67th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, 1 – 10 May 2021
The Awards of the International Competitions
Award ceremony: Monday, 10 May 2021, 7.30 pm CEST, https://spatial.chat/s/kurzfilmtageoberhausen
Awards of the International Competition
Awards of the International Jury
Members:
Godart Bakkers (Netherlands), Théo Deliyannis (France), Claudrena N. Harold (USA)
Grand Prize of the City of Oberhausen
worth 7,000 euros
Toumei na watashi
(Transparent, I am.)
Yuri Muraoka
Japan 2020, 11’ 36’’, colour/black-and-white
Statement:
We see the sea, pictures of the sky taken in backlight, and hear the narrator tells us about a failed suicide attempt. What follows is a personal story about life, its difficulties and its beauty. A story that is told by pulling out all the cinematic registers, using different animation techniques, found footage and still images. By doing this she creates a nonlinear narrative making space for the viewers and their interpretations and imagination. The filmmaker dives into her own history, both in terms of imagery as well as storyline. It feels like a moment of reflection, a visual artists’ statement in which she turns inward. The film celebrates life and celebrates film, the result is stunning and – like life – incredibly rich.
Principal Prize
worth 3,000 euros
8’28’’
Su Zhong
China 2021, 8’28’’, colour
Statement:
A continuous shot with no end or beginning and that seemingly catches us in a random moment. It shows us, in 8 minutes and 28 seconds, how violence is interconnected with machines, technology, and labour. With humour, which is always close to despair, the filmmaker mixes both Western and Eastern mythologies and depicts them as future leaders of a humanless world, with only industrialised mechanical movement. Making a film like this, coming out of the guts, directly onto the screen after a very long and patient digital work is a huge accomplishment. Thank you, Su Zhong, for reminding us that even before the pandemic we could already make a film about a world full of violence and despair.
Special Mentions
More Woman, More Cry
Anne Haugsgjerd
Norway 2021, 24’, colour/black-and-white
Sensory Overload
Ganza Moise
Rwanda 2020, 6’56’’, colour
Statement:
More Woman, More Cry by Anne Haugsgjerd is a stunning film that captures the beauty and fragility of life. With vivid clarity, great imagination, and sly humour, Haugsgjerd provides thought-provoking reflections on family, art, ageing, and the fluidity of time in a humorous and poetic way. Without embarrassment, but full of doubts, the film shows an emancipated filmmaker contemplating her life and asking the question: What next? At the other end of this spectrum, the jury sees Sensory Overload, a poetic film by Ganza Moise, that takes a poem by Natacha Muzira as its guide. A seemingly featherweight film with an existential underlayer, in which time, form and space run into each other, in a search for a way out of reality, not through destruction, but through the poetry of life.
Prize of the Jury of the Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia
worth 5,000 euros
Members:
Bernd Brehmer (Munich), Miriam Gossing (Cologne), Lina Sieckmann (Cologne)
A terra de não retorno
(The Earth of no Return)
Patrick Mendes
Portugal 2020, 20’, colour
Statement:
In an indeterminate time, women wash clothes by the river, a stone ear becomes porous. Out of the blue, a motionless body falls headfirst into the riverbed. The screams of the working undead pierce the mysterious silence. This work positions ’’film as ritual” in the style of magical realism. The blazing fire forges new eyes that let us see the beauty of an analogue mystery of tears, earth, light and shadow. The unsettling absence of dialogue sharpens our senses to the highest alertness, only to sweep us out of earthly hell with ’’heavy metal”. You are invited to join the order of cinema.
Special Mentions
Divided by Law
Katie Davies, Emma Agusita
United Kingdom 2021, 26’11’’, colour/black-and-white
Statement:
’’I miss you.” Analogue black-and-white images show chats of anonymous lovers which are supposed to serve as testimonies of a valid partnership for the British government. ’’Hostile Environment Policy’’ is the name of the UK Home Office's attempt to make immigration into Great Britain as unbearable as humanly possible. This film lets us experience the impact of these drastic measures on binational families and relationships in personal accounts, combined in an unpretentious montage with 16mm film, Google Street View and found footage.
Before the fall there was no fall. Episode 02: surfaces
Anna Dasović
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Netherlands 2020, 20’1’’, colour
Statement:
In her haunting film Before the fall there was no fall. Episode 02: surfaces, Anna Dasović recounts how traces of history manifest themselves in places where cruel contemporary history was written, how the fading graffiti of terror evoke a mural of testimonies of genocide, and how even small businessmen profit from war. In addition, she masterfully combines archive material and authentic found footage to ask the question: What remains?
The International Critics’ Prize (FIPRESCI Prize)
Members of the Jury:
Valentina Giraldo (Colombia), Fritz de Jong (Netherlands), Elīna Reitere (Latvia)
{if your bait can sing the wild one will come} Like Shadows Through Leaves
Lucy Davis
Singapore/Finland 2021, 27’52’’, colour
Statement:
The film offers an artistic and investigative exploration resulting in a fascinating perceptive experience. While creating a cinematic atmosphere, it reflects on urban and eco-social transformations from human and more-than-human relationships. In this way, {if your bait can sing the wild one will come} Like Shadows Through Leaves allows us to think of cinema as an aesthetic tool that questions, resists, and reimagines the relationships between culture and climate change.
Prize of the Ecumenical Jury
worth 1,500 euros
Members:
Linda Dombrovszky (Hungary), Gundi Doppelhammer (Germany), Anna Grebe (Germany), Christian Gürtler (Germany)
Zoom sur le cirque
Dominique Margot
Switzerland 2020, 14’26’’, colour
Statement:
A clown is grimacing into the webcam from his living room; an aerialist is trying to stay in shape on her balcony; a circus director is suffering from the cold in his caravan because he cannot afford the heating costs: Zoom sur le cirque brings together the social, political and aesthetical aspects of the current Corona pandemic in an accurate yet heart-wrenching way: the human desire or even the human need to laugh even in times of crisis; the hardship suffered by artists and people engaged in the cultural sector who are threatened by losing their means of existence; the art of improvisation that the circus as well as Zoom require equally and therefore the technical and social possibility of decreasing the distance by means of humour.
Special Mention
nga’i nang
(Home)
Ngima Gelu Sherpa
Nepal 2020, 20’10’’, colour
Statement:
nga’i nang is a film about a son who returns to his family home in Nepal to say farewell to his dying dad. The son films these last days, the passing and the death of his father which appear just as simple and natural in the everyday life of this poor farmer family as the tiny things that usually happen to them. Even though all this is sad, this is the order of life. While the film is very modest, it tells its story in a distanced but very personal and emotional way. Similar to the way the mother, who escapes to religious rituals, experiences mourning internally and in silence and similar to the son, who, after leaving his Home and his lonely mother behind again, will later reminisce alone on the beach of the ocean on another continent. Even though all this is sad, this is the order of life.
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Awards of the International Online Competition
Awards of the International Online Jury
Members:
Paola Buontempo (Argentina), Daniel Kasman (USA), Carly Whitefield (United Kingdom)
Grand Online Prize of the City of Oberhausen
worth 5,000 euros
Kalsubai
Yudhajit Basu
India 2020, 19’54’’, colour/black-and-white
Statement:
For creating a dialog between past and present through its lyrical ethnography; and for exploring with a gentle distance a remarkable mythology empowering non-traditional ways for women to live.
Principal Online Prize
worth 2,000 euros
Trampa de luz
(Light Trap)
Pablo Marín
Argentina 2021, 8’30’’, colour/black-and-white
Statement:
For giving us a breath of fresh air and allowing us to rediscover nature; and for showing its light and its wonders through the photochemical materiality of celluloid, continuing to explore the possibilities of analogue methods.
e-flux Prize
worth 3,000 euros
For an exceptional film and video work which reshapes the poetic and electric potential of moving images in the age of planetary circulation of information.
Un très long temps d’exposition
Chloé Galibert-Laîné
France 2020, 7’, colour/black-and-white
Statement:
For its astute and poetic exploration of time, recording technologies, and erasure of workers and Indigenous identity from a perspective both personal and critical; and for uniting these expressive themes through compact and modest means.
Online Prize of the Jury of the Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia
worth 3,000 euros
Members:
Ruth Schiffer (Düsseldorf), Bernd Schoch (Hamburg), Ulrike Sprenger (Constance)
Un très long temps d’exposition
Chloé Galibert-Laîné
France 2020, 7’, colour/black-and-white
Statement:
It is only logical that the film awarded by us renounces sound, since it is an exploration of the conditions of visibility. Un très long temps d´exposition discovers, layers and combines images and narratives from global and personal history. Chloé Galibert-Laîné’s both analytical and personal composition of chains of visual motifs reveals the political and ideological dimensions of technological imaging methods and questions media visibility as the ultimate legitimization and proof of existence.
Special Mention
The___________World
Peixuan Ouyang
USA 2020, 17’56’’, colour
Statement:
The unlimited availability of the world, just a click away – and yet the shabby papier mâché models of famous monuments in a small amusement park ignite quite original ideas of freedom and the future. Our Special Mention goes to a film which shows us the ephemeral stuff that dreams are made of, and those strangenesses that even global digital communication can’t abolish.
Online Prize of the Ecumenical Jury
Members:
Blandine Brunel (France), Silvan Maximilian Hohl (Switzerland), Michele Lipori (Italy), Phil Rieger (Germany)
Minnen
(Memories)
Kristin Johannessen
Sweden 2020, 13’32’’, colour/black-and-white
Statement:
How do you remember how you used to be in the past? Minnen is an authentic documentary where we look back on the filmmaker's mental illness as she soberly traces her life. Animated sequences display what was in her mind at that particular time of her life. With original footage of her youth added to a recent interview with her own parents, Kristin Johannessen shows, through accurate memories, the difficulties of being different, of raising a child you can’t always understand but never want to leave behind. Minnen talks about the hope of recovery that must be held on to when facing sickness.
Special Mentions
Kalsubai
Yudhajit Basu
India 2020, 19’54’’, colour/black-and-white
Statement:
Kalsubai explores the history of the goddess Kalsu and her meaning for the women of Bari. The film relies on strong visual and acoustic images that neither explain nor falsify. The almost photographic compositions and their expressive simplicity make the film accessible to everyone and invite you to reflect on your own cultural influences and to question them.
Cântec de leagăn
(Cradle)
Paul Mureșan
Romania 2020, 4’, colour/black-and-white
Statement:
Unfortunately, even today, many families are hiding dark secrets. The animated short film Cântec de leagăn investigates the innermost depths of a family devastated by domestic violence and alcoholism. In such a climate of terror, we see life still existing with a mother taking care of her new-born, trying to protect him and his big brother from being bullied. The animation technique reflects the different states of mind of the characters perfectly and raise our awareness of the difficulties every family could struggle with at one time and must overcome. Particularly effective is the way in which the song ’’Cântec de leagăn” – a traditional Romanian lullaby performed by Maria Tanase – Is grafted onto the animation.
You can download a list of all award winners of the 67th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen here.
Oberhausen, 10 May 2021
Press contact: Sabine Niewalda, niewalda(at)kurzfilmtage.de,, Tel. +49 (0)208 825-3073