About the Festival

Short film, insofar as it is not devoted to advertising or economic purposes, is by its very nature not glamorous, but experimental, fragmentary, beginning and testing ground, diploma film and launch pad. Oberhausen is not a home of the "big" movies, but sometimes these are targeted, or filmmakers reach for them, if only for twenty minutes. Andreas Rossmann, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 12 May 2005

What united the Festival was a sparkling concept of artistic difference. You can't ask for anything better. At the heart of this was the retrospective. One might argue that the programme "The Fallen Curtain: The Self and the Other since 1989" was even less clear than its predecessors, the traditional special programmes, about what it was really about, but that was irrelevant. ...The fact of the matter was that each individual programme teemed with discoveries from the history of cinema and that they triggered more through their associative compilation than any theory. Daniel Kothenschulte, Frankfurter Rundschau, 12 May 2005

A permanent latent opposition of digital video and film was discernible at Oberhausen this year. Celluloid seems to fade to a mere cinema archetype - the material one longs for but that has become impractical. Hans Schifferle, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 12 May 2005

With 134 contributions from 36 countries, the Oberhausen festival once again offered a cross-section of the genre. It confidently focused on itself in the "Fallen Curtain" special programme. Films from the USA, China, Russia, Germany, Poland and England documented the history of the short film since the Iron Curtain fell. Gabrielle Schultz, Die Welt, 11 May 2005

Cinema between yesterday and tomorrow was the focus of the great Oberhausen retrospective. Under the title "The Fallen Curtain", images and ideas of the capitalist West and the socialist East were juxtaposed, the after-effects of the fall of the Berlin wall were investigated. An incredible jungle of images and genres revealing any number of differences but also many strange similarities, for example the rigid, very closed US society that emerges in 'educational films'. Hans Schifferle, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 12 May 2005

No established festival in Germany makes us aware of the historicity of media to any comparable degree. Nowhere else is the history of cinema used more creatively. Daniel Kothenschulte, Frankfurter Rundschau, 12 May 2005

... Oberhausen is not the place for "normality" or routine, of all things - again and again, the range and variety of the works presented there prove to be too diverse. Dietmar Kammerer, die tageszeitung, 11 May 2005

The special programme once more lent the Oberhausen festival its distinctive character. Nonetheless, the competitions and specials also contributed to demonstrating the cinematic interweaving of the political and the experimental, which for years has not only been the declared festival motto but also projected on the screens. Barbara Wurm, Freitag, 13 May 2005

The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen has frequently played the role of pioneer in recent years, on the technical or programming level. It was among the first German film festivals to present CD-ROMs, internet projects, interactive media and virtual worlds. In addition, the team around festival director Lars Henrik Gass helped music videos achieve recognition as an artistic short film genre of their own by introducing special programmes and a competition. With reelport, a new online film submission platform Oberhausen now takes the technological lead again and once again proves itself to be one of the most innovative film festivals around. Reinhard Kleber, Filmecho/Filmwoche, Nr. 20/2005

There were a number of these small films which stop, reflect, sometimes accept the status quo in a resigned way but then look hopefully into the future again. This year's Oberhausen festival finally proved once more that short film can still be the spice of cinema. Rolf-Rüdiger Hamacher, Westfälische Rundschau, 11 May 2005

The 51st International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen (5 to 10 May) takes place under the banner of a rapprochement of the arts and the short film. ART, May 2005

The Festival is [...] also an economic factor. One should not forget this when the costs of film funding are once more heatedly debated in North Rhine-Westphalia these days. Michael Vaupel, Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 5 May 2005

At half-time, the festival with its rich tradition surprised, even after the golden anniversary last year, with frequently sold-out screenings - and, in the International Competition, with a series of amazingly good contributions from rather new film nations. Michael Schmitz, Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 9 May 2005

Short films are addictive, and so is the atmosphere at Oberhausen. If you go there once, you are sure to come back again. [...] Of course, the Festival is a special experience not just for the audience, but also for the filmmakers who compete with other artists in the competitions. Tanja Turanskyj has returned from Berlin to her old hometown. She made the film "Remake", together with her three colleagues from the "Hangover Ltd." directors' collective, a film that is all about four women and one man during a Vodka-soaked night: "It's exciting to be back in Oberhausen," says the 38-year-old filmmaker who left 20 years ago, "As a teenager, I worked for the Filmothek der Jugend for five years". Being invited to Oberhausen with her film is a big compliment, she says. Monika Idems, Neue Ruhr Zeitung, 9 May 2005

After six days of intense programmes, you return from Oberhausen not with any definite answers in hand but with a convoluted strand of questions. [...] One thing is certain: In Oberhausen, the borders between works intended for cinematic release and works intended for contemporary art galleries are fading. Elena Marchesi, il manifesto (Italy), 28 May 2005

In the films and videos screened there, it was also clearly discernible that politics and a (political) attitude are not a "wrong theme" at a film festival: national identity, criticism of capitalist everyday life, migration and illegal immigration were at the focus of works in which these themes were often combined with the filmmakers' biographies or a reflection on image production. Claudia Slanar, Der Standard (Austria), 12 May 2005

The programmes of this festival which has always seen itself as a political festival presented themselves as "having a mind of their own" in the very best sense. Ranging from structuralist experiments (Józef Robakowski) to Super-8-poetry (Anarchistische GummiZelle) and bombastic cinemascope symphony ("Optinen ääni" by Finnish filmmaker Mika Taanila) to a looped fight ("Fisticuffs" by Miranda Pennell) and an installation by Christoph Girardet, they offered an alluring sea of styles and aesthetics. Oliver Baumgarten, Blickpunkt:Film, 30 May 2005

The programme of German music videos proved to be all the more surprising in its variety. [...] Their playful, at first sight naive approach to technology in particular sometimes resulted in an effectively transformed perspective on German lifestyles. Oliver Rahayel, film-dienst, Nr. 12/2005

In May, the small town of Oberhausen transforms itself into the cutting edge focal point of the global short film scene. Considered too experimental for some, and too conventional for others, the festival is essentially defined by its commitment to discovering innovation with the moving image and for its distinctive and uncompromising nature. Shai Heredia, The Hindu (India), 29 May 2005