Cities, territories: An expedition through the urban world

In the 23-part special programme "cities, territories" the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen will look at chrome shining centres in decaying suburbs, it will show the faces of the city, organise encounters with artists expressing urban life in their images, and discuss "how the images learned to dance".

 
Marseilles is a powder keg, filled up with unemployment, cultural and social contrasts. It is a miracle that it has not yet exploded; a miracle which has a lot to do with HipHop and Rap. The music serves as mouthpiece for those who do not have access to the established media world.

S?o Paulo is South America's biggest city, the world's third biggest city, the city with the fastest growth. It is an example for the seemingly unstoppable effects of the development of mega cities: districts become interchangeable, lose their face, public space mutates into mere traffic space, and public life — if there is any — is only taking place in the media.

"Genuine as far as your fingers reach, above it can be plastic"— so a member of the Ministry for Urban Development in North Rhine-Westphalia describing the architectonic effects of the structural changes in the Ruhr area.  More and more of the old industrial estates are replaced by big building projects like fun parks, shopping centres, or musical halls which leads to a new aestheticism that is detached from historical facts, thus becoming global and consequently interchangeable.

Who is forming whom? How do people in the cities deal with visions, how do they create their own spaces, their alternatives, their own territories? These are the questions which make up the charm of this year's big special programme at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.

Not prefabricated visions are at the centre of the four programme parts ‑ "BIGNES?”, "The City - Anchor and Wandering Place”, "Urban Perspectives”, "Urban Projections" or "Centre/Outskirts" – but the artistic and often surprising human views of the city. The festival will thus continue the discussion on ways of image production which was begun during last year's special programme "Useful Images". It also refers to the changes which in form of structural changes in the Ruhr area are beginning to show in the immediate vicinity of the festival, while at the same time being connected to global developments. Whereas elsewhere state-of-the-art technology is used to dream up grand utopias, the Oberhausen festival will show the cultural and social implications of urban fantasies, and look at artistic approaches and alternative plans.

In addition to the film part the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen will provide plenty of opportunities to discuss the different points of view and the different approaches to urban development.

 

Some Highlights:

How can art stop the disappearance of public spaces? — That's the question which the project Arte/Cidade will be exploring in co-operation with the Goethe Institut. The results of the parallel study Brásmitte (S?o Paulo-Brás and Berlin-Mitte) will be presented and discussed as part of a separate programme block. (www.artecidade.org.br)

Guests: Giselle Beiguelman, co-founder of Arte/Cidade, and curator Nelson Brissac Peixoto.
 

Show projects, visualised on main frames in an optically impressive way will meet video works of independent initiatives. On one side the city organised according to entrepreneurial needs adapting to the economic pressures of the investors and presenting itself internationally in standard design, on the other side the "free ones" approaching the city from the grassroots, e.g. via the documentation of alternative forms of life. Both sides will be represented in the special programme "BIGNES?"

The HipHop band Da Mayor will be present at the festival  in three different ways: with their clip "Le Partage", shot on a tyre dump in Provençe; as subject of the documentation "Côte obscure" by Ania Faas on the HipHop scene in Marseilles; finally as live act at the party following the MuVi award ceremony.

Starting point is the clip "My Favourite Game" by the Cardigans: cities are always places of movement from the centre to the outskirts and back, from one city to the other... The programme part "Transit(t)räume" (a pun linking transit dreams to transit spaces) will interpret "cities, territories" as set for road movies and dynamic clips.

The workshop organised in co-operation with the University - GH - Essen and the Werkstatt Architektur und Film (workshop architecture and film), Graz will be given a special place. 15 students from Essen and Graz respectively will use the time during the festival to explore the city of Oberhausen and follow the different territories within its boundaries. For example: the artificially created city centre, the naturally grown villages Osterfeld and Sterkrade, the beach at the Rhein-Herne-Kanal, the workers' housing estate "Ripse" etc. The students are to come up with sketches, photos, collages, installations or films exploring Oberhausen in an exemplary way as city and territory in change. The working groups will be housed in an empty café in the immediate vicinity of the festival venue, so that the festival visitors and the citizens of Oberhausen can look at their work — "work in progress" as a stimulus for discussion and debate.

Responsible for the special programme are:

Jochen Becker, Madeleine Bernstorff, Ralph Christoph, Ania Faas, Nicole Gingras, Olaf Karnik, Tobias Nagl, Dirk Scheuring, Reinhard W. Wolf.

Responsible for the workshop are:

Martin Hoelscher, Professor for Landscaping at the University - GH - Essen

Hubert Sandmann, Werkstatt Architektur und Film, TU Graz