British filmmaker Isaac Julien has been nominated for the Turner Prize 2001. As one of the 4 artists on the short list to receive this most important and prestigious of British visual arts honours, Julien’s films "The Long Road to Mazatlán" (1999/2000) and "Vagabondia" (2000) were shown as multiple projections at the Tate Gallery (now know as the Tate Britain). Isaac Julien, known for his films "Looking for Langston", "Young Soul Rebels" and the short film "The Attendant", thus takes his place amongst the growing number of British film artists who are turning away from the cinema and tending more toward the gallery and arts scene. Julien is now being represented by London’s Victoria Miro Gallery.

Despite the insiders’ expectations, however, Isaac Julien did not walk away with the grand prize. Instead, it was presented on the 9^th of December by Madonna to the controversial artist Martin Creed, whose work "The lights going on and off" – and the title pretty much sums it up – provoked heated protests from the British fine arts scene, especially from the painters’ faction.

More information

http://www.victoria-miro.com

Japanese non-commercial films and filmmakers today follow in the footsteps of a long and impressive history of independent filmmaking, but nevertheless face various problems in screening, distribution, and public recognition. Taking on this challenge, a new filmmakers’ coop called Filmmakers Information Center (FMIC) will be launched next spring by several young Japanese filmmakers.

The group’s activities will focus on collecting and compiling a database of films and filmmakers and assisting distribution.

FMIC was initiated by experimental filmmaker Ichiro Sueoka (Tokyo) and film critic Tomohiro Nishimura (website not yet available).

In cooperation with the «Agence de développement régional du cinéma», the French «Agence du court métrage» is organising a programme based on the theme "Mémoire" with new prints of nine short films produced by Pierre Braunberger: "Toute la mémoire du monde" by Alain Resnais, "Tous les garçons s’appellent Patrick (Charlotte et Véronique)" by Jean-Luc Godard, "Le chant du styr?ne" by Alain Resnais, "L’amour existe" by Maurice Pialat, "? la mémoire du rock" by François Reichenbach, "Le drame du taureau" by Lucien Clergue, "Les veuves de quinze ans" by Jean Rouch, "La sixi?me face du Pentagone" by Chris Marker and François Reichenbach, and "La direction d’acteurs par Jean Renoir" by Gis?le Braunberger. (Source: Bref n°48)

Contact: Yann Goupil, Agence du court métrage, Tel: +1 44 69 26 60.

http://www.soros.org/sdf

On the recommendation of the BKM (State Minister for Cultural and Media Affairs) selection committee for production funding, the following projects will be supported with grants of DM 25,000 each:

Gil Alkabetz (Stuttgart) for "Morir de Amor"

Philipp Fleischmann (Ludwigsburg) for "Mehmet"

Susanne Fränzel (Ludwigsburg) for "Im Netz"

Christoph Heckenbücker (Berlin) for "Quits"

Rudolph Herzog (Berlin) for "Der Zeitreisende"

Yuk Jevremovic (Munich) for "Quercus"

Peter Keller (Munich) for "Schicht"

Barbara Marheineke (Cologne) for "E-Mail Express"

Rudolf Schweiger (Cologne) for "Snipers Alley"

In charge of making the selections were: Heinz Badewitz, Detelina Grigorova-Kreck, Charlotte Immel, Elfi Mikesch, Evelyn Schmidt, Werner Schneider-Quindeau, and Arnold Vaatz.

Funding is provided to short films with a maximum screening length of 15 minutes »that are made for and appropriate for public screening in film theatres«.

(Source: BKM – State Minister for Cultural and Media Affairs -- press release)

http://www.filmfoerderung-bkm.de

As a tribute to Steina and Woody Vasulka, pioneers of electronic art, the Daniel Langlois Foundation in Montreal, Canada, is now offering online access to the Vasulka Archives on its website. By showcasing the Vasulkas' career and achievements, the Foundation hopes to enable people to discover the work of these two artists through innovative electronic means.

The artists’ development can be traced with the help of a biographical timeline, while video clips of selected works can be viewed online. The site also offers essays and texts by and about the Vasulkas and, of course, also includes a comprehensive list of their works and a bibliography.

(Tip: The English version of this excellent website can be accessed under:

www.fondation-langlois.org/e/collection/vasulka/archives/index.html).

In cooperation with the «Agence de développement régional du cinéma», the French «Agence du court métrage» is organising a programme based on the theme "Mémoire" with new prints of nine short films produced by Pierre Braunberger: "Toute la mémoire du monde" by Alain Resnais, "Tous les garçons s’appellent Patrick (Charlotte et Véronique)" by Jean-Luc Godard, "Le chant du styr?ne" by Alain Resnais, "L’amour existe" by Maurice Pialat, "? la mémoire du rock" by François Reichenbach, "Le drame du taureau" by Lucien Clergue, "Les veuves de quinze ans" by Jean Rouch, "La sixi?me face du Pentagone" by Chris Marker and François Reichenbach, and "La direction d’acteurs par Jean Renoir" by Gis?le Braunberger. (Source: Bref n°48)

Contact: Yann Goupil, Agence du court métrage, Tel: +1 44 69 26 60.

http://www.agencecm.com

This year Germany's "Kommunale Kinos" (an association of non-commercial repertory cinemas) are dedicating their activity day - which has been taking place on 31 October each year ever since the "one hundred years of film" celebration commemorating the 'birthday' of cinema in Germany - to films made by newcomers to the craft.

With this activity day, the Kommunale Kinos wish to draw attention to their value as a forum for up-and-coming film talents and to spotlight their support in paving the way for young directors to reach their audience. In cities throughout Germany, short film programmes will be presented on this day. Among these cities are Bochum (animated film), Bremen (Bremen "Young Collection"), Frankfurt-Höchst (Best of Rüsselsheimer Filmtage), Heidelberg (regional films), Karlsruhe (films from the HfBK Braunschweig), Cologne (Cologne Newcomers), Mainz (3sat Promotional Prize winners), Mannheim (films from the FH Mannheim), Nuremberg (selections from the Augsburg Short Film Festival) and Weimar (films from the Bauhaus University).

http://www.kommunale-kinos.de

From 19 to 29 October, the Museum of Modern Art in New York will be exhibiting the winners of the British Advertising Broadcast Awards 2001, just under 100 of the most outstanding advertising films of the year 2000. The programme, curated by Laurence Kardish, is complemented by the retrospective: 25 Years of British Television Advertising Awards Gold Winners.

During the Art Cologne trade show, the Cologne Kunsthochschule für Medien will be showing video works by students from 30 October to 4 November. The programme includes work by Dagmar Keller, M. Wittwer, Hee-Seon Kim, Philipp Lachenmann, Hiroyuki Masuyama and Neringa Naujokaite and was compiled by Prof. Marcel Odenbach. 

"Starting on 1 July, the Swiss Short Film Agency is continuing its services in reduced form during a transitional period of six months (...) The Swiss Short Film Agency has been plagued by financial difficulties from the outset, at the same time having to cope with ever greater demands on its time and services. As a result of this scarcity of resources, the Agency has been forced to reduce its staff. This belt-tightening means that only the most essential tasks will be accepted for the time being.

Under the interim presidency of the filmmaker Jonas Raeber, the five-member board will concentrate on developing a new concept ensuring better and more widespread support for the Swiss Short Film Agency in the new year, in particular through closer links with the Federal Office for Culture. This concept will then be presented at a special general meeting, which is due to take place this coming autumn. These measures should make it possible to keep both the headquarters in Lausanne and the Zurich office ofthe Agency up and running. They can be seen as a testimony to the renewed health of the short film in Switzerland (with 200,000 cinema admissions last year), helping to ensure the continued presence of this ever more dynamic sector of the film industry, of which the general public is increasingly aware.

The Swiss Short Film Agency fulfils an important role. It needs and deserves a solid and widely accepted basis for its work and the support of everyone interested in the cinematic art." shortfilm.de will report in November. 

Source: http://www.shortfilm.ch

The film "The 70th Day" by Sedat Yilmaz has been banned in Turkey. In the opinion of the Ministry of Culture and the Control Commission, the film is not suitable to be "shown and duplicated". The film presents an account of the experiences of eight prisoners taking part in a hunger strike in hospital in 1996. "The 70th Day" is the second short film to be banned, after "Ax" (=earth) by Kazim Öz, and was supposed to have been shown at this year's Istanbul Film Festival in the human rights category. After being banned, the film was removed from the programme. 

http://www.dialogkreis.de

The German State Minister at the Federal Chancellery for Media and Cultural Affairs, Julian Nida-Rümelin, will present the German Short Film Award (Deutscher Kurzfilmpreis) 2001 at the "Filmkunsthaus Babylon" in Berlin on 10 November 2001. Two film prizes in silver will be awarded. The Deutscher Kurzfilmpreis in gold and silver is awarded in two categories, for short films of maximum 7 minutes and for films of maximum 15 minutes. The award-winning films will then go on tour under the title "Kurzfilmpreis unterwegs". The organizer is the Hamburg Short Film Agency.

Please see also under the heading: Awards

Based in Los Angeles and founded by Larry Cuba, the "iotaCenter", which is dedicated to the preservation of abstract films and videos, will present its "Kinetica 3" starting in October, the third in a series of shows dealing with abstract films from 1950 to today. Aside from works by Harry Smith, John and James Whitney, and Mary Ellen Bute from the 1950's and 60's, and the premiere of Jordan Belson's video "Bardo", the two-part programme will focus on the newly restored works of Hy Hirsh.

Hirsh did pioneering work in the 50's experimenting with electronic means of producing images. A member of the Californian Beat Generation, he worked with abstract forms and patterns, synchronising these to Afro-Cuban rhythms. From 1955 on, Hirsh worked in Amsterdam, and died in Paris in 1961. 

The presenters of the German "Menschenrechts-Filmpreis" (Nuremberg) have concluded an agreement with the award winners in the year 2000 to release all prize-winning films for non-commercial screenings. As screening date, the organizers suggest sometime around 10 December 2001, International Human Rights Day. The short films are available on videocassette from Protestant and Catholic media centres.

mailto:info  emzbayern.de 

http://www.menschenrechts-filmpreis.de

London's independent cinema scene lost one of its most distinctive organisations when the Lux Centre cinema, exhibition and facilities complex was surprisingly closed.

The Lux Centre was formed in 1997 as a merger of the London Filmmakers Coop and London Electronic Arts. The new organisation comprised a cinema, gallery, film and video post-production facilities as well as an archive and a distribution office all housed in purpose-built Arts Lottery funded premises in Hoxton Square, East London.

The Lux Centre had been suffering from continued financial difficulties. In consultation with the Arts Council's Recovery Panel, the board of directors of the Lux suspended all operations on Tuesday 2nd October with immediate effect. Lux staff were told to go home, without pay or periods of notice.

"The decision of the Recovery Panel has left us no alternative but to take the action we have been forced to take," said the Chairman of the Lux board, Mike Flood. "However, the Board is totally committed to finding solutions that can take forward the valuable work of the Lux and its unique collection albeit as a different organisation in a new location."

"In its 4 years of existence the Lux has established itself as London's foremost resource for artists' film and video and its film and exhibition programme is unparalleled in the UK," he added. "Our biggest regret is having to lose our dedicated and talented staff at such short notice".

How the Lux staff feels about this and which causes led to the closure will be covered in the next edition of the Shortfilm Magazine (ed.)

The "Europe in Shorts" project sponsored by the European Coordination of Film Festivals, which each year puts together a distribution packet containing a collection of outstanding short films united by a common theme, is dedicated this year to student films. "Europe in Shorts 7" is being coordinated by François Defaye from "Rencontres Internationales Henri Langlois" in Poitiers.

From 70 recommendations received, 8 films have been chosen, out of which the following 6 titles have already been confirmed: "Roza" (Nederlandse Film en Televisie Academie, NL), "Crucy Fiction" (La Cambre, B), "Balloon" (National Film and Television School, GB), "Cambi e Scambi" (Centro de Formation Cinematografica, I), "Cleaning out" (DFFB, D) and "Julma Maaseutu" (University of Industrial Art and Design, SF).

At the same time, "Europe in Shorts 6" is making the rounds of the European festivals and can be viewed at upcoming festivals in Cologne, Ankara, Regensburg and Aix-en-Provence, among others.

http://www.eurofilmfest.org

The Italian agency emmefilm.com srl is organizing a short film competition on the theme of "The First Kiss". 20 one-minute films have been chosen and can be voted on in the Internet until 30 September. Subsequently, the prize winners will be determined and 3 cash prizes in the amount of 5 million, 8 million and 15 million lire will be awarded.

http//www.shortvillage.com

From the Berlin short film festival previously known as "interfilm", the "interfilm Berlin Management GmbH" has evolved. Apart from the festival itself, the distribution and sale of short films and videos are also part of the company’s activities, as are development of the business fields New Media and Streaming Media, for which a cooperation with the Kirch New Media Group AG is planned.

For the time being, the distribution service, with a self-proclaimed archive of 8,000 films, is offering seven thematically-grouped 35mm short film reels, 16mm films and 3 Super-8 film reels. Films can also be booked individually. Films booked from Interfilm cost DM 80 per day per film, or DM 200 per week. The short film reels can be booked for a DM 300 minimum guarantee. Subscriptions and standing orders can also be arranged.

Among the newer films in distribution are: "La Comtesse de Castiglione" by David Lodge, "Carapaces" by Alexis Berset, "Coincidence" by Erik Lange, "Le Dernier Reve" by Emmanuel Jespers and "Ring of Fire" by Andreas Hykade.

Source: interfilm+newsletter+ 23.07.01

http://www.interfilmberlin.de

Following the withdrawal of its major sponsor, BBC Television, the British Short Film Festival has been forced to announce its closure. Established in 1988, the festival initially focused only on British film school productions. In the following years the festival obtained funding from British Petroleum and, under the moniker BP British Short Film Festival, grew into an international event, taking place each year at the Riverside Studios. After BP withdrew its support in 1992, the festival was able to secure the BBC as main sponsor. Under the direction of Amanda Casson, and now carrying the BBC label, the festival opened up to include non-student films and relocated to London's West End cinemas. With a total of 300 to 400 films in its programme, it became the biggest short film festival with international participation in the British Isles.

Now BBC Television has pulled out at short notice, leaving the festival with no other institutional sponsorship worth mentioning and thus spelling its immediate demise. According to Amanda Casson, there was simply not enough time to find a replacement sponsor. The BBC based its decision on the desire to concentrate funds instead on short film development and production.