Presenting: KORTFILM.BE

Kortfilm.be, a Belgian website exclusively devoted to the short film, has been online since November 2005. Under headings such as Reviews, Festival, Interview or Short Film Online, Kortfilm.be reports in Dutch on the latest developments in short film production. A user forum and festival guide for professionals round out the services. The focus of Kortfilm.be is on film criticism. This makes Kortfilm.be not merely the only Flemish website for short film, but also one of the few magazines anywhere in the world that regularly publishes reviews of shorts.

Founding and founders

Kortfilm.be was founded as an independent offshoot of the sister website operated by online film magazine K.U.T., established by cineastes – mainly students at the Free University of Brussels – in 1999. Like K.U.T., Kortfilm.be is oriented primarily toward the Belgian market; the most important motivation for its founding was the lack of a good Belgian, non-commercial, Dutch-language film site. K.U.T. and Kortfilm.be are organized just like film magazines in the print medium. There are editors for each department or area of interest, along with freelance staff and an editor-in-chief. The editorial teams at K.U.T. and Kortfilm.be work independently of one another. The connecting link between them is Frank Moens, joint editor-in-chief and webmaster. One of the three founders of K.U.T., Moens also works as programme curator for the Zed Cinema in Leuven and is programme coordinator for the International Short Film Festival Leuven.

Short film rankings from zero to four stars

The most extensive of the website’s six editorial sections is the one containing film reviews. By now almost 400 reviews of Belgium and international short films can be found there. Although the French-language Belgian productions (for which there are also other media) and the international short film are well represented, Flemish-Belgium productions are the chief focus.

The editorial department strives to discuss at least all Flemish short films shown at domestic festivals. The website thus gives these films a public platform for the first time – something that no other film magazine or other medium offers. The situation in Belgium is after all no different from that in other countries – short film is written about only in the festival context, with only a few top productions, if any, featured in the press. Kortfilm.be thus represents the first independent voice to take a critical look at the entire range of short-film production, confronting the filmmakers with high-level criticism that takes their work seriously.

In the reviews on Kortfilm.be the content of the film is briefly summarized, the aesthetic is described, sometimes information on the authors is given, and a short, critical evaluation is provided. Each review is accompanied by key information on the film such as the director, running time, country of origin and festival appearances. The directors’ names are linked to lists of their previous work, helping users to find films by the same director, while the festival appearances are linked with festival reports stored under the Festivals heading.

All reviewed films are arranged alphabetically according to quality ranking. The editors give films that are worth seeing anywhere from one to four stars and list the others – diplomatically – with a zero. Only the absolute top films receive a four-star ranking. There are only five films that have earned this status in the eyes of the editors to date, including “Arktis” by Jürgen Reble (D), “Six Shooter” by Martin McDonagh (Ireland) and the classic “Particles in Space” by Len Lye (NZ/UK). Otherwise, the judgments are quite mild and empathetic – no one is ever put down here! Hence, most of the 400 films have at least one star, and only about 30 were given a zero, including – as in the top five – a German short ...

Festival reports

The “Festival” section reports on short film festivals, organized by year – starting with 2004. With just one exception (Clermont-Ferrand), these are Belgian festivals that the editors visit and write about. The object here is not festival criticism, but rather fact-based reporting that sketches the profile of each festival. In this category as well, there is an information bar with links to information including all of the festival films featured in the Reviews section.

Additional sections: DVD Reviews, Articles and Interviews

The Interviews section is interesting, but with only five entries to date – among them a talk with Nicolas Provost and one with the makers of the COURTisane Festival –not yet very extensive. The ten or so editors’ contributions under the Articles heading handle themes ranging from short film on the Internet to a portrait of a video artist to mark an exhibition of his work in Antwerp. In another section, all short film DVDs released in Belgium are presented – especially editions issued by the Short Film Festival in Leuven and the label “Come and See”. These articles are likewise linked to people’s names, festivals and film titles in the other sections.

Short film online with the cooperation of dekortefilmonline.nl

A recently launched cooperative agreement with the Dutch online platform dekortefilmonline.nl (“the short film online”) enables Kortfilm.be and its visitors to view a few of the films discussed as streaming video. The Dutch platform is a service of the NPS network made up of public broadcaster VPRO and the “de Volkskrant” newspaper, which already showed short films online but did not yet include any film reviews. This mutually beneficial collaboration is initially limited to Belgium films, such as “The Diver” (Nicolas Provost) and “Alice et Moi” (Micha Wald).

Network for short film

The many cross-references between film reviews, articles, streaming videos and DVD reviews give visitors to the website a good overview and help them decide whether to attend a festival, for example, or purchase a DVD. The only problem is that the internal interlinkages are so closely meshed that it’s almost impossible to leave the website :-) This thorough cross-referencing affords the viewer a consolidated, comprehensive view of the Flemish short film scene. At the same time, it makes the editors’ working methods transparent.

A small, dynamic editorial team

A total of seven people work for Kortfilm.be. Except for one part-time job made possible by a public grant, the team is made up of volunteers. By skilfully exploiting synergies – for example, combining visiting or working at a short film festival with viewings and conversations that can then be reflected on the site in the form of reviews, interviews and festival reports – Kortfilm.be is growing organically at high speed, offering high informative value for all short film enthusiasts and professionals.

URL: www.kortfilm.be

Reinhard W. Wolf

editor@shortfilm.de