Other programmes

Just as important as the competitions and, since the 1990s, a central and successful part of Oberhausen’s profile is the Theme, a comprehensive programme on annually changing issues. Here, the Festival reflects the enormous variety of the short form, whether avant-garde, advertising or scientific film, whether expanded cinema or linear installation excerpt, within thematic contexts, creating a forum for cinematic and social discussions that, starting with the short film, extend far beyond film-related issues and engage in an overarching dialogue on image production in the arts, new technologies and sciences.

Topics covered in recent years include: "Solidarity as Disruption" (2021), "Leaving the Cinema – Knokke, Hamburg, Oberhausen (1967–1971)" (2018), "Social media before the Internet" (2017), "El Pueblo - Searching for Contemporary Latin America" (2016),  "The Third Image – 3D Cinema as )Experiment" (2015); "Memories Can't Wait - Film without Film"(2014), "Flatness: Cinema After The Internet" (2013), "Provoking reality: Mavericks, MouveMents, Manifestos" (2012), "Shooting Animals. A Brief History of Animal Film" (2011), "From the Deep: The Great Experiment 1898-1918" (2010), "Unreal Asia" (2009), "Bordercrossers and Troublemakers",  "Whose History" (2008), "Kinomuseum" and "Don't turn around! Children, Childhood, Cinema" (2007), "Solidarity As Disruption – Epilogue" (2022), "Synchronize. Pan-African Film Networks" (2022), "Against Gravity. The Art of Machinima" (2023), "Sport in Film: Focus on Historic Sports Films" (2024), The Long Way to the Neighbour – GDR Films in Oberhausen (2025)

Kristina Jurkowski
thema(at)kurzfilmtage.de

Linda Bilda (1963-2019) was an artist, publisher, entrepreneur, exhibition curator, performer, comic artist, activist and teacher – and a filmmaker. She first became known through her comic drawings and as the editor (with Ariane Müller) of several zines and magazines, including Artfan. Her oeuvre was always based on the aspiration to create emancipatory art; she organised groups, wrote manifestos, intervened in public space.

A previously unknown side of her creative practice was discovered in her estate: films made by Linda Bilda, both alone and in cooperation with others. The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen is presenting the world’s first look at Bilda’s cinematic oeuvre, curated by Olaf Möller and in the presence of her long-term artistic partner Ariane Müller

Born in London, Charlotte Pryce has been working with film and optical objects since 1986. Her experimental works have been shown at film festivals as well as in museums around the world. In her work, she explores proto-cinematographic structures of dreaming, juxtaposing the real and the imaginary, the playful and the paradoxical. Her practice is rooted in biological processes, inspiring us to re-think the mysteries of the natural world – a cinematic cabinet of wonders. Oberhausen is screening Pryce’s works on 16mm and each screening will conclude with a Magic Lantern projection from her “Illuminated Fiction” series.

Gernot Wieland, born in Austria in 1968, is a storyteller who works with film, drawing, animation and lecture performances. His films are collages of claymation, Super 8 snippets, photos, children’s drawings, paper cutouts, diagrams and sketches: complex narratives in which documentation and fiction flow into each other. He links personal memories with political accounts, expanding autobiographical material to universal themes, often introducing absurd or tragicomic elements. In 2023, he won the Prize of the German Competition for Turtleneck Phantasies, now Oberhausen is dedicating an extensive retrospective to the artist and filmmaker.

Elie Maissin and Mieriën Coppens have been working together as Les Films de la Maison in Brussels, collaborating with the La Voix des Sans Papiers Bruxelles collective and creating short films that they call “essais”, always in close cooperation with their protagonists. They document plenary sessions, moves and evictions, court hearings and protests in front of the immigration office, but also daily life, distributing the mail, carrying on with life, sleeping. Oberhausen is presenting a selection of their works in the presence of the filmmakers and representatives of the Sans Papiers.

Sandor Aguilar (2017), Eija-Lisa Ahtila (2000), Victor Alimpiev/Olga Stolpovskaya (2006), Wojciech Bakowski (2014), Craig Baldwin (2000), Baloji (2021), Melika Bass (2021), Guy Ben-Ner (2007), Majoleine Boonstra (2007), Louise Botkay (2018), Marcel Broodthaers (2023), Yamashiro Chikako (2023), Linda Christanell (2012), Raquel Chalfi (2016), Jem Cohen (2001), Josef Dabernig (2016), Kiri Dalena (2019), Amit Dutta (2010), Nicolás Echevarría (2009), Teboho Edkins (2023), Heinz Emigholz (2001), Factory of Found Clothes (2009), Helga Fanderl (2013), Jeanne Faust (2016), Morgan Fisher (2022), Herbert Fritsch (2009), Susannah Gent (2020), Karpo Godina/Želimir Žilnik (2002), Marina Grižnić/Aina Šmid (2003), Alexandra Gulea (2023), Bert Haanstra (1998), Anne Haugsgjerd (2016), Stefan Hayn (2005), James Herbert (1999), Sohrab Hura (2022), Yamada Isao (2004), Ito Takashi (2015), Ken Jacobs (1996), Jim Jennings (1998), William E. Jones (2011), Larry Jordan (2001), Aryan Kaganof (2014), Kanai Katsu (2007), Patrice Kirchhofer (2008), Ken Kobland (2007), Rainer Komers (2022), Eva Könnemann (2018), Andrew Kötting (2008), Petar Krelja, Krsto Papić und Zoran Tadic (2013), Grzegorz Królikiewicz (2011), Mark Lewis (2005), Salomé Lamas (2018), Marie Lukáčová (2021), Dušan Makavejev (2003), Mox Mäkelä (2024), Davorin Marc (2024), Mara Mattuschka (2014), Dóra Maurer (2025), John Maybury (2002), Philbert Aimé Mbabazi Sharangabo (2020), Bjørn Melhus (2017), Deimantas Narkevicius (2014), Erkka Nissinen (2015), Matsumotu Toshio (2009), Münchner Gruppe: Klaus Lemke/Rudolf Thome/Max Zihlmann (2003), Gunvor Nelson (2010), Robert Nelson (2006), Vera Neubauer (2012), Ho Tzu Nyen (2013), No Wave (2010), Jayne Parker (2004), Kayako Oki (2019), Miranda Pennell (2006), Ilppo Pohjola (2012), Shalimar Preuss (2022), Luther Price (2013), Laure Prouvost (2013), William Raban (2015), Abraham Ravett (2024), Jennifer Reeder (2015), Lis Rhodes  (2008), Jósef Robakowski (2005), Roee Rosen (2012), Roter Hahn 1907 (2011), Lynne Sachs (2023), Larissa Sansour (2017), Sarajevo Documentary School (2009), Boris Schafgans (2006), Sylvia Schedelbauer (2022), Maya Schweizer (2020), Dietrich Schubert (2025), John Smith (2002), Alexander Sokurov (2019), Eva Stefani (2019), Barbara Sternberg (2017), Sun Xun (2016), Eszter Szabó (2022), Jaan Toomik (2017), John Torres (2024), Salla Tykkä (2021), Robert Van Ackeren (2001), Mona Vătămanu & Florin Tudor (2018), Vipin Vijay (2015), Laura Waddington (2005), Susanna Wallin (2025), Orson Welles (2000), Joyce Wieland (2002), Charles Wilp (2001), John Wood & Paul Harrison (1999), Fred Worden (2010), Nina Yuen (2017) und Akram Zaatari (2008).

Here you can find the profiles from the last year.

Kristina Henschel
berezovskaya(at)kurzfilmtage.de

30.4.-4.5. daily 10 h at the Festival Space

30 April
Who Goes Fascist?
This podium discussion asks about psychological and neurological predispositions that drive people into extremism – and what these might be.
With Prof. Emilie A. Caspar, Lecturer in Social and Cognitive Neurosciences, University of Ghent; Dr. Agnieszka Golec de Zavala, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Goldsmiths, London; Artur Zmijewski, artist, Warsaw; Rod Dickinson, artist, Bristol.
Moderated by Galit Eilat.

1 May
The Long Way to the Neighbour – GDR Films in Oberhausen
This panel explores the strong presence of GDR filmmaking in Oberhausen: never a matter of course, never free of conflicts!
With Helke Misselwitz, filmmaker and professor, Film University Babelsberg; Wolfgang J. Ruf, festival director from 1975-1984; Felix Mende, curator of the Theme programme.
Moderated by Cornelia Klauß.

2 May
Ideology Machines. The Conformism Trap in Culture and its Institutions
A conversation with author Harry Lehmann about his book “Ideologiemaschinen” (Ideology Machines) and the question how cultural institutions can maintain their independence in the midst of digital outrage, political scandals and inner pressures to conform.
With Gertrud Koch, Professor of Film Studies (ret.), Berlin; Harry Lehmann, writer / Research Fellow at the University of Luxembourg, Berlin.
Moderated by Jonathan Guggenberger.
In cooperation with the European Short Film Network (ESFN).

3 May
The Aesthetics of Resistance: Really?! Aesthetic Strategies between Immunity and Resilience
A panel with filmmakers about the state of political aesthetics today. Where are its forms still resistant and where does it become a gesture - an empty promise of radicality, progress and healing in a world full of crises.
With Elena Kulesh, Director (Мякиш (Crumb), International Competition); Roee Rosen, artist and filmmaker, Tel Aviv; Franz Wanner, artist, Berlin.
Moderated by Michel Wagenschütz and Jonathan Guggenberger.

4 May
Critical Closeness, Productive Distance: Festival Films and their Interrelationships
Oberhausen x-rays itself in a talk with filmmakers, jury members and members of the selection committee. The core question is: How do you put your own perspective in a context? And vice versa: What does context do with your own perspective?
With Philipp Gufler, artist, Amsterdam/Munich; Silke Schönfeld, filmmaker, Amsterdam/Dortmund; Philbert Aimé Mbabazi Sharangabo, filmmaker, Kigali.
Moderated by Michel Wagenschütz and Jonathan Guggenberger.

Introduced in 2006, this series of discussions has quickly established as a place to engage with film. Here, scholars, curators, artists and authors discuss current aesthetic, technological, cultural-political and economic issues relating to short film. The steadily growing audience is invited to participate. Among those who have been in Oberhausen so far are: Catherine David, Chris Dercon, Diedrich Diederichsen, Adrienne Goehler, Alexander Horwath, Oskar Negt, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Martha Rosler and Akram Zaatari.

Amelie Große-Lüger
orga@kurzfilmtage.de

Jan Ehlen fills in here and there when someone has to cancel. He has been able to nurture his passion for audiovisual media through his work for the Nekes Collection for many years. As a member of the RaumZeitPiraten for over ten years, he describes himself as a professional dilettante who is constantly overwhelmed.

Einar Fehrholz
fehrholz(at)kurzfilmtage.de

Wiebke Jung
jung@kurzfilmtage.de

In this section, launched in 2025, selected international distributors present works from their catalogues, both new acquisitions and older titles, rediscoveries and rarities. This year’s line-up: Arsenal Filminstitut (Germany), LI-MA (Netherlands), Filmform (Sweden) und sixpackfilm (Austria).

Nine audience award winners from other European short film festivals demonstrate the creative diversity of European cinema in two programmes.

As the European Short Film Network (ESFN), Oberhausen runs the THIS IS SHORT streaming platform together with five other European short film festivals. For a change, the network is showing a programme in the cinema on the origins of digital film. The selection will be shown at all network festivals in the course of 2025.

This program presents a diverse selection of experimental audiovisual works that explore the complexity of digital image processing. By combining a wide range of techniques and concepts, the programme offers insight into the ongoing development of digital image processing techniques and how artists have explored them over the past decades.

Oberhausen’s Filmgeflacker art collective is presenting films from this year’s competitions and inviting the filmmakers to discuss their works with the audience.

To mark the conclusion of the festival, the Oberhausen team will personally introduce their favourites from this year’s competitions.

Since 1998, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen shows a selection of trend-setting international music videos and formally exceptional works - a showcase of current developments in the music video genre.

Contact
Jessica Manstetten
muvi(at)kurzfilmtage.de

A programme of international music videos for kids aged 14 and older. MuVi 14+ is a rich and varied cross section of recent video clips ranging from handmade to computer-generated. 

Contact
Jessica Manstetten
muvi(at)kurzfilmtage.de

Since 2019, Oberhausen has been giving carte blanche every year to a filmmaker from North Rhine-Westphalia to compile a personal film programme. This year, the filmmaker, artist and book illustrator Christine Gensheimer will show own and other people’s works that have shaped her path as a filmmaker. Her films and music videos have regularly been shown in competition in Oberhausen since 2007; in 2021, she won second prize at the MuVi Award for The Source of the Absolute Knowledge, a music video for Jaakko Eino Kalevi.

On the day after the award ceremony, we will show the most important award winners of the five competitions of the Short Film Festival 2026 in one programme.

On its first day, Oberhausen traditionally shows short films that have received awards at other festivals. A cross-section of the past festival season.
 

In cooperation with the One Minutes Foundation, Oberhausen presents one-minute films in two series curated for the festival.

Contact
Susannah Pollheim
pollheim(at)kurzfilmtage.de

What is special about this programme: Oberhausen citizens between the ages of 65 and 90 are responsible for selecting the films. Traditionally, the Oberhausen Selection, which was launched in 2015, celebrates its premiere during the festival and then goes on tour from autumn.

Contact
Susannah Pollheim
pollheim@kurzfilmtage.de

The Short Film Festival's distribution programme is based on one of the oldest and most important short film collections in the world. Every year, the Short Film Festival purchases around 50 new works from the current festival programme. Here we are showing a selection programme with five films from the 2024 International Competition, in which the relationship between humans and nature and animals plays a central role.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Tom Chomont was part of the New York underground scene. Between 1962 and 1989, Chomont, who died prematurely, made around 40 short films: experiments in which he combined colour positives and black and white negatives, which gave them an unmistakable aura – lyrical, erotic, mystical. They are psycho-sexual self-examinations in whose restoration Ross Lipman played a key role. He will present a selection of these films on 16mm.

The American filmmaker, restorer and essayist will personally present his new book, The Archival Impermanence Project (2025), a collection of case studies in film restoration from early cinema to the present day. Practical examples, rare archival documents, essays, numerous illustrations and appendices make it a rich resource for both film scholars and archivists.

A portrait of the Bulgarian exile writer and universal artist Tzvetan Marangosoff (1933-2021), who, as Marran Gosov, made 28 of the funniest and wisest short films of his time in Munich in the 1960s and 70s. And a homage to filmmaker and cinema operator Bernhard Marsch, who died in 2025, who took care of Gosov’s work with extraordinary dedication and on whose work this programme is largely based.

A rediscovery: Erwerbslose kochen für Erwerbslose (The Unemployed Cook for the Unemployed, 1932) and Wahlkampf 1932. Letzte Wahl (Election: Campaign 1932.Last Election, 1932/33) are two titles from the small film oeuvre of painter, film club activist and long-term Oberhausen visitor Ella Bergmann-Michel (1895-1971) – everyday observations from the last years of the Weimar Republic. Bergmann-Michel collaborated closely with Paul Seligmann (1903-1985), who produced some of her films, wrote about independent film and, after the Nazis had seized power, began to clandestinely shoot Frühjahr 1933 (Spring 1933), a film recently rediscovered in a Canadian archive. Oberhausen is commemorating both with a film programme.

In cooperation with the European Short Film Network (ESFN), Oberhausen is presenting an Expanded Cinema programme by Luis Macías. In his performances and installations, the Spanish filmmaker and moving image composer and co-founder of CRATER-Lab is exploring the possibilities of the cinematographic apparatus and the photochemical nature of the medium. In Oberhausen, he will present his work Orbita 360° together with musician Robert Martinez.