New lockdown forces November festivals to cancel, online variations or postponements

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© Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg

November has always been a busy festival month. Due to the Corona pandemic, several spring festivals had also postponed their editions until autumn.
The recent lockdown in Germany and other (European) countries, with the closing of cinemas and the cancellation of all events, now confronts these festivals with the decision to cancel completely, to switch to online versions or to postpone. From the outset, some festivals had planned their festival for 2020 only as an online festival.
The Short Film Festival Hamburg, which had already had to cancel its date in June and hoped for a concentrated “Film-In” in November, will now have to cancel. The festival organizers* explain this step on their Facebook page: “It was a very conscious decision of us to present the Film-In and thus the competition films of the 36th Short Film Festival Hamburg exclusively in the cinema and not online. The selected films should be shown on the big screen in the Kulturraum Kino, because that’s where they belong! For this reason there will be no substitute online presentation of the Film-In.”
The exground filmfest in Wiesbaden will now switch to online offerings instead of a festival in the cinema: “Due to the new corona restrictions, the program of exground filmfest 33 cannot be shown to the public in November. Please support us by switching to our comprehensive on-demand offer. You can get the tickets for this from November 2, 2020 for only 5 EUR on our streaming platform (more information to follow).”
interfilm Berlin will also take place online: More than 270 short films in over 30 programs including selected Q&As will be presented online at www.interfilm.de/sooner over a period of one month. The whole thing is offered at the price of a single cinema ticket of 7,95 EUR. The partner festival Kuki for children and young people is also affected by the cancellation. Kuki offers schools & daycare centers to register and book programs to watch them in the classroom or group room.
The Short Film Festival Winterthur, the most important short film festival in Switzerland, will also only take place online and will move selected short film programs, industry events and the awards ceremony into the digital space instead of in the cinema.

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