For the 46th time, Oberhausen presents hundreds of short films and videos in several competitions and special programs, as well as the world's biggest short film market screening about 3,000 films and videos in one of the 12 viewing booths. For six days Oberhausen is going to be the centre of the international short film scene - filmmakers, guests, journalists and the audience are going to meet, discuss, and gain an overview over current trends and developments.
Drama, grotesque, experimental film or animation, the USA or Kazakhstan, Japan or Senegal, 30 seconds or 35 minutes: anything goes, as long as they make it short. Every year the Festival receives about 3,000 entries, out of which about 70 films and videos are selected for the International Competition, the traditional core of the Festival.
The German Competition will present five programs with about 30 films and videos and the 23rd International Children's Cinema is presenting about 40 films, to be judged by children themselves. The special programs - the festival's trademark: Difference and Dissidence; Pop Unlimited?; Sex, Rock'n'Roll and History; Orson Welles - Magic and Fairy Tales...
Special guests: Craig Baldwin, a visionary of the unthought connection; Eija-Liisa Ahtila, prize winner at Oberhausen 99; Dagie Brundert and Ramona Welsh presenting their Super 8 films.
Women filmmakers stole the show at The Oberhausen International Short Film Festival last week, when Austrian Filmmaker Kathrin Resetarits won the coveted Grand Prize for her film Strangers, a 29-minute short. The Main Prize went to Australian Cate Shortland for her 19-minute film Flowergirl. The festival is known for celebrating shorts of all genres and has categories for seemingly everything. Love Is All, a 3 minute short from Oliver Harrison won the Cinema Jury Prize, awarded to the short film best suited for theatrical release. Frenchman Gelee Precoce won the Children's Short Film Prize, a surprise nod to a film about adolescent homosexuality. The "MuVi Award" (the prize for the top German music video) was a tie between Svenja Rossa for Der Mond and Mark Sikora for Prowler. 111 films vied for the MuVi award; the winners were chosen from a mere 11 selected to participate. The jurors found that Der Mond "aspired to go beyond the limits of the song" and that Prowler "had the most interesting visual content and could stand alone as a film independent of the soundtrack."