sky, CHAIN).

Empires Of Tin was performed on one night during the 2007 Viennale. There was one rehearsal with the assembled musicians, who scored the live presentation from start to finish: Vic Chesnutt; Thierry Amar, Efrim Menuck, Jessica Moss and David Payant (Thee Silver Mt. Zion); Guy Picciotto (Fugazi); T. Grifin and Catherine McCrae (The Quavers); Eric Craven (Hangedup). Jem Cohen cued the musicians, as well as the assembled 16mm film and video footage, and live readings from the texts of Joseph Roth as spoken by Viennale alumnus Bobby Sommer.

The live score includes bracing renditions of a number of Vic Chesnutt songs, brilliant improvisations by various players, an excellent extended sound piece by The Quavers, a revisited Black Ox Orkestar arrangement by Jessica Moss and Thierry Amar of Silver Mt. Zion, and wonderfully blown-out interpretations of Strauss The Radetzky March by the whole group of players.

The result was a fascinating, feverish, politically charged hybrid of concert and film, and an event roundly hailed as a festival highlight.

The Viennale approached Jem and Constellation with the idea of assembling a permanent document of the performance. Paolo Calamita at the Viennale continued to oversee the project, bringing Jem back to Vienna to edit a filmed version of the performance using Jem's original footage and digital video shot by the Viennale crew during the event. The DVD version of Empires Of Tin was screened at the 2008 Viennale and a DVD release of this work will be commercially available in early 2009.