Oberhausen is one of the oldest and most avant-garde film festivals in the world. [...] Because it presents short films of all types - from documentaries and fictions to artworks and music videos - and welcomes short films in all media - from Super 8 and 16 millimeter to 35 millimeter and digital video - it has become known as a prime scouting ground for new talent. The festival doesn't just blend the line between commercial and noncommercial film - arguably, it is the line. Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, The Daily Star, Lebanon, 12 May 2006

One of the famous experimental laboratories of cinema for more than 50 years. Stern, Germany, 20 April 2006

The correspondences between the "Radical Closure" series which never ceased to question the truth of images and the competition films showed very clearly that politics and aesthetics are no opposites in Oberhausen. Hans Schifferle, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, 11 May 2006

Perhaps the best thing about Oberhausen is that it does not seek to smooth off the edges or to be defensive about its provincial setting.. Festivals, after all, are celebrations: happy are the margins. Mike Sperlinger, Frieze, September 2006

Short film does not have to re-invent itself all the time, and yet it does. Perhaps precisely because it is not exposed to the commercial pressures of ticket sales. The 52nd Oberhausen festival was overwhelming proof that the short film can school us in the pleasures of seeing. Since Lars Henrik Gass took over as director, once a year long queues form at the ticket counters for one week. Because the team around Gass have guided the oldest short film festival in the world back to its roots with films that break our viewing habits and reveal unexpectedly, but with split second explosive force, astonishing new angles on life. Gabrielle Schultz, Die Welt, Germany, 10 May 2006

Maybe [Robert] Nelsons films are something like Southern Californian dadaism, playful, meditative, dense montages of elements from vaudeville, slapstick, pin-up and car culture, married to the spirit of the I ching. But in spite, or maybe because of this, one feels their greatness. It is a greatness founded in a genuinely American kind of nonchalance and a beautiful modesty, and of course in their radical freedom in the treatment of image and sound. [...] Nelson's images today seem like a reminder of freedom, of a lost age when fun was still an important part of making and watching films. Questions around this kind of freedom and its counterpoint, closure, were at the centre of this year's festival. Hans Schifferle, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Germany, 11 May 2006

The most ambitious and convincing short films were those that reflected their own medium. Andreas Rossmann, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany, 11 May 2006

What is art? What is theatre? What is film? We have become used to resorting to agency contexts when we answer that question. Art is what the art museums present, theatre is what's performed on the stages, and film is what's screened in the movie theatres. This simple rule will go a long way on the practical level. It reminds us that the definition of art has nothing to do with its quality. It cannot, however, explain the short film, because that has no home. One might say, of course, that short film is what's screened in Oberhausen. But this didn't satisfy even the signatories of the famous 1962 manifesto. Since the 1980s, if not earlier, when film theorist Karola Gramann took over as director, the significance of this festival lies in its production of context. Daniel Kothenschulte, Frankfurter Rundschau, Germany, 11 May 2006

Our film "Reigen der Ziegen" (Round dance of the goats) on a huge screen in the packed Lichtburg cinema; a bit like being in a fairytale. Oberhausen International Short Film Festivals: six days of short films, six days of first-class Oberhausen hospitality. Michael Sasdi, Switzerland, filmmaker (Reigen der Ziegen in the International Competition 2006)

The noticeable tendency towards documentary, technically un-perfect, "rough" images might also be interpreted as a yearning for immediate access to reality, or even for a new seriousness. The Oberhausen festival makers underlined this by introducing a remarkably well-attended series of debates on topical subjects. Generally, the festival director showed a sense of the contemporary, in the selection of side programmes as well as in the festival's openness to new media - podcasts on the website - which countered any negative associations connected with "time-honoured tradition" and at the same time rather successfully continued the tradition of commitment for which Oberhausen is also known. Barbara Schweizerhof, epd film, Germany, 7/2006

The osmosis between the film industry and the art world which has been observable for quite a while now was made explicit in a special section. Twelve distributors of experimental films presented selections from their catalogues ranging from classical museum-loops to finger exercises by renowned artists like Lawrence Weiner's "Inherent in the Rhumb Line" (USA 2005). Anyone trying to draw a strict line between such art market-screenings and the competition programmes though soon found themselves in deep water. Michael Kohler, film-dienst, Germany, 12/2006,

(...) A first-class phalanx of documentary films not seen since the happy days of the Eastern European documentary film studios. Georg Immich, Film & TV Kameramann, Germany, 6/2006

With its deftly staffed panel discussions about cultural politics and media education, internet television and sales strategies for moving images Oberhausen in its new shape lived up to its reputation of being a festival of discussion and reflection. Reinhard Kleber, filmecho/filmwoche, Germany, 20 May 2006

The artistic extremes coming from all over the world are not exactly easily consumable - and yet the international film avant-garde find their audience. Not just the sold-out cinemas but the crowded auditorium of the panel discussions are proof of this. Oliver Baumgarten, Blickpunkt:Film, Germany, 22 May 2006

The Oberhausen festival once more confirmed the unique ability of the international short film to put its finger on the emotions and problems of today's societies and communicate them with penetrating aesthetic force. Dieter Wieczorek, Documents, France, 3/2006

True, Oberhausen is perfectly willing to insist on gruelling seriousness - but only if absolutely necessary, as demonstrated again this year by the best works of the programmes in which subtleties and experiments were combined with brilliant technical skills and a deep love of their object of presentation. Carsten Tritt, Schnitt, No. 43, 3/2006

Film/montage in the lab, a never-ending series of possible connections, divisions, duplications, permanent shifts of meaning, interstices. Film as the fixation of a potential at a specific point. In view of all this it seems almost logical for Nelson to re-work some of his films (ca. 30) years later, to re-edit or destroy them. They are provisional works which (can) change constantly or even disappear, leaving behind only a title. Films which cancel out any traditional idea of the work of art based on unity, contingency and continuity. Tanja Widmann in Malmoe, Austria, No. 32, late spring 2006

Apart from the topical political dimension of directed artistic interventions [in the "Radical Closure" programme], Oberhausen once more reminded us that the short form has always been recognised in the avant-garde. That the question of the length of a film constitutes first of all a conceptual decision conforming to certain kinds of content or cinematic experiments. Isabella Reicher, Der Standard, Austria, 10 May 2006