PROGRAMME ADVISORY BOARDS

Of skin, flesh and stone – fruitful animations.

There are a multitude of ways to create animated films, making for a diversity we don’t want to restrict, for it brings colour. Yet techniques should be chosen for a reason, not at random. A film’s animation technique is like a skin enclosing and supporting the fruit of its contents. As such, it should be soft. We place value on personal, creative and lovingly made visualisations that take characteristic effect.

The flesh creates structure. It is the narrative the stone is embedded into. Some are sweet, some bitter, some hot, some juicy – there are many ways for animated films to tell a story. We look for films capable of bearing the tension between stone and skin: films that use their own specific techniques to deliver a capturing, surprising and consistent narrative.

But most of all we value the stone, that is, the content at the core of the story. And at the core we want solid matter: things that provoke thought, that rouse to action and untie communication. The stone should have weight enough to delve deep and provide a lasting impetus when the film is over. We look for small-scale and personal stories exemplifying the bigger picture.

At the end of the day, skin, flesh and stone have to become a fruit.

Nele Fischer, Almut Undisz und Steffen Neumann
Animation Film Programme Advisory Board

So much more than a backdrop – let places play a role
About the short feature films we prefer to show at the Provinziale.

Every year we receive and examine submissions from all quarters of the world to our short feature film competition, where the length of a film is limited to 30 minutes. They deal with almost all aspects of human life and living together, and they combine all forms conceivable: drama, comedy, experimental film. In this universe of commentary on our society’s here and now we have set out to look for films which give prominence to the places where people live, work and shape their world.

People are bound to places. Our lives depend on neighbourhoods and landscapes we can make our own. The places around us are products and expressions of our social lives, and they inscribe themselves into people’s sensual potentialities. It makes a difference whether someone grew up in a village, small town, hermitage, in the melting pot of a metropolis, feeling at home or being a stranger, with or without a roof over their head. We want this difference, the places life depends on, to be part of the play and receive attention. We look for films that make the places their plots are set in more than a backdrop. Because it is those places that shape individual and social life, no matter whether that life turns out a winning or losing game for each of us.
Cinematic qualities, of course, play an important role – a bad film cannot tell a good story – but are not the only thing we take into consideration when compiling our programme. In artistic terms, the quality of a film also depends on whether it concerns us, relates the world it describes to our own lives and asks for a response on our part. We look for films which involve a challenge strong enough to make us want to share and discuss them with other enthusiasts.

Each year, we find more and more films that live up to these standards. Which makes us confident that it’s worth continuing the search for short feature films that can have – and present – a place at the PROVINZIALE.

Katja Ziebarth, Sascha Leeske and Lars Fischer
Short Feature Film Programme Advisory Board

Translation soming soon.

Everyone needs their province

Once again this year, about 120 films were submitted to our competition. We’ve watched most of them from beginning to end because they seemed to fit in with our festival. We are happy about how our cause – to explore people’s relationships with their environment – has got about and how filmmakers respond to our invitations. However, it doesn’t make compiling a programme easier. Which films should we accept into the competition when so many are important to us?

The only thing we can do is make decisions with all our senses. Trustworthiness is an issue; the message of a film; the way filmmakers work with their protagonists; the adequateness of equipment and technology to the stories told; whether a film invites questions or nails down answers; whether we feel we get enough information to judge for ourselves or whether the preferred route of judgment has already been paved out. We like films we can trust with regard to these questions. They combine many things – depiction, sympathy, skill and clarity –, and this makes for their beauty, even when they make us feel sad.

People have a place where they live. Even when they have to flee that place, they are still somewhere. It is this somewhere, and how it shapes our lives, that this year’s competition remains committed to. More than ever, a lot of films revolve around the question where humans exposed to desctruction, impoverishment and deplacement can find shelter, safety and hope for the future. The subjects thus covered range from homeless children in Hungary to people who hold out in the contaminated Tchernobyl area because that’s where they feel at home. We do not judge their visions of life, but we want to understand them. Everyone needs a province of their own, and we all are in need of peace.

Kenneth Anders Udo Muszynski Sven Wallrath
Long Documentary Film Programme Advisory Board