Film festivals, or more precisely, the film-cultural, social and economic roles of film festivals have become the subject of discussion, and that not just since the corona pandemic. The unique… Read More
What is the point of film festivals?
Magazine
Interview mit Julia Roesler – werkgruppe2
Julia Roesler and her collective werkgruppe2, consisting of four artists from different disciplines, work together primarily in film and theater. In their artistic work, they reflect on themes of social minorities, the invisible and the excluded, exploring the boundaries of documentary and fiction. Read More
Interview with Anna Roller
Anna Roller is a director and writer from Munich, she already experimented with the camera as a child and teenager. Since 2014 she studied at the University of Television and Film.
With Borjana Gaković Anna Roller talks about her short films PAN (2017) and GÖR (2021), which successfully screened at festivals worldwide and won awards. Read More
Interview with Betina Kuntzsch
As an artist, Betina Kuntzsch has developed the genre of video drawing, often combining hand-drawn animations with historical film, photo and archive material to create animated, documentary short films. Betina Kuntzsch talks with Borjana Gaković about her short film HALMASPIEL (Chinese Checkers, 2017) – which tells the story of her mother. Read More
Young People and Short Film Audiences
The Short Film Conference’s recent event sought to examine not only how we bring audiences to short films, but why it is crucial to do so. With a large number… Read More
Volker Schlecht: Seeking the Right Image
An image that fits to a T – what is that exactly? And what precedes it – perhaps another image, one before the inner eye, or merely just a vague thematic hunch? These are questions that arise quickly when you explore and engage yourself with Volker Schlecht, who pivots back and forth between the moving and the non-moving image. Read More
Interview with Michael Fetter Nathansky
Borjana Gaković talks to Michael Fetter Nathansky about his 2017 short film GABI, his working methods and current projects. Read More
Interview mit Sophie Linnenbaum
Borjana Gaković spricht für Talks’n’Topics mit Regisseurin Sophie Linnenbaum über eines ihrer früheren Werke – den Kurzfilm PIX – aber auch über aktuelle Projekte wie ihr Langfilm-Debüt THE ORDINARIES, das Ende März 2023 in den Kinos startet. Read More
Film Festivals – Crises, Opportunities, Perspectives
In their highly readable anthology “Film Festivals – Crises, Opportunities, Perspectives,” the authors Tanja C. Krainhöfer and Joachim Kurz explore the situation in the German film festival scene, and that especially during and after the corona pandemic. Read More
Interview with Alison Kuhn
Alison Kuhn is one of Germany’s most interesting young filmmakers – she is a writer, actress and director and has made a name for herself in recent years with multiple… Read More
“The short film is not some proof of potential – it stands for itself”
An interview with Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck, head of Berlinale Shorts, together with an overview of events related to short film at the Berlinale, the largest audience festival in the world. Read More
Interview with Ilaria Di Carlo
Ilaria Di Carlo is an Italian artist and filmmaker who lives and works in Berlin. With her artistic documentary films, which have won numerous international awards, she has developed her… Read More
Interview with Thea Sparmeier and Jakob Werner
Thea Sparmeier and Jakob Werner are two of the three directors of the film GLÜCKPFAD (Happy Trail), which premiered at DOK Leipzig in 2021. For Talks’n’Topics, they talk to Sven… Read More
The Film Critique’s Fear of Animation Film
An Interminable Polemic
Wann eigentlich ist der Zeichentrickfilm ins Hintertreffen geraten gegenüber einer Fülle von Animationsfilmen unterschiedlicher Techniken? Man merkt: Wenn ich nun laut über Berührungsängste der Filmkritik mit dem Animationsfilm nachdenke, begebe ich mich auf gefährliches Glatteis. Read More
Nikita Diakur
An Avatar to Combat Fakes
The avatar trembles, barely able to stay up on its legs, then it falls over, its arms flailing. “Attempting a backflip is not safe. You can break your neck, or land on your head, or land badly on your wrists. None of that is nice, so my avatar does the trick,” an emotionless voice explains. The voice is that of animation director Nikita Diakur, distorted using voice cloning software. Yet its dry humour does manage to penetrate even through the manipulative software coils. Read More
Reflecting Diversity: German Shorts Presented at the Locarno Film Festival
Known for its intriguing curatorial choices, Locarno Film Festival does not make an exception at the time of preparing the selection of its Pardi di Domani short film section… Read More
The reel thing – film laboratories between industry and art
It is a world of its own, the world of the film labs – especially when referring to the artist-run or self-governing film labs and not the industrial or commercial… Read More
“We believe in short film”
Interview with Giona Nazzaro and Eddie Bertozzi of Locarno Film Festival
The Locarno Film Festival, one of the most important of all the international film festivals, has a tradition of supporting short films. Not only does it host competitions for national and international shorts, but also Shortsweek, which takes place online in February. When Giona Nazzaro took over as artistic director in 2021, he further strengthened this commitment. Together with Eddie Bertozzi, who is responsible for Pardi di Domani, the festival’s short film program, they launched a new competition for films by established directors: Corti d’autore. Shortfilm.de met them both shortly before this year’s edition to discuss their visions regarding short films and their efforts at integrating them into the overall ecosystem of the festival. Read More
Nervous landscapes.
On the films of Ojoboca.
Ojoboca (Anja Dornieden und Juan David González Monroy) machen zugleich mehr und weniger als „Kurzfilme“. Mehr, weil sie neben Filmen auch Performances und Installationen entwickeln, derzeit an ihrem zweiter Langfilm arbeiten und Texte von einer eigenwilligen Literarizität fast alle ihre Bewegtbildarbeiten begleiten. Read More
“I’m a documentary filmmaker.
My films are the news.”
“Are you afraid you’re not actually here,” asks a resounding voice in Gudrun Krebitz’s latest work “Echodrome” as the water ripples and splashes. There it is again – the ‘you’. A hallmark of Krebitz, a word that is at times a dialogic reassurance of the self, often addressing some metaphorical counterpart, or mostly directed at the potential audience. Read More
Anibar: Festival of Possibilities
Travel Notes from Kosovo
“What’s your name, where do you come from? Thanks for being here.” During the storyboard exhibition at the Kosovan Anibar Animation Festival, the volunteers eagerly seek out human contact… Read More
Svaneti International Film Festival
One of Georgia’s best-known toasts goes something like this: When God was apportioning out the land he had just created, he summoned everyone to a meeting. Georgians, of course,… Read More
Armenian Shorts on the Way to the National Cinema Reinvention
The short film form, a synonym for certain artistic freedom in the presumptively dependent on high budgets film industry, could play a crucial part in the process of reinvention of a national cinema. The ingenuity and aesthetic diversity of the newest Armenian short films caught my eye still in 2021 when I first attended Yerevan’s Golden Apricot International Film Festival. Read More
“… I wish I could do more for you, I wish we could do better for you.” [1]
This year in April, a planned film that was never shot served as a pretext for sentencing the Turkish documentary filmmaker and producer Çiğdem Mater to a prison term of… Read More
Jonatan Schwenk
The Story First, Then the Animation
Enraptured, the two-legged creature picks the blissfully smiling axolotl up from the earth and pops it in its mouth. Sheer joy. Doing so, its hands – filigree stick-puppet hands – initially reach out tentatively then greedily for the tasty stop-motion being. In Jonatan Schwenk’s ZOON, over and again we encounter so many nuances and animation techniques, all at the same time. Read More
Film festivals now offer events and programmes year-round
One of the many recent upheavals in the film and festival world, in this case caused or presumably accelerated by the pandemic, involves the expansion of festival activities beyond the… Read More
Filmfestivals ohne Einreichgebühren
[/caption]Seit 2017 veröffentlicht die Animationsfilmemacherin und Medienkünstlerin Tracy Miller-Robbins aus Cincinnati mit bewundernswerter Ausdauer auf ihrem Blog eine Auswahl von Film- und Medienkunstfestivals, die von FilmemacherInnen keine Einreichgebühren verlangen. … Read More
Chemnitz Filmworkshop
Little effort is required when gleaning facts from the available databases. We soon discover here that the non-profit Chemnitz Filmworkshop is a media-education institute that “promotes young filmic talent”. Its headquarters and official address is the Clubkino Siegmar cinema, which was entrusted to the association in 1996. But what exactly lies behind these sobering facts and figures, behind these ideas, which is far greater than them and has already been lived out for decades by the out-and-out filmmakers from Chemnitz? Read More
Who knows what short films are?
Zwanzig Jahre AG Kurzfilm, zwei Jahrzehnte Medienwandel
In der goldenen Zeit des Kurzfilms reichte man das Dessert vor dem Hauptgang: Nicht wenige Zuschauer kauften ihre Karte für zwanzig Minuten Chaplin oder sieben Minuten Mickey Mouse und kümmerten sich erst in zweiter Linie um den Hauptfilm danach. Kurzfilme brachten Zeitstimmungen auf den Punkt, bedienten populäre Dramaturgien noch effektvoller als die Langfilme und standen für den Reiz des Neuen. Read More
No One Can Be Sad Forever
Sophie Linnenbaum
Sophie Linnenbaum, who was born in Nuremberg in 1986, is an observer of small everyday moments and human encounters. Yet her films are not intended to be understood as pure entertainment. Nor do they let themselves be casually consumed and then founder in our memories overflowing with moving images. Read More