interfilm 2011
500 films, 50 programmes, 6 competitions, international guests and festivals, close-ups and wide-angle views, ShortFriday, project presentations, concerts, parties ...
With an audience record of 16,000, the 27th International Short Film Festival Berlin came to a euphoric close on Sunday. 500 films from 68 countries were shown in 50 programmes during a successful festival week.
More than 500 accredited guests attended this year’s festival, 220 international and german filmmakers and 100 industry professionals,. Prizes amounting to € 36,000 were awarded in six competition categories.
A particular highlight of this year‘s interfilm Festival were the foreign focuses on Switzerland and Southeast Asia as well as the thematic spotlight on environment.
Ambitious events and new programme formats also triumphed: At Sound & Vision we turned down the sound on 8 short films and invited 8 music acts and sound artists to create live soundtracks. The sold out show at the Volksbuehne’s main stage was an impressive aural and visual feat. The first-ever Film+Fertig was such an entertaining success that it looks as though the competition is here to stay: 5 film crews made 5 films featuring 5 criteria in 5 days. The winner was announced at the lively Film+Fertig awards ceremony. Further festival events included the cinematic guessing-game at interfilm Quiz Night, a film project exchange at Pitch me! as well as Film Salons and out-of-the-ordinary programming such as Bike Shorts (literally that), Critically Short (film critics’ favourite films), Decibel (short films about musicians and music), music videos and various parties. Once again interfilm celebrated the seemingly infinite diversity of filmmaking in highly original and unforgettable ways!
We called in the digital revolution and ended up with brilliant image quality: this year we decided to take the leap and screen festival films using a hard disk player. We were blown away by the system’s stability! The audience were treated to a stunning visual feast! Just 10 % of this year’s films were sent on 35mm while the rest, after uploading, instead of being shown in a Beta MP4 format, could be projected onto the screen in HD.
