The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, founded in 1954, is one of the oldest

short film A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

festivals in the world. Held in

Oberhausen Oberhausen (, ) is a city on the river Emscher in the Ruhr Area, Germany, located between Duisburg and Essen ( ). The city hosts the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and its Gasometer Oberhausen is an anchor point of the European Rout ...

, it is one of the major international platforms for the short form. The festival holds an International Competition, German Competition, and International Children's and Youth Film Competition, as well as the MuVi Award for best German music video and, since 2009, the NRW Competition for productions from the German state of

North Rhine-Westphalia North Rhine-Westphalia (german: Nordrhein-Westfalen, ; li, Noordrien-Wesfale ; nds, Noordrhien-Westfalen; ksh, Noodrhing-Wäßßfaale), commonly shortened to NRW (), is a state (''Land'') in Western Germany. With more than 18 million inha ...

. Oberhausen is known today for its extensive thematic programmes such as "Memories Can't Wait. Film without Film" (2014), "The Third Image. 3D Cinema as Experiment" (2015), or "The Language of Attraction. Trailers between Advertising and the Avant-garde" (2019). The festival in addition offers visitors a well-equipped Video Library, operates a non-commercial short-film distribution service and owns an archive of short films from over 60 years of cinema history.

History

The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen was founded in 1954 by the director of the Oberhausen Volkshochschule (

adult education Adult education, distinct from child education, is a practice in which adults engage in systematic and sustained self-educating activities in order to gain new forms of knowledge, skills, attitudes, or values. Merriam, Sharan B. & Brockett, Ral ...

centre),

Hilmar Hoffmann Hilmar Hoffmann (25 August 1925 – 1 June 2018) was a German stage and film director, cultural politician and academic lecturer. He founded the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. He was for decades an influential city councillor in Fr ...

, in association with the Filmclub Oberhausen under the name "1st West German Educational Film Festival". The event was initially geared to fulfilling an educational policy mandate and the motto chosen for the first festival was hence "Cultural Film – Route to Education". Featured were 45 films from the Federal Republic of Germany, France and the USA. At the 4th West German Educational Film Festival in 1958, the motto "Way to the Neighbour" was introduced, under which the festival took place until 1997. In 1959, the festival was rechristened "West German Short Film Festival". Oberhausen soon made a political name for itself, chiefly because many films produced in the

Eastern Bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...

could only be viewed in Oberhausen, a situation that led to the festival's rapid ascent and its reputation as "short film mecca". As early as the 1950s, however, visitors were also treated to works by young filmmakers from the West such as

François Truffaut François Roland Truffaut ( , ; ; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. After a career of more th ...

Norman McLaren William Norman McLaren, LL. D. (11 April 1914 – 27 January 1987) was a Scottish Canadian animator, director and producer known for his work for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).Rosenthal, Alan. ''The new documentary in action: a caseb ...

Alain Resnais Alain Resnais (; 3 June 19221 March 2014) was a French film director and screenwriter whose career extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included ...

Bert Haanstra Albert Haanstra (; 31 May 1916 – 23 October 1997) was a Dutch director of films and documentaries. His documentary ''Glass'' (1958) won the Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject in 1959. His feature film ''Fanfare'' (1958) was the m ...

, and

Lindsay Anderson Lindsay Gordon Anderson (17 April 1923 – 30 August 1994) was a British feature-film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading-light of the Free Cinema movement and of the British New Wave. He is most widely remembered for ...

. At the fourth festival in 1958, 190 films from 29 countries were already included in the programme. At the eighth festival in 1962, a group of young German filmmakers, among them Alexander Kluge,

Peter Schamoni Peter Schamoni (27 March 1934 – 14 June 2011) was a German film director, producer and screenwriter. He directed 35 films between 1957 and 2011. His 1966 film ''No Shooting Time for Foxes'' was entered into the 16th Berlin International ...

and Edgar Reitz, issued the

Oberhausen Manifesto The Oberhausen Manifesto was a declaration by a group of 26 young German filmmakers at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia on 28 February 1962. The manifesto was a call to arms to establish a "new German feat ...

, pronouncing the "old" film dead and declaring their aspiration to create a new kind of German film. DBP 1979 1003 25 Jahre Westdeutsche Kurzfilmtage

DBP 1979 1003 25 Jahre Westdeutsche Kurzfilmtage

The 1960s then culminated in a 1968 scandal surrounding Hellmuth Costard's film ''Besonders wertvoll'', in which a talking penis criticized the new Film Funding Act of 1967. Responding to an objection issued by the public prosecutor's office, the festival removed the film from the official programme, whereupon many German filmmakers withdrew their works from the festival. Oberhausen emerged from the crisis with an amended set of regulations, including a public selection procedure for German films. In the 1970s, the women's movement was a touchstone at the festival, with young filmmakers such as

Chantal Akerman Chantal Anne Akerman (; 6 June 19505 October 2015) was a Belgian film director, screenwriter, artist, and film professor at the City College of New York. She is best known for films such as ''Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles' ...

and

Helma Sanders-Brahms Helma Sanders-Brahms (20 November 1940 – 27 May 2014) was a German film director, screenwriter and producer. Biography Helma Sanders was born on 20 November 1940 in Emden, Germany. She attended a school for acting in Hannover from 1960 to 1 ...

showing their first films in Oberhausen. With its Children's and Youth Cinema, the festival inaugurated a new competition category in 1978. The 1970s also witnessed a wave of new festivals: ousted from the cinema, the short form found new screening options in the festival arena. In the late 1980s, video and

new media New media describes communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for ...

began to gradually come onto the scene at Oberhausen. With the subsidence of the East/West conflict that had shaped the festival's early years, its role as "window to the East" slowly faded. Now, the festival's profile as mediator and trailblazer between the worlds of short film and advertising clip,

music video A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing devic ...

, industrial film, and

video art Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting ...

– often subsumed under the generic term

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretica ...

– came to the fore. In 1991, the festival was renamed the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, the name it still bears today. That same year, Oberhausen introduced the nation's first competition for German short film. Since 1993, the festival has given film and video equal standing in its competitions. In 1999, Oberhausen introduced the first film-festival award for music videos anywhere in the world, known as the "MuVi", which is still today awarded exclusively to directors for the visual quality of their clips. With the rise of video art, more and more films made by artists have found their way into the festival programmes. Today, Oberhausen presents short films and videos originating from a wide range of formal, cultural and social backgrounds. Large-scale special programmes take up a different theme each year, most recently "Memories Can't Wait. Film without Film" (2014), "The Third Image. 3D Cinema as Experiment (2015), or "The Language of Attraction. Trailers between Advertising and the Avant-garde" (2019). The festival also maintains a Video Library featuring a large selection of recent international short films, regularly mounts profile programmes dedicated to individual artists, Market Screenings for international distributors of avant-garde film and the Archive series presenting short film archives, and each year, hosts a discussion series called "Podium". Due to the Corona pandemic in 2020, the Festival organised its 66th edition completely online, making it the first exclusively digital film festival in Germany. With over 2,500 festival passes sold and users in nearly 100 countries, the new format proved far more successful than expected. This was followed in 2021, too, by another all-digital festival edition. The 67th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen took place online from 1 to 10 May. At ten days, the Festival was almost double its usual length and presented for the first time three new online competitions (International Online Competition, German Online Competition and Muvi International Award). Besides organizing the festival, Oberhausen operates a non-commercial short film distribution service and its own archive holding short films from over 60 years of film history.

Careers

During the long history of the Oberhausen festival, many careers got off to a successful start. A few of the filmmakers and artists who showed their early works in Oberhausen: * Eija-Liisa Ahtila *

Doug Aitken Doug Aitken (born 1968) is an American artist. Aitken's body of work ranges from photography, print media, sculpture, and architectural interventions, to narrative films, sound, single and multi-channel video works, installations, and live perf ...

Kenneth Anger Kenneth Anger (born Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer, February 3, 1927) is an American underground experimental filmmaker, actor, and author. Working exclusively in short films, he has produced almost 40 works since 1937, nine of which have been grouped ...

Andrea Arnold Andrea Arnold, OBE (born 5 April 1961) is an English filmmaker and former actor. She won an Academy Award for her short film ''Wasp'' in 2005. Her feature films include '' Red Road'' (2006), ''Fish Tank'' (2009), and '' American Honey'' (2016), ...

Jürgen Böttcher Jürgen Böttcher (pseudonym Strawalde, born 8 July 1931) is a German film director and painter. He is best known for his film '' Born in '45''. See also * A. R. Penck References External links * 1931 births Living people Germa ...

Stan Brakhage James Stanley Brakhage ( ; January 14, 1933 – March 9, 2003) was an American filmmaker. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th-century experimental film. Over the course of five decades, Brakhage created a larg ...

* Vera Chytilová *

Valie Export Valie Export (often stylized as 'VALIE EXPORT'; born 17 May 1940) is an avant-garde Austrian artist. She is best known for provocative public performances and expanded cinema work. Her artistic work also includes video installations, computer an ...

Miloš Forman Jan Tomáš "Miloš" Forman (; ; 18 February 1932 – 13 April 2018) was a Czech and American film director, screenwriter, actor, and professor who rose to fame in his native Czechoslovakia before emigrating to the United States in 1968. Forman ...

Werner Herzog Werner Herzog (; born 5 September 1942) is a German film director, screenwriter, author, actor, and opera director, regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema. His films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with u ...

Christoph Hochhäusler Christoph Hochhäusler (born 10 July 1972) is a German film director and screenwriter. His film '' Falscher Bekenner'' was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. His film '' The City Below'' was screened in th ...

Hermine Huntgeburth Hermine Huntgeburth (born 13 November 1957) is a German film director. She is best known for her 2005 film ''The White Masai''. Selected filmography *'' The Terrible Threesome'' (1991) *''Gefährliche Freundin'' (1996, TV film) *' (1998) *''The C ...

Joris Ivens Georg Henri Anton "Joris" Ivens (18 November 1898 – 28 June 1989) was a Dutch documentary filmmaker. Among the notable films he directed or co-directed are ''A Tale of the Wind'', ''The Spanish Earth'', ''Rain'', ''...A Valparaiso'', '' Mi ...

* Isaac Julien * Miranda July * Romuald Karmakar * *

Jan Lenica Jan Lenica (4 January 1928, Poznań, Poland – 5 October 2001, Berlin) was a Polish graphic designer and cartoonist. A graduate of the Architecture Department of Warsaw Polytechnic, Lenica became a poster illustrator and a collaborator on the e ...

Chris Marker Chris Marker (; 29 July 1921 – 29 July 2012) was a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and film essayist. His best known films are ''La Jetée'' (1962), '' A Grin Without a Cat'' (1977) and ''Sans Soleil ...

* Bjørn Melhus * *

Roman Polanski Raymond Roman Thierry Polański , group=lower-alpha, name=note_a ( né Liebling; 18 August 1933) is a French-Polish film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. He is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, tw ...

* Pipilotti Rist * Christoph Schlingensief *

Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. He is the recipient of many major accolades, incl ...

István Szabó István Szabó (; born 18 February 1938) is a Hungarian film director, screenwriter, and opera director. Szabó is one of the most notable Hungarian filmmakers and one who has been best known outside the Hungarian-speaking world since the ...

Agnès Varda Agnès Varda (; born Arlette Varda; 30 May 1928 – 29 March 2019) was a Belgian-born French film director, screenwriter, photographer, and artist. Her pioneering work was central to the development of the widely influential French New Wave film ...

* Adolf Winkelmann

Chronology

* 1954: Founded as Westdeutsche Kulturfilmtage * 1958: Introduction of the motto "Weg zum Nachbarn" * 1959: Renamed as Westdeutsche Kurzfilmtage * 1962: Oberhausen Manifesto * 1970: First computer-animated film * 1989: Introduction of a video section * 1991: Renamed as Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen; launch of the first German short film competition ever * 1993: All competitions are opened for video productions to compete on an equal footing with film * 1999: First film festival music video award in the world introduced * 2002: Co-founder of the AG Kurzfilm e.v., the lobbying organisation for German short film * 2019: Co-founder of AG Filmfestival, the lobbying organisation for German film festivals

Numbers

* Almost 7,000 submissions from around 90 countries annually * Approximately 500 films shown at each festival * More than 1,000 accredited international visitors annually * Awards totalling more than 41,000 € * Accredited by the FIAPF since 1960 * Reference festival of the

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS, often pronounced ; also known as simply the Academy or the Motion Picture Academy) is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motion ...

Festival directors

* 1954–1970:

* 1971–1975: Will Wehling * 1975–1985: Wolfgang J. Ruf * 1985–1990: Karola Gramann * 1990–1997: Angela Haardt * Since 1997:

External links

*
The international short film festival in Oberhausen 2011 - a recapitulationsensesofcinema.com
{{Coord missing, North Rhine-Westphalia Annual events in Germany Film festivals in Germany Oberhausen Short film festivals Film festivals established in 1954 1954 establishments in West Germany Culture of North Rhine-Westphalia Tourist attractions in Oberhausen