interfilm 1996

The more improbable a promise is, the more easily it is believed, the more absurd an assertion, the more followers it will find" (after note by Kurt Jürgen Huch/ 1992 to Charles Mackay's "Signs and Wonders - From the Annals of Madness"/ 1852).

We want to draw attention to the fact that even today occultism, superstition and mass delusion are omnipresent, often without being recognized; partly hidden or have become a part of everyday life: Television, lotteries, game shows, computer games, televangelists, fortune telling and horoscopes, mass delusions at football games and music events, the collective techno party frenzy.

New drugs are being consumed, and the cults cannot complain about a lack of newcomers.

New mythmakers have appeared on the scene: Internet, multi-media and cyberspace. Dissatisfaction with one's own fate is as old as man himself and has given rise to the most diverse forms of coping. Much more could be listed here.

We want to provide food for thought by offering thematically organized competition programs, special programs and lectures. "The idea, as if mankind could be freed from its desire for the inexplicable, from its unreasonable wishes and hopes, from its manifold miracle dreams, in a word. from its unconscious, belongs for its part to the realm of superstition." (After note by Kurt Jürgen Huch/1992 to Charles Mackay's "Signs and Wonders - From the Annals of Madness"/ 1852)

We are a film festival that offers young Eilmund videomakers from all over the world a forum for their productions and also shows some of these films after the festival in numerous countries and cities. From around 600 submitted works and after traveling through Italy, Norway, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Colombia, we have put together a program of over 250 films and videos. We expect many guests from home and abroad. In the competition 80 films and videos will be presented, in total productions from 27 countries will be screened. In May 1896, the Lumiere brothers showed their films on the film projector they developed in Treptower Park as part of an industrial exhibition. 100 years later, we are showing them at the opening of our 13th International Short Film Festival in the Martin-Gropius-Bau with newly restored prints and an informative as well as entertaining introduction by Thierry Frömaux, from the Institut Lumiere in Lyon.

Great Britain celebrates 100 years of cinema history in 1996, a year later than elsewhere. Our program, too, has become a cross-section of film history. Beginning in 1895 with the films of the Lumiere brothers, we move on to the surrealist animated films of the Russian Starewicz, produced in Russia and France in the years 1911 - 1933, to the 3 episodes of the machine man "Homunculus" by Otto Rippert from 1916. The films of the Drug Scare program, which warns us of the dangers of various drugs, were produced between 1936 and 1972. Retrospectively we show a selection of Jan Svankmajer's ingenious surrealistic animations from 1960 -1990.

Via the competition films produced in recent years on all film and video formats, we finally come to the programs "Escape to Transcyberia" and "Opera Imaginaire". These techno and opera music interpretations, are mainly computer animations. "The Sphinx, which poses its riddles to man, is, it should never be forgotten, a monster. And monstrosities will also be encountered by those who are not afraid to look her firmly in the eye." (Magic and Starry Magic - Ralph Tegtmeier)

After 15 years of existence of the interfilm - Festival and my also 15 years of work for it, the 13th festival will probably also be the last. interfilm is looking for new sources of financing, since neither the Berlin Senate for Culture nor the Filmboard Berlin-Brandenburg guarantee the necessary basis.

We have put together an interesting and diverse program and wish the guests and viewers at the 13th Berlin International Short Film Festival something to think about and a lot of fun in the cinemas and at the many parties and events that will take place, especially on the event ship MS Sanssouci.

Berlin Collection: Berliner Videos at MS Sanssouci

The compilation of VideoKunstMuItiMedia e.V. offers an insight into the collection of videotapes by artists living in Berlin. In total, more than 350 works by more than 25 authors have been archived there since the end of the seventies until today. In these more than fifteen years, different tapes have been created, whose broad spectrum ranges from documentary orientation to narrative to experimental form and all conceivable combinations of these approaches.

Video and media art in Berlin? Does it exist?

Apart from a few temporary exceptions, Berlin has no real continuous forum or lobby for artistic media work that attempts to contrast the anonymous images and sounds we know from television with a personal touch. Experimental videography or video poetics, although registered as an art form, is still relegated to a peripheral fringe position.

In addition to previous activities, such as editing television programs about video art, co-productions, video events and exhibitions, the collection created is an archive unique in the Federal Republic and a real treasure trove on video culture. Heiko Daxl

Program - Competition

    Tele Visions
    Believe it or not
    Expectation enclosed
    Throwing Stones
    Blackouts
    Spirits in a Circle
    Untold Stories O
    ther Places
    Sisyphos
    Escape to Transcyberia

Special programs
    Die Gebrüder Lumiere
    Shorts of Famous Directors
    Drug Scare
    Programm Russische Animationsfilme 1911-33
    Jan Svankmajer
    Strange Love
    As in Heaven
    Homunculus-Reihe
    Lie Down with Dogs
    British Shorts
    Twilight Tales from Tallahassee
    Isländische Kurzfilme
    Kolumbianische Filme & Videos
    Buried in Light Opera
    Imaginaire interfilm 12: "Das Böse" & "Der Trieb"
    Golden Bucket Night
    Videos International
    Berlin Collection (Videos)
    Videoinstallationen

Lecture
    Mythos und Magie im Film