Scott Miller Berry, who leads the film programming committee of Toronto's Rendezvous with Madness and is a long-time collaborator of Goethe-Instituts from Toronto to Jakarta to Bangalore, is a regular at Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, the global get-together of experimental short filmmakers, and just returned from the 69th Oberhausen Short Film Festival. German Film @ Canada asked him to report back on highlights and takeaways in this 2-part journal entry-meets-festival report.
I recently returned home to Toronto from five brimful days at the annual short film celebration that is the hallowed Oberhausen Short Film Festival. The energies around Oberhausen are always infectious, with tonnes of guest filmmakers, programmers, distributors, students, journalists and yes, the interested public too; the lobby at the main cinema is constantly filled with people rushing from one program to another or inhaling a quick sandwich and strong coffee.
This year the festival hosted 800 guests from 65 countries (compared with 800+ in 2022 and 1000+ in pre-Covid 2019) and similarly to each previous year I've been fortunate to attend, I met old colleagues, creators and cinephiles and a slew of new ones as well.
Surprisingly, this edition felt more intimate than 2022.
By my count, the festival presented 120 screening programs, most of which were held at the magical 5-room Lichtburg Cinema in the heart of this post-industrial city of 200,000 residents. Each evening there was a live expanded cinema performance program adjacent to the Festival Lounge at the Zentrum Altenberg, which is also next door to the intimate Kino im Walzenlager. I managed to attend 27 programs over five days —three of which were live "expanded cinema" events.
If you're not familiar with Oberhausen, the size and scope of the program and visiting guests is both incredible and overwhelming; this year, the festival screened 500 short films across all sections. It's no big secret that the sprawling International Competition is always a mixed bag —increased to 9 programs in 2023 (up from 8 in 2022) that included 48 films from over 4,800 submissions (versus 6000 in 2019).
While I was relieved that the festival was 100% on site this year and didn't split their Competition Programs, I also wish that those who can't travel to Germany would be able to tap into the films. That said, check out the year-round
Festival Channel for cool retrospectives and special archival treats!
I learned early in my sojourns here to dip into the International waters but don't stay too long; the density of short film gems is often more prominent in the other sections. This year the
Theme program was titled Against Gravity: The Art of Machinima (8 screenings and one talk co-programmed by Vladimir Nadein and Dmitry Frolov)
focusing on works —sometimes performed live— that use video games or gaming engines to create short movies. The 2023 Oberhausen
solo artist Profiles featured retros on Marcel Broodthaers (Belgium), Yamashiro Chikako (Japan), Teboho Edkins (South Africa), Alexandrea Gulea (Romania) and Lynne Sachs (USA).
This year marked the 25th anniversary of Oberhausen’s popular MuVi section (you haven't experienced a music video until you’ve watched it on the huge main Lichtburg screen at full volume!) with requisite anniversary programs, onsite and online, alongside a
country spotlight on the Basque region; the stalwart
Children and Youth sections (36 films in total) with hundreds of kids brought in from the populous urban region called
Ruhrgebiet, and the more recent and dynamic
Labs section spotlighting artisanal film labs from around the world, this year with films and guests from Mexico, Norway, Italy, France and Portugal (more on other sections later).
One of the many reasons I try and attend each year is that the festival often tries new sections or new ways of presenting short film projects —
this year Oberhausen introduced two programs entitled To be continued. On the first full day of the festival, they brought back seven filmmakers from 2022 Competition programs to screen works in progress while inviting input from the audience. What a refreshing commitment to maintain a relationship with guest filmmakers year over year. I thoroughly enjoyed the casual format: each maker introduced their piece, screened an excerpt or clip and then took questions, some even inviting direct feedback about the direction of their future works.
To be continued.
Scott Miller Berry is a short film maker and cultural worker living in Toronto. By day he is Managing Director at Workman Arts, an arts + mental health organization that presents the Rendezvous With Madness Festival where he leads the film programming committee. Previously, he served for 10 years as Executive Director at the Images Festival. Scott is a film festival believer and has co-instigated many collective projects including the 8 fest small gauge film festival, MICE Magazine, Early Monthly Segments and current itinerant programming project, re:assemblage collective. His film “ars memorativa” screened in competition at Oberhausen in 2014 after debuting at Experimenta India in Bangalore. Recent screenings include New York, VUCAVU, London UK, Jakarta, Lisbon, Ottawa, Seoul, Montréal and Colectivo Toronto.
image: Ask Me I'm Positive by Teboho Edkins. South Africa, 2004 courtesy Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen
