International Short Film Festival Oberhausen

Following the great success of last year’s Oberhausen International Short Film Festival Tour, in Cyprus, ARTos Foundation in collaboration with the Goethe Institut are proud to welcome the screening of the ‘International Competition 2014’ film programme of the 2014 Short Film Tour, which will take place on the 3 March 2016 at 20:30, at ARTos Foundation.

The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen has been part of the highly charged field of short films for over 50 years now, as a catalyst and a showcase for contemporary developments, a forum for what are often heated discussions, a discoverer of new trends and talent, and not least as one of the most important short film institutions anywhere in the world. Some 6,000 films submitted on average per year, around 500 films shown in the festival programmes and over 1,100 accredited industry professionals are proof enough.

In the course of more than five decades, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen has become one of the world's most respected film events - a place where filmmakers and artists ranging from Roman Polanski to Cate Shortland, from George Lucas to Pipilotti Rist have presented their first films. Oberhausen has managed to instigate various political and aesthetical developments, for instance through perhaps the most important group document in the history of German film. Careful programming and a pioneering choice of subjects has helped the Festival to build up its exclusive position in an increasingly unpredictable market.

Free Admission
English & German Language
English subtitles

Screening Program & Synopses:

International Competition 2014 (Running time 96')
Every year, some 60 works are selected from nearly 4,000 entries to compete in the world’s oldest short film competition. This programme now brings together some of the best and most interesting works featured in the 2014 International Competition. On show are five award-winning international films that revolve around the serious themes of memory, loneliness and isolation but always with some bright, positive highlights. Teboho Edkins, for example, explores in his documentary with a playful twist the complex realities of life on the fringes of Cape Town society, where the spectre of death is always imminent. Maria Kourkouta tries to regain a sense of belonging by combining found footage with poetry and music into a multi-layered collage. And Neeuklidinė Geometrija uses sometimes perplexing but always outstandingly animated images to tell of the apparently finite nature of love. The grand cinema of the short form is here to be discovered in a specially selected programme.

Epistrofi Stin Odo Aiolu (Returning to Aeolus Street)
France / Greece 2013, 14', by Maria Kourkouta
Greek with English subtitles
Synopsis: Found footage film, an audio-visual collage of a journey through modern Greece and through downtown Athens.

Neeuklidinė Geometrija (Non-Euclidean Geometry)
Lithuania 2013, 11', by Skirmanta Jakaitė / Solveiga Masteikaitė
No dialogue
Synopsis: Where does love go when lovers break apart? Or when they stay together? What becomes of our love after death? Is it really that important or simply inevitable?

A Million Miles Away
USA 2014, 28', by Jennifer Reeder
English
Synopsis: An adult woman on the edge of failing and a pack of teenage girls simultaneously experience a supernatural version of coming-of-age. The transformation is equal parts tense and tender.

Exorcize Me
Singapore 2013, 3', by Ang Sookoon
No dialogue
Synopsis: Exorcize Me addresses coming-of-age anxiety, teenage alienation and the confusing phase between childhood and adulthood.

Gangster Backstage
France / South Africa 2013, 37'30'', by Teboho Edkins
English
Synopsis: A documentary film with gangsters in Cape Town that moves between a casting and an empty theatre space.