Curated by Krystalbilleder The film medium is intimately connected to our living planet and to nature. Almost as soon as the movie camera was invented it was trained on the earth’s swarming life forms as filmmakers attempted to capture the essence of life on celluloid. From these first film fragments and in subsequent examinations, as cinema evolved and branched out over the 20th century, filmmakers  continued to search for ways to capture flora and fauna in all their diverse manifestations. Biological life factors has such an urgent philosophic, aesthetic and sensual obsession for great parts of film history that what can be termed the...

This one-hour program features three of the foremost examples of “structuralist” American underground filmmaking. All three of these non-narrative works are characterized by a fixed camera position and film “strobing” or flashing, and were not intended to teach or entertain, but to illuminate and unsettle the inner catacombs of the human psyche. These films were often likened to experiencing LSD (a drug that was still legal in 1966) and came to be understood as “psychedelic” cinema.   The Flicker
 Tony Conrad / USA / 1966 / 30 min. / 16mm This film emits a constant strobe effect that can cause the illusion of color and the...

Our trend spotter, Claus Löser, a German film curator and historian, has once again selected a handful of the most outstanding short films from the large pool of high quality shorts from Germany. Among them the award-winning ”Das offenbare Geheimnis” (An Apparent Secret) by Eva Könnemann who herself will be present at the festival and discuss her film with Claus Löser.   Hochbrücke Brunsbüttel (Brunsbuettel Bridge) Karsten Wiesel / Germany / 2015 / 12 min. / Digital Experimental short film about one of Germany’s longest bridges, a huge concrete structure over the North East Sea canal. Won awards at several festivals. The...

The five films here are thematically connected. Each in its own way deals with human beings, objects or infrastructure related to the topic of work. There is the phenomenon of “cold hands:”  work that requires no physical labor beyond clerical practicalities, work that produces no visible or concrete result. The kind of work that most people in a post-industrial society make a living by. This nourishes a longing for the materials, the textures and physical properties of hands-on labor, a desire to master a trade, a craft, a traditional profession – something these films represent. Can these films offer us an escape from the physical...

The Flensburg short film festival, Flensburger Kurzfilmtage, presents highlights from 2015. Festival director Karsten Wiesel will introduce the highlights that feature eight German short films. Among them two award-winning films, one for best animation, “AlieNation” by Laura Lehmus, and one for best experimental film, “Freedom & Independence” by the renowned experimental filmmaker Bjørn Melhus. Director Arne Bunk and co-director Tanja Bächlein will be present and introduce their short film “Eure Orte. Skizzen zur deutschen Kolonialarchitektur in Namibia. (Your Places. Sketches of German Colonial Architecture in...

How does one deal with the invisible issues which lurk in the corners of human psychology and inhabit all layers of the social structure? This film draws attention to some of the rather diffuse but nonetheless omnipresent and immediate quandaries, and brings the power of the camera to bear in making the unseen visible. Whether it involves a group of girls subjected to gendered pressure, the ill-informed expectations about identity harbored by three boys, or the demonstration of power of a whole nation that entails great consequences for average people, these films prove with glances, unsaid words, charged sentences and facial expressions...

Various techniques and strategies of the modern documentary film, from disassociated sound and image to casual staging, non-linear progression and fiercely subjective viewpoints were first explored in short experimental and underground films. Tonight we offer a diverse sampling of some of these shorts that paved the way to a new understanding of how we consider our world on film. All movies in English when dialogue is present.   O Dreamland Lindsay Anderson / USA / 1953 / 13 min. / 16mm This breezy “day in the life” of the amusement park in Margate. England was an important contribution to the British Free Cinema movement of the...

Sharna Pax presents a program of five short films concerning socially and politically loaded spatial structures. They extract hidden or barely perceptible configurations; under ground, of the facade, in public and in virtual worlds through a variety of formal gestures and modes of experimentation.   by Zachary Epcar Under the Heat Lamp an Opening Zachary Epcar / USA, Spain / 2014 / 10 min. / 16mm on HD Here Zachary Epcar offers an expanded view of the lunch crowd at an open-air restaurant, from a bird’s-eye of the exterior to the depths of the interior.     by Kevin Jerome Everson Courtesy the artist; Trilobite-Arts...