Berlin

23 films from 19 countries will be competing for the Golden and the Silver Bear as well as the Audi Short Film Award, worth € 20,000, and a nomination for the European Film Awards at the 2017 edition of Berlinale Shorts. The Algerian film Monangambeee, produced in 1969 and directed by Sarah Maldoror, will also be screened out of competition.

The International Short Film Jury 2017 will be composed of Christian Jankowski, artist and professor at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design, curator and social media manager of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York Kimberly Drew and the artistic director of SANFIC Santiago International Film Festival Carlos Núñez (see press release from December 13, 2016).

The Berlinale Shorts competition will feature works from a wide range of filmmakers including Gabriel Abrantes, Salomé Lamas, Jonathan Vinel, Victor Lindgren, Lukas Marxt and Marcel Odenbach, Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca, David OReilly and Rainer Kohlberger.

“A preconceived image, a clichéd notion of something or someone, can only alter its form if my own view of things expands to include a new perspective. All of the films selected for Berlinale Shorts 2017 have in common the fact that they invite one to recalibrate one’s own perception,” commented curator Maike Mia Höhne in reference to this year’s  programme.

In his new film keep that dream burning, Berlin-based director Rainer Kohlberger visualizes an intimation for everything new that comes into being: a promise of the greatest possible indeterminacy.

The Boy from H2 on the other hand, produced by the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, takes us right out on the street so that we may be able to experience what it means to live as a 12-year-old in the divided city of Hebron, opposite ever-present security forces.

David OReilly (Please Say Something, Golden Bear for Best Short Film 2009 & RGB XYZ, Berlinale Shorts 2008 ), who will also speak about his filmmaking philosophy at the 2017 edition of Berlinale Talents, will present his new computer game Everything. Everything is the complete opposite of how we commonly conceive of games – there are no levels to be reached, instead there is only the possibility to become anyone and everything. The insight acquired along the way represents a reframing.

Jonathan Vinel (Notre Héritage, Berlinale Shorts 2016 & Tant qu’il nous reste des fusils à pompe, Golden Bear for Best Short Film 2014, both created in collaboration with Caroline Poggi) rearranges sequences from the video game Grand Theft Auto V into a new narrative about losing one’s friends in his film Martin Pleure.

In Avant l’envol, the modern, futuristic architecture that sprang up in Ivory Coast in the wake of independence from France assumes the role of protagonist, an architecture that stands for the newly gained self-confidence of the period. The film Monangambeee, which is part of the collection of Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art e. V. and was only recently digitized, bears witness to a cinematic practice in opposition to colonial oppression.

The extraordinary diversity of Portuguese cinema is represented by no less than four productions at Berlinale Shorts, including among others the most recent work from filmmaker Salomé Lamas (Eldorado XXI, Forum 2016 & Terra de ninguém, Forum 2013), Coup de Grâce, in which a father and daughter explore a space marked by absence. João Salaviza’s new film Altas Cidades de Ossadas follows a Creole rapper on a deep dive into the darkness of night and the aggressive poetry of his lyrics. In 2012 Salaviza took home the Golden Bear for Best Short Film for Rafa, dedicating the award to the Portuguese government: “We are in a moment where we really don’t know what will happen,” Salaviza declared at the time, adding that the dedication was contingent on the administration taking a stand to improve conditions for the country’s filmmakers. Today the situation in Portugal has improved considerably through structural changes in funding.

Included among the films to be screened at Berlinale Shorts 2017 are:

Altas Cidades de Ossadas (High Cities of Bone), João Salaviza, Portugal, 19’ (WP)

Avant l'envol, Laurence Bonvin, Switzerland, 20’ (IP)

The Boy from H2, Helen Yanovsky, Israel / Palestinian Territories, 21’ (WP)

Call of Cuteness, Brenda Lien, Germany, 4’ (WP)

Centauro (Centaur), Nicolás Suárez, Argentina, 14’ (IP)

Cidade Pequena (Small Town), Diogo Costa Amarante, Portugal, 19’ (IP)

Coup de Grâce, Salomé Lamas, Portugal, 26’ (WP)

The Crying Conch, Vincent Toi, Canada, 20’ (WP)

Ensueño en la Pradera (Reverie in the Meadow), Esteban Arrangoiz Julien, Mexico, 17’ (WP)

Estás vendo coisas (You are seeing things), Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca, Brazil, 18’ (IP)

Everything, David OReilly, USA / Ireland, 11’ (WP)

Le film de l'été (A Summer’s Film), Emmanuel Marre, France / Belgium, 30’ (WP)

Fishing Is Not Done On Tuesdays, Lukas Marxt & Marcel Odenbach, Germany / Austria, 15’ (WP)

Fuera de Temporada (Out of Season), Sabrina Campos, Argentina, 23’ (WP)

Hiwa, Jacqueline Lentzou, Greece, 11’ (WP)

Os Humores Artificiais (The Artificial Humors), Gabriel Abrantes, Portugal, 30’ (WP)

keep that dream burning, Rainer Kohlberger, Germany / Austria, 8’ (WP)

Kometen (The Comet), Victor Lindgren, Sweden, 11’ (IP)

Martin Pleure (Martin Cries), Jonathan Vinel, France, 16’ (WP)

Miss Holocaust, Michalina Musielak, Poland / Germany, 22’ (WP)

Monangambeee, Sarah Maldoror, Algeria, 15’ – Out of competition

Oh Brother Octopus, Florian Kunert, Germany, 27’ (WP)

The Rabbit Hunt, Patrick Bresnan, USA / Hungary, 12’ (IP)

Street of Death, Karam Ghossein,  Lebanon / Germany, 23’ (WP)