Out Of The Melting Pot: Authenticity In Oberhausen
International Short Film Festival Oberhausen opened each session with its curious festival promo trailer. The trailer featured images of Las Vegas’ famous Strip, including the sphinx from the Luxor hotel and the Eiffel Tower from the Paris Las Vegas hotel. Accompanied by an unnerving score, the image then abruptly cuts to a stark white screen with the word Oberhausen printed boldly in red. Nervous laughter from the audience would usually follow. Smaller than the authentic landmarks they imitate, these images are not what they appear. This playful trailer set the tone at the start of each session, kindly letting the audience know that what they were about to see might not be what they were expecting. But no matter how abrasive, confusing or jarring the experience could be, what it always would be is provocative.
Far less gaudy than Las Vegas, Oberhausen is a festival less interested in the indulgences of its industry. It is a film festival of inclusion. Eight separate juries award prizes, and whilst there is a clear celebration of excellence, the festival is anything but elitist. Oberhausen is also known for its experimental content. Within the context of a strong non-narrative cinema presence, still, accessibility persists. The feeling of involvement at Oberhausen is infectious and each award-winning film beautifully echoes the spirit and ethos of the festival. Ever inclusive, Oberhausen also champions the music video with a dedicated program; titled MuVi, now in its fifteenth year. Opening night for the festival featured a selection of the festival’s best music videos screened in the MuVi program in recent years.
The most innovative idea however is the festival’s children’s competition and the children’s jury the festival appoints to judge its content. Nothing short of inspired. The winning film, I’m Going to Mum’s, was a typically charming story about a young boy whose parents are separated and who feels as though he is being torn between parents behaving childishly. The children’s jury noted in their motivation that they all related to the young boy, something adults could never truly or accurately assess. The films in this category are all made for, not by, children and in creating a children’s jury the festival resists falling victim to prescriptive programming.
I noticed too that the seven people who put together the competition programmes called themselves programmers and the individuals responsible for the retrospective programmes called themselves curators. Programming, by their definition, is selecting works from an available mass of options – some 6700 submissions - whereas curating is selecting and working on realising a specific and desired exhibition. Both strands in the festival were incredibly successful. That they should also incite discussion around the way in which we consider the work put in to presenting a festival programme was really the decorated feather in an already handsome cap.
The FIPRESCI jury’s International Film Critics’ Award went to Canadian filmmaker Mike Hoolbloom for Buffalo Death Mask (2013), a striking and contemporary upgrade on the traditional underground film diary. Featuring a remarkably earnest conversation between two HIV positive friends discussing new medication as well as memories of friends and lovers lost to the virus, Buffalo Death Mask was both personal and universal in its approach. Blended together with home movie footage and obscured faces, the film achieved a resonant harmony between its dialogue and image.
Outside of the official festival activities change lingered in the air as the German Film Critics Circle voted for and elected a new council, at its helm my fellow juror Jennifer Borrmann. Extraneous to the curated retrospective was a not-so-secret screening of one of Luther Price’s early films, Clown #1 (2001). Taking place outside of the confines of the cinema, in a gallery bar annexed to the central train station, this only further highlighted the festival’s central podium question from the day before, Where is Cinema?
The festival, much like the city that houses it, is immersed in progressive and creative energy. Oberhausen, sat comfortably in the Ruhr Valley – known as the ‘Ruhr Pot’ historically for its pollution, but contemporarily for its reputation as a melting pot for the arts, is a stone’s throw from other talented cities; Bochum and Essen, and Dusseldorf just outside the Ruhr.
One of the most fantastic experiences and certainly one of the most enjoyable film festivals I have had the pleasure to attend, Oberhausen is the exact opposite of Vegas. Where the Paris Vegas hotel presents mimesis, Oberhausen offers a refreshing authenticity.
Tara Judah
Festival report for FIPRESCI:
‘Celebrating Scarcity and the Question of Rejection in the Works of Luther Price’ http://fipresci.org/festivals/archive/2013/oberhausen/tjudah.htm
Festival report for Senses of Cinema:
‘After Cinema, Back to Celluloid: The 59th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen’
Bio: Tara is a freelance film journalist. She co-hosts 3RRRFM’s Plato’s Cave, is resident film critic for JOYFM’s Saturday Magazine and contributes to Senses of Cinema, The Vine, Metro Magazine, Screen Education, Screen Hub and The Big Issue. Tara is the Programming and Content Assistant at Melbourne’s Astor Theatre, a volunteer at the Australian Film Institute Research Collection and a committee member of the Melbourne Cinémathèque.
Far less gaudy than Las Vegas, Oberhausen is a festival less interested in the indulgences of its industry. It is a film festival of inclusion. Eight separate juries award prizes, and whilst there is a clear celebration of excellence, the festival is anything but elitist. Oberhausen is also known for its experimental content. Within the context of a strong non-narrative cinema presence, still, accessibility persists. The feeling of involvement at Oberhausen is infectious and each award-winning film beautifully echoes the spirit and ethos of the festival. Ever inclusive, Oberhausen also champions the music video with a dedicated program; titled MuVi, now in its fifteenth year. Opening night for the festival featured a selection of the festival’s best music videos screened in the MuVi program in recent years.
The most innovative idea however is the festival’s children’s competition and the children’s jury the festival appoints to judge its content. Nothing short of inspired. The winning film, I’m Going to Mum’s, was a typically charming story about a young boy whose parents are separated and who feels as though he is being torn between parents behaving childishly. The children’s jury noted in their motivation that they all related to the young boy, something adults could never truly or accurately assess. The films in this category are all made for, not by, children and in creating a children’s jury the festival resists falling victim to prescriptive programming.
I noticed too that the seven people who put together the competition programmes called themselves programmers and the individuals responsible for the retrospective programmes called themselves curators. Programming, by their definition, is selecting works from an available mass of options – some 6700 submissions - whereas curating is selecting and working on realising a specific and desired exhibition. Both strands in the festival were incredibly successful. That they should also incite discussion around the way in which we consider the work put in to presenting a festival programme was really the decorated feather in an already handsome cap.
The FIPRESCI jury’s International Film Critics’ Award went to Canadian filmmaker Mike Hoolbloom for Buffalo Death Mask (2013), a striking and contemporary upgrade on the traditional underground film diary. Featuring a remarkably earnest conversation between two HIV positive friends discussing new medication as well as memories of friends and lovers lost to the virus, Buffalo Death Mask was both personal and universal in its approach. Blended together with home movie footage and obscured faces, the film achieved a resonant harmony between its dialogue and image.
Outside of the official festival activities change lingered in the air as the German Film Critics Circle voted for and elected a new council, at its helm my fellow juror Jennifer Borrmann. Extraneous to the curated retrospective was a not-so-secret screening of one of Luther Price’s early films, Clown #1 (2001). Taking place outside of the confines of the cinema, in a gallery bar annexed to the central train station, this only further highlighted the festival’s central podium question from the day before, Where is Cinema?
The festival, much like the city that houses it, is immersed in progressive and creative energy. Oberhausen, sat comfortably in the Ruhr Valley – known as the ‘Ruhr Pot’ historically for its pollution, but contemporarily for its reputation as a melting pot for the arts, is a stone’s throw from other talented cities; Bochum and Essen, and Dusseldorf just outside the Ruhr.
One of the most fantastic experiences and certainly one of the most enjoyable film festivals I have had the pleasure to attend, Oberhausen is the exact opposite of Vegas. Where the Paris Vegas hotel presents mimesis, Oberhausen offers a refreshing authenticity.
Tara Judah
Festival report for FIPRESCI:
‘Celebrating Scarcity and the Question of Rejection in the Works of Luther Price’ http://fipresci.org/festivals/archive/2013/oberhausen/tjudah.htm
Festival report for Senses of Cinema:
‘After Cinema, Back to Celluloid: The 59th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen’
Bio: Tara is a freelance film journalist. She co-hosts 3RRRFM’s Plato’s Cave, is resident film critic for JOYFM’s Saturday Magazine and contributes to Senses of Cinema, The Vine, Metro Magazine, Screen Education, Screen Hub and The Big Issue. Tara is the Programming and Content Assistant at Melbourne’s Astor Theatre, a volunteer at the Australian Film Institute Research Collection and a committee member of the Melbourne Cinémathèque.
