Lama? (Why?), Nadav Lapid, Israel, 5’ (IP)
|
27
films from 18 countries will be competing for a Golden and a Silver Bear, as
well as the nomination for best short film at the European Film Awards and the
first-ever EUR 20,000 Audio Short Film Award. This year’s members of the
International Short Film Jury are documentary filmmaker and curator Madhusree
Dutta from India, Turkish artist Halil Altındere, and producer and festival
director Wahyuni A. Hadi from Singapore. Screening in competition are the latest
works of Nadav Lapid, Amit Dutta, Jennifer Reeder, Matt Porterfield, artist duos
Daniel Schmidt & Alexander Carver, Mischa Leinkauf & Matthias Wermke in
collaboration with Lutz Henke,Billy Roisz & Dieter Kovačič, among many
others.
Reflections
on the current social and political conditions, in which the order of subject,
predicate and object have been permanently suspended, pervade the programme and
generate all kinds of symmetries. Independently of large production budgets,
filmmakers today have the possibility of using analogue and digital technologies
to fill cinematic space with hypotheses on and solutions to relevant
issues.
What
images have the power to dispel the pleasure found by some in being a soldier?
Israeli director Nadav Lapid asks himself this question and then discovers an
image that is able to do exactly that in
Lama? (
Why?). In Japan, there’s a new term
since Fukushima: “atomic divorce”. It is what the many divorces are called that
have been filed all over Japan in the aftermath of the catastrophe. Christian
Bau attempts to capture this phenomenon in
Snapshot Mon Amour. David Muñoz visits a
Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon. The production of his film
El Juego del Escondite (
Hide & Seek) relates directly to the
question of what enables a refugee to remain the subject of his or her own
narrative. Then there is the quintessence of artist intervention in public space
– the raising of white flags atop the Brooklyn Bridge last summer in New York
City – which can be seen as either
an affront or a chance: the documentary
Symbolic Threats by Leinkauf, Wermke and
Henke offers a number of interpretations.
Mumblecore,
a subgenre of US independent film, has made the leap across the ocean: Matt
Porterfield’s
Take What You Can Carry
tells of a young woman who is a foreigner in Berlin – and in doing so
portrays Generation Y, with performance group Gob Squad as its mouthpiece.
Jennifer Reeder’s
Blood Below the
Skin gives a glimpse of the tender and tangled web of love and dependency
between a mother and her daughter that goes beyond the traditional allocation of
roles.
German
short films are making a strong showing, which can be ascribed, among other
things, to intensive funding policies. “Yet the fact that for a long time now
short films have not been limited to 15 minutes, but are on the average
22-minutes long, should - if German cinema is to remain competitive – be taken
into account when revising film funding regulations” says Maike Mia Höhne,
curator of
Berlinale
Shorts.
In
February 2015, the Golden Bear for the Best Short Film will be awarded for the
60th time. A special programme, titled The Golden Night of the Short
Bears, with a selection of films from 60 years of the Berlinale will be held at
the Zoo Palast on Saturday, February 14.
Berlinale
Shorts
2015:
Architektura,
Ulu
Braun, Germany, 15’ (WP)
Bad
at Dancing
,
Joanna Arnow, USA, 11’ (WP)
Blood
below the Skin
,
Jennifer Reeder, USA, 32’ (WP)
Chitrashala
(
House of Painting), Amit Dutta, India,
19’ (WP)
Däwit
(
Daewit), David Jansen, Germany, 15’
(WP)
Dissonance
,
Till Nowak, Germany, 17’ (WP)
Hosanna,
Na
Young-kil, South Korea, 25’ (DP)
La
Isla está Encantada con Ustedes
(
The Island is Enchanted with You)
, Alexander Carver & Daniel Schmidt,
USA / Switzerland / Australia, 28’ (IP)
El
Juego del Escondite
(
Hide & Seek), David Muñoz, Spain,
23’ (WP)
Kamakshi,
Satindar Singh Bedi, India, 25’ (WP)
Lama?
(
Why?), Nadav Lapid, Israel, 5’
(IP)
Lembusura
,
Wregas Bhanuteja, Indonesia, 10’ (IP)
Lo
Sum Choe Sum
(
3 Year 3 Month Retreat), Dechen Roder,
Bhutan, 20’ (WP)
maku
(veil)
,
Yoriko Mizushiri, Japan, 6’ (WP)
The
Mad Half Hour, Leonardo Brzezicki, Argentina, 22’ (WP)
Mar
de fogo
(
Sea of Fire), Joel Pizzini, Brazil, 8’
(WP)
Of
Stains, Scrap & Tires
,
Sebastian Brameshuber, Austria / France, 19’ (IP)
Pebbles
at Your Door
,
Vibeke Bryld, Denmark, 18’ (WP)
Planet
Ʃ
,
Momoko Seto, France, 12’ (WP)
San
Cristóbal
,
Omar Zúñiga Hidalgo, Chile, 29’ (WP)
Shadowland
,
John Skoog, Sweden, 15’ (IP)
Snapshot
Mon Amour
,
Christian Bau, Germany, 6’ (WP)
Superior,
Erin Vassilopoulos, USA, 16’ (IP)
Symbolic
Threats
,
Mischa Leinkauf, Matthias Wermke & Lutz Henke , Germany, 16’
(WP)
Take
What You Can Carry
,
Matt Porterfield, USA / Germany, 30’ (WP)
The
,
Billy Roisz & Dieter Kovačič, Austria, 13’ (WP)
Yúyú
,
Marc Johnson, France / Spain / USA, 15’ (WP)
