International Short Film Festival Oberhausen

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Logo of the short film days since 2015

The Oberhausen International Short Film Festival , founded in 1954, is considered the oldest short film festival in the world and is one of the largest international platforms for the short form. The festival organizes an international, a German and an international children's and youth film competition as well as the MuVi Prize for the best German music video, and since 2009 the NRW competition for productions from North Rhine-Westphalia .

In addition, Oberhausen is known today for its extensive thematic programs, such as B. "Memories Can't Wait. Film Without Film ”( 2014 ),“ Social Media Before the Internet ”(2017) or“ The Language of Temptation. Trailer Between Advertising and Avant-Garde ”(2019). In addition, the festival offers a well-equipped video library, operates a non-commercial short film rental company and has an archive of short films from over 60 years of film history .

history

The Oberhausen International Short Film Festival was founded in 1954 by the director of the Oberhausen Adult Education Center, Hilmar Hoffmann , in collaboration with the Oberhausen Film Club under the name “1. West German Culture Film Festival "was founded. The event was supposed to fulfill an educational policy mandate, "Cultural film - Path to education" was the motto of the first festival, 45 films from the Federal Republic of Germany, France and the United States were shown.

In 1958 the motto “Way to the Neighbors” was introduced at the 4th West German Cultural Film Festival, under which the festival took place up to and including 1997. In 1959 the festival was renamed "West German Short Film Festival". Oberhausen soon acquired a political reputation, especially since many films from the Eastern Bloc could only be seen in Oberhausen, a fact that contributed to the rapid rise of the Short Film Festival and its reputation as the “Mecca of short films”. But as early as the 1950s, works by young filmmakers from the West such as François Truffaut , Norman McLaren , Alain Resnais , Bert Haanstra and Lindsay Anderson could be seen in Oberhausen . At the fourth festival in 1958, for example, 190 films from 29 countries were represented in the program.

In front of the festival cinema Lichtburg Filmpalast, Oberhausen
50 pfennigs postage stamp of the German Federal Post Office from 1979 on the occasion of the 25th anniversary

In 1962, the Oberhausen Manifesto was announced at the eighth festival , with which young German filmmakers, including Alexander Kluge , Peter Schamoni and Edgar Reitz , declared the old film to be dead and announced their claim to create the new German film.

The 1960s culminated in the 1968 scandal surrounding Hellmuth Costard's film Particularly Valuable , in which a speaking penis criticized the 1967 reissued film subsidy law. The festival management withdrew the film from the official program due to an objection by the public prosecutor, whereupon many German filmmakers withdrew their work from the festival. The Kurzfilmtage emerged from the crisis with changed regulations (including a public selection process for German films).

The women's movement was a big issue in the 1970s - young filmmakers like Chantal Akerman and Helma Sanders-Brahms showed their first films in Oberhausen . With the children's cinema, the 1978 Short Film Festival introduced a new festival section. The 1970s also saw a wave of new festivals being founded: Ousted from the cinemas, short films found new forms of play in the festival area.

In the late 1980s, the development of the short film festival was shaped by the gradual integration of video and new media . With the end of the East / West conflict that had shaped the first decades of the festival, Oberhausen's role as a “window to the east” faded. The profile of the festival as a mediator and trailblazer between short films and commercials , music videos , industrial films and video art  - often summarized under the collective term avant-garde - came to the fore .

In 1990 the festival was renamed the International West German Short Film Festival . Since 1991 it has been called the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival . In the same year, the Short Film Festival introduced the first nationwide competition for German short films. The Short Film Festival has been showing film and video on an equal footing in the competitions since 1993. In 1999 the Short Film Festival introduced the world's first prize at a film festival for music videos , the MuVi, which to this day is awarded exclusively to directors for the visual quality of the clips. With the advent of video art , more and more works by artists have found their way into festival programs.

Today Oberhausen shows short films and videos from the most varied of formal, cultural and social origins. Large, thematic special programs take up different topics every year, most recently among others “Provocation of Reality” on the 50th anniversary of the Oberhausen Manifesto 2012, “Memories Can't Wait. Film Without Film ”(2014) or“ The language of temptation. Trailer between advertising and avant-garde ”(2019). The festival also includes the Video Library with a large selection of current international short films, profile programs dedicated to individual artists, market screenings for experimental short film distributors, the Archive series and the “Podium” discussion series.

Outside of the festival, the Short Film Festival maintains a non-commercial short film rental company and a unique archive in which short films from over 60 years of film history are stored.

Careers

“This is where I smoked my first cigarette. For years I saw every film here at the West German Short Film Festival, and every year I looked forward to the days in Oberhausen. These events were important for me to make my decision to make films. ” Wim Wenders , Filmmaker, Germany

“The short film is a great first step for a young filmmaker. That's how I started, and Oberhausen was an important stage in my development as a director. ” Roman Polański , filmmaker, Poland / France

In the long history of the festival, numerous careers started in Oberhausen. Some names of filmmakers and artists who showed their early work in Oberhausen: Eija-Liisa Ahtila , Doug Aitken, Kenneth Anger , Andrea Arnold , Jürgen Böttcher , Stan Brakhage , Věra Chytilová , Valie Export , Miloš Forman , Werner Herzog , Christoph Hochhäusler , Hermine Huntgeburth , Joris Ivens , Isaac Julien , Miranda July , Romuald Karmakar , Jochen Kuhn , Jan Lenica , Chris Marker , Bjørn Melhus , Dore O. , Roman Polański , Pipilotti Rist , Christoph Schlingensief , Martin Scorsese , István Szabó , Agnès Varda , Adolf Winkelmann as a member of the Kassel film collective .

timeline

  • 1954: Founded as the "West German Culture Film Festival"
  • 1958: Introduction of the motto "Way to the Neighbors"
  • 1959: Renaming to "West German Short Film Festival"
  • 1962: Reading of the Oberhausen Manifesto
  • 1970: First film with computer animation
  • 1989: Creation of a video section
  • 1990: Renaming to "International West German Short Film Festival"
  • 1991: Renaming of the festival to “Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen”, conversion of the “Informationstage” into the nationwide first German short film competition, expansion of the retrospectives to include thematic special programs
  • 1993: Video contributions are admitted equally to films in all competitions
  • 1998: After 34 years, the Kurzfilmtage move to a new venue in the “ Lichtburg Filmpalast ”
  • 1999: Transformation of the short film days, which were part of the city administration, into a non-profit GmbH
  • 1999: Establishment of the world's first festival music video award
  • 2001: Establishment of "shortfilm.de", the world's first short film internet portal
  • 2002: Co-founding of AG Kurzfilm e. V., the advocacy group for German short films
  • 2003: Establishment of the international film platform reelport.com , through which festival submissions to several festivals via the Internet are possible at the same time
  • 2019: Co-founder of AG Filmfestival, the lobby group for German film festivals

numbers

  • an average of almost 6500 to 7000 film submissions from over 90 countries
  • an average of over 500 films in the festival
  • over 1000 accredited international trade visitors
  • Prize money of over € 41,000
  • accredited by FIAPF since 1960
  • Reference festival of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

ladder

literature

  • Andreas Kötzing: Cultural and Film Policy in the Cold War. The film festivals in Leipzig and Oberhausen from an all-German perspective 1954–1972 . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1264-7 .
  • Klaus Behnken (editor): short and sweet. 50 years of the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2004, ISBN 3-7757-1323-9
  • Ralph Eue, Lars Henrik Gass (Ed.): Provocation of Reality. The Oberhausen Manifesto and its consequences . edition text + kritik, Richard Boorberg Verlag, Munich 2012. ISBN 978-3-86916-182-2

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ International Short Film Festival Oberhausen - Competitions ( Memento from September 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ Foundation of the "Westdeutsche Kulturfilmtage" by Hilmar Hoffmann , 1000interviews.com
  3. ↑ Leisure activities / cinema and film ( Memento from October 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Short Film Festival: 58th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen: April 26 - May 1, 2012 ( Memento from September 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Short Film Festival: 58th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen: April 26 - May 1, 2012 ( Memento from September 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive )