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10th International Short Film Festival Berlin 1992

Babylon, Volksbühne, Im Eimer, Friseur der Botschaft.

In 1992, the 10th festival took place at the Filmkunsthaus Babylon and was more retrospective in nature. Programs from Russia and the former GDR were shown. The current competition focused on films from Cuba, Japan and Denmark. Films by Lars von Trier and Nanni Moretti were also shown.

INTERVIPFILM SPECIAL is on the one hand dedicated to super-eight film in a retrospective, on the other hand filmmakers from Japan, Russia, Denmark, England, Cuba and Austria were invited to present whole program blocks.

In 5 program blocks new and old film and video productions from all over the world will be shown mixed together. Nani Moretti and Lars von Trier are represented with their debut works and performances and installations are also back in the program. There will be the filmmaker breakfast, discussions and parties and guests from 14 countries and 4 continents will be present at the festival. Unfortunately, due to lack of space, we could not show all the films we wanted to show or should have shown in a retrospective program.

Among many that are not represented enough, I would like to mention the "Teufelsbergfilm Produktion", the "Brigade Zeitgewinn" and the "Film und Pfennig Produktion" from Berlin, the "Schmelz Dahin" group from Bonn and the "Alten Kinder" from Bielefeld, as well as Michael Krause, Jo Schäfer, Katarina Peters, Klaus Dörries, Dirk Baranek, Christoph Janetzko, Axel Brand and Annette Maschmann, Diego Risquez, Cesary Javorski, Rox Lee, Atoine Strip Pick es, Virginia Murray, Paul Garrin and many more. This list could go on and on and I hope that no one feels left out anyway.

After 11 years, it is up to the Senator for Cultural Affairs to give the festival a chance to continue. With the minimal financial support we have received so far, this is no longer possible. Berlin and its film landscape is large enough to be able to afford an independent and already established film festival outside of the Berlinale. There is even a need for an international film festival like "we are" which is dedicated to young, independent film, especially short film, since the Berlinale does this only to a disproportionate extent. It is not enough that Berlin talks about improvements to promote no/low budget film, but these films m'ust also have a forum where they can be shown and where an exchange can take place on an international level.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Program

    Program GDR The Super 8 film in the GDR
    Program Japan Independent Women Filmmakers in Japan
    Program Cuba New Cuban Short Films and Videos
    Program Denmark Experimental Films in Denmark
    Program Russia New Russian Short Films
    Lesbian / Gay Film Night
    Program Mark Adrian Mark Adrian and his films
    Program Lars von Trier Lars von Trier- Images of a Relief
    Program Nanni Moretti Nanni Moretti - I am an autarkist
    Program Kassandra Wellendorf
    Program Tony Hill
    Video Program
    Film program 1
    Film program 2
    Film program 3
    Film program 4
    A Super 8 film by 11 filmmakers There is something contagious about freedom
    All the power of Super 8 Berlin Super 8 underground filmmakers introduce themselves
    Project overnight famous project (films from Austria, Canada / Germany)
    A film in 13 episodes Home of OYKO
    Where were the wild 60s? A package of 8mm films
    Special effects in Super 8 film A package of 8mm films
    Special program ANGELIKA Fifteen short films
    Performances Think Global; Do Local The Projected Sound Installation Tantalus

The Super 8 film in the GDR

The conditions were adventurous. There were mainly Russian cameras to buy in the GDR, ones that could be wound up. The 30-second editing rhythm prevailed. No sound track! Given the dictates of censorship, this almost seems like an agreement: The ambivalence of the images was not startled by the spoken word. Wagner or live music cheered the images, but rarely a word. The projectors (the nightmare Meos duo), noisy and notorious for their film frenzy, were accompanied in parallel by cassette records. The image-sound synchronicity had to be left to chance; each screening turned into a premiere. (Adventure No.2: The fact that individuals were scouring life with a camera drove ordinary citizens and volunteers into a panic. The blacklist of everything that was not allowed to be filmed was not available, but it was long. About everything that could not identify itself as touristy).

But technically disastrous conditions, the gathering of resistances and restricted zones, gave rise to the woodsy "charm" of the pictures. There were perhaps 30 super-artists working with self-made devices in their closet, who knew nothing about each other for a long time, until the first festival was initiated at the Dresden Art Academy in 1987. The surprise was great to meet like-minded people from all over the republic. For the first time, parallels and lines could be drawn: Abstract film predominated, setting the symphonies of the big cities in motion - via double projection, as sentimental schmaltz, peppered with vermin, monumental. The lockstep of the parades, the senile waving and clapping rituals, the celebrated through-industrialization of the country, mass rallies did not ask about the individual.

But with a Super 8 camera, one could encounter this and counter it with one's own imagery. The militancy of everyday life translated into a hurled, angry montage. Mountains of trash, decaying industry, crumbling houses were popular subjects. This aesthetic of the morbid reflected the state of mind of the country most meaningfully. In view of the standard DEFA and Aktuelle Kamera versions, this was where the provocation came in. Another tendency: small stories that told of murder, officials and marriages. The lack of language led to recourse to silent film aesthetics, such as the insertion of written panels as well as the (dramaturgically often immoderate) use of illustrative music. Small films that played with genre cinema and simply indulged in the pleasure of filmmaking. Political content tended to be the exception. Crammed with the 'achievements of socialism', the longing for the private and individual prevailed - and at the same time represented an affront.

A considerable number of the filmmakers came not from film but from the visual arts. These image-violent artists had a major influence on the scene; they worked with the material (without restraint, the image surface was scratched, dyed, painted over, exposed to bio-cultures), and were involved in performances, exhibitions and multimedia events. Here, the Super-8 film often came closest to itself - namely, neither as a substitute for non-existent video technology or home cinema, but as a subculture's search for language, as an experiment, as a citizen's shock. No less exciting could be reported about all the hickhack and the absurdities of the struggle for the screenings of Super-8 films in any form.

Literature remained limited by the lack of any copying possibilities, visual art was elitistly circumscribed, theater was officially observed, photography was limited to silent documents. But films, which according to Lenin were already the most effective propaganda tool as a mass medium, required new strategies. Events banned at short notice, confiscations, the attempt to regain state control through the introduction of "film tickets" are only examples, and in the end they could not prevent the sheets stretched out in the backyard and the rattling of the projectors. The machinery of prevention was never in proportion to the modesty of the films. The complete ignorance of the history of "underground film" elsewhere and at other times, set as the only yardstick one's own state of mind. A certain insouciance was not absent.

There was a real, small Super 8 world: its own festival, its own newspaper (Koma-Kino - circulation: 20 copies, hand-duplicated), its own critics and a lively exchange of recommendations whenever the opportunity to show a film arose somewhere. Today, this scene has dissolved into complete nothingness. Apart from revivals, only the images of a sunken world remain.

Cornelia Klauß