About the Festival

Once again, Oberhausen maintains its position as a capital of the kind of culture that is allowed to hurt a little. [...] One was irritated, caught astonished glimpses of a labyrinth of oblique paths and eccentricities. One may have enough of short films for a while. But boring it wasn't. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 11 May 2002

Oberhausen today attracts audiences because word is spreading that pop culture - for instance in the shape of music video clips - has entered the festival without displacing critical and artistically advanced short films. Neue Ruhr Zeitung, 8 May 2002

Digital home laboratories represent not only a factor of production, they belong to people's lifestyles, as the driving force of biographies situated somewhere between technology, services and culture programs: There are artists who use Oberhausen as an extended vernissage; there are creative start-ups who, after their working hours at the advertising agency, still find the time to produce wobbly Super 8 orgies that criticise the system that feeds them; and there are endless opportunities to build a niche for yourself between MTV clips and the ARTE midnight slot. die tageszeitung, 10 May 2002

With a wealth of highlights and a new audience record the 48th International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen presented the Ruhr region with a cultural highlight of international standards. Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 8 May 2002

Despite the notorious financial quarrels at Oberhausen, the Festival once more confirms its reputation of being one of the most innovative festivals around. filmecho/filmwoche 19, 11 May 2002

Amsterdam-based video artist and filmmaker Florian Wüst has compiled a "Special Program Catastrophe" for this year's International Short Film Festival Oberhausen which, with encyclopaedic reach and without limiting itself overmuch to short film, was meant to create an awareness of the media's fascination with states of emergency. The subject which was chosen a few months before September 11th proved to be not just a key to the past century's media history, but to our own contemporary experience of time inasmuch as it is formed and expressed by films, video essays and television documentaries. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 17 May 2002

In the 15 program sections, curator Florian Wuest achieved a remarkably sure balance between theoretical analysis, aesthetic sublimation and subtle irony. The dialectic relations between fact and fiction were often revealed only in the mix of artistic subversion, advertising, education and documentary films. Jungle World, 15 May 2002

Oberhausen today effortlessly moves between pop culture, advertising clips and political, critical and ambitious short films without losing sight of aesthetic and experimental quality. Filmdienst No. 12, June 2002

The commercial approach of working life seems to have won the day. But short film is precisely not just a short film. Its relation to feature-length films can be compared to the relation between story and novel, one-act-play and five-act drama or poem and epic. What is needed is a cross-classification system. There are short fiction, short documentary, short animation and short experimental films. Stuttgarter Zeitung, 10 May 2002

[At the award ceremony] The festival which was well attended by the industry and the broad public concluded a high quality and above all very rich program with a show of truly cinematic works. Blickpunkt:Film, 13 May 2002

At the 48th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, television editors, film producers and filmmakers met on May 6 at the first "Producers' Day". The extremely well-attended program aimed at creating a lively exchange between new film talent and industry representatives to discuss the career step from short to feature-length film. Blickpunkt:Film, 20 May 2002

Not only are short films treated as finely tuned works in their own right - the programmers actively resist calling-card titles - but their exhibition is framed within debates about changes to the medium and the social/political underpinning of contemporary film-making. It helps that directors, staff, industry delegates and spectators mingle freely in the modest host cinema, the Filmpalast Lichtburg. Sight and Sound, UK, July 2002

According to the festival director, Lars Henrik Gass, some of the third-world entries cannot even afford the postage to submit a videocassette. Budgets are tiny or non-existent. Short film-makers, it is safe to say, are not in it for the money. So let's give full marks for enthusiasm, courage and artistic integrity to all the 3,703 auteurs from 83 countries who submitted their work to the international competition. And let's give two paracetamol to Gass and whoever else had to watch them. The Guardian, UK, 25 May 2002

[...] While the feature film industry seemed to be circulating around a single, obsessively sought theme, the plethora of innovative work presented at this year's festival offered a more vivid picture. [...] So which were the best films of Oberhausen no. 48? Films that question and contest their own construction; stories with counter-stories; open rather than closed forms; documentaries that let us make up our own minds; structures with a tension, rooms with a view; new films. Filmwaves, UK, 18/2002

The end of representation is the best thing that could have happened to the video clips presented in Oberhausen which were in danger of becoming perhaps not grandfather's cinema, but an academism of their own - and which are now again permitted to present themselves as entertainment. Frankfurter Rundschau, 7 May 2002

In purely aesthetic terms, the 2002 line-up is highly interesting, but at the same time the fourth competition marks a watershed moment. This year's harvest is the last produced in the age of Viva Zwei, the more or less natural broadcaster for this kind of video clips for a type of music listened to by few people. [...] The ironies of fate: The allegedly most commercial short film genre turns into an endangered species. Süddeutsche Zeitung NRW, 2 May 2002

Over the years, it [the MuVi Award] has acquired a pop-momentum of its own. INTRO, May 2002

More, more often. www.buback.de, May 2002