Mavericks, Mouvements, Manifestos:Oberhausen honours the 50th anniversary of the Oberhausen Manifesto with a programme of rare films
“The old film is dead. We believe in the new one.”
(Oberhausen Manifesto, 28 February 1962)
The 58th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Oberhausen Manifesto (28 February 2012) with a large-scale thematic programme entitled “Provoking Reality: Mavericks, Mouvements, Manifesto”. To honour the anniversary of the Manifesto, perhaps the single most important group document in German film history, the festival has compiled a selection of films of the signatories, many of which have not been shown for decades and had to be restored expressly for the programme.
In addition, Oberhausen will look at the Manifesto in the context of its age. All over the world, people were coming together to try to change cinema at the time, often enough declaring their plans through manifestos. The festival will present five movements from five different countries which reflect the whole spectrum of efforts undertaken in those years to shake up prevailing conditions. The central question of all programmes will be what the manifestos of the past can teach us about the present-day state of art and cinema culture(s).
In 1959 the Balázs Béla Stúdió was founded in Hungary as a field for experimentation beyond the official cinema; the New American Cinema Group around Jonas Mekas, in its First Statement in summer 1961, demanded radical change in the US cinema; in April 1964 more than 80 Japanese filmmakers came together to establish the Eiga geijutsu no kai (Film Art Society) in an effort to reform documentary film from the ground up. As early as 1953, the Groupe des Trente in France published its manifesto in defence of the short film, while in the late 1950s in Sweden a cohort rallied around museum founder and curator Pontus Hultén, whose efforts to link the visual arts with experimental film are just as pertinent today as they were then.
In addition to the film programmes, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen will organise a panel discussion about temporary affiliations between filmmakers, artists and intellectuals who make themselves heard through manifestos - and whether they’re fit to face present-day challenges.
The 50th anniversary of the Oberhausen Manifesto will also be marked by the release in spring 2012 of a double DVD in the “Edition Filmmuseum” series containing around 20 works by the signatories of the Manifesto produced between 1957 to 1965. The festival will also see the presentation of a collection of essays, documents and conversations entitled “Provokation der Wirklichkeit. Das Oberhausener Manifest und die Folgen” and published by edition text + kritik (German language only).
Supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.
Other programmes of the 58th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen include profiles of artists Linda Christanell , Vera Neubauer , Ilppo Pohjola and Roee Rosen .
xx - posted on 23/05/2012 13:13:28
