AWARDS & JURY 2019

Every day via technology, humankind seems to be reducing the physical dimensions of the world of objects and even our need to interact with them to the absolute minimum. This has provoked me as a designer to ask myself is the endgame actually to minimize everything down to energy and nothing more? Is the Modernist expression ‘Less is more’ to be worshiped – or criticized?

With this in mind, the ‘e’ trophy has become a reduced raw expression of digital visual communication and has been produced using state of the art 3D printing technology. Video-‘Film’ as digitally projected signals is simply stated, the ‘signals’ describe an ‘e’ which finally manifests itself as colours on a ‘flat’ surface. Perhaps in the future this design will simply be transparent…?

The exception to the design for the main 6 categories is the design for the new category: ‘The PRICKLE’. This object has by nature of the theme ‘Sustainability’ to have a more serious persona. Produced from both PLA and recycled plastic, it is designed to convey the seriousness of ‘Sustainability’ which is an issue that grows bigger and more critical every day.
Driven by the Filmfest Eberswalde ‘PROVINZIALE’ concept, a number of positives have emerged during the design phase: The ‘e’ is manufactured from the ‘stuff’ of the Provinces, that is ‘PLA’ (Poly Lactic Acid) derived from plant based starch which is bio-generated and biodegradable. Furthermore, the 3D printable data generation and the production of the trophies was handled by YOUin3D, a young company based in Berlin Mitte, thereby supporting smaller ‘seed’ idea generators, the likes of whom could emerge anywhere at any time – essential for the perpetuation of provincial life.

Richard Hurding, Designer,
Joachimsthal/UNESCO Biosphere Schorfheide-Chorin
Zelfo Technology / BIORAMA-Projekt

The international competition will be held in the categories of Documentary Film and Short Feature Film. There are no restrictions as to the filmmakers and their origins.
From the films sent in, the programme advisory boards select those that will take part in the competition. The ‘e’ prize will be awarded by a jury at the end of the festival for overall artistic performance in each category.

In the Documentary Film category, the jury decides on the winner of the PROVINZIALE, which will be the best film on the subject of province.

The award is meant as an encouragement to the prize winners for their achievement.

• Award for the best documentary film in the PROVINZIALE competition: 4,000 EUR, donated by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy of the State of Brandenburg
• Award for the best short feature film: 2,000 EUR

Festival visitors can decide on four audience awards, one in each of the Documentary Film, Short Documentary, Short Feature Film and Animated Film categories. Ballots will be issued before each screening. The counting of votes is closed to the public.

• Audience award for the best documentary film: 1,000 EUR
  donated by the mayor of Eberswalde
• Audience award for the best short documentary film 1,000 EUR
• Audience award for the best short feature film 1,000 EUR donated by Sparkasse Barnim
• Audience award for the best animated film 1,000 EUR

Constanze Fischbeck

Constanze Fischbeck works as a set decorator, filmmaker and curator. She lives in Berlin. Her works originate in her ideas of space, the present and the social context of specific places. Her films link analyses of space with staged discourse, performativeand documentary elements. Many of them have been created collaboratively and in dialogue with film directors, choreographers and artists. From 2009 to 2015 she developed the international research, film and art project state theatre #1-6 (with Daniel Kötter), based in Lagos, Teheran, Berlin, Detroit, Beirut and Mönchengladbach, which deals comprehensively with the conditions in performative places.

Moritz Springer

Moritz Springer works as an author and film director. He was born in Starnberg in 1979 but started dreaming about a different life early. After detours to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Switzerland, he now lives with his friends and family on a farm near Berlin. Following various feature film experiences and short projects of his own, he created hisdocumentary debut JOURNEY TO JAH in 2014. The film won the audience award at the Zurich Filmfest and the DEFA Foundation Award of the Max Ophüls competition. His second documentary, Project A, won the audience award at the 2015 Munich Filmfest and, with more than 25,000 viewers, was a German box-office success in 2016.

Ralph Eue

Ralph Eue is a cinema historian, curator, publicist and translator. He was a trainee in Berlin and Vienna. Today he works as a programme advisor to international cultural institutions. He was Artistic Director for the events “Provokation der Wirklichkeit. das Oberhausener Manifest und die Folgen” (2012) and “Susan Sontag revisited” (2015). Since 2017 he has been Programme Director for DOK Leipzig.

Antje Schiffers

Antje Schiffers is a visual artist and has been associated with the Filmfest through the Farmers‘ Film Night event for three years.

© Photo by Lena Gansmann

Marion Brasch

Marion Brasch was born in East Berlin in 1961 and completed an apprenticeship as a typesetter. After finishing higher school, she worked for a printing company, various publishing houses, the East German composers‘ association and a radio station. She has been a writer of fiction since 2011.

© Photo by Holmsohn

Mostafa Gandomkar

Mostafa Gandomkar was born in Iran in 1986. He studied Cinema at the Tehran University of Art. He is currently teaching at some universities and at the Iranian Youth Cinema Society. He began with photography and the making of documentary films, and he is now a producer and director. At the 15th PROVINCIALE his short feature film “Alan” won the jury prize -short feature film.

How can we live without jeopardising ourselves? The question is a long-standing one. The answers attempted so far have included not only plain scientific balances but also our endeavours to lead a life worth living, in view of the variety and unrestfulness of our desires. Whether our ever-more-radical appropriations of nature will save us or kill us has been a cause for argument whenever new technologies arose.

The present discourse on sustainability has turned this argument into a promise: It seems to be only a matter of time and good will to build a society that has made its peace with nature. Do we have good reason for such optimism? Or is what we call a sustainable way of living an issue to be tackled afresh every day? Do we maybe need some kind of thorn to prick us every now and then, reminding us that we need to rethink our own practice?

Every year, we admit films with prickles to our competitions: documentaries, animated and feature films which contribute to the sustainability debate in a productive way.

What we are looking for is a film that tells neither tidings of joy nor messages of doom; a film that deliberately upsets our well-studied stances, allows for uncertainty and traces contradictions.

From 2017 on, PROVINZIALE and Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development will award the PRICKLE special prize for the best cinematic contribution to this ongoing issue of our time, sustainability.

A total of nine entries have been nominated for the PRICKLE by this year’s programme advisory boards. Among these are three long and three short documentaries and three short feature films. The candidates are marked in the programmes.

• “THE PRICKLE” special award: 1,000 EUR donated by Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development

Kerstin Kräusche

Kerstin Kräusche has been working in corporate environmental management since 1992. In 2007, she started working at Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development (HNEE), where she has now been holding the position of Sustainability Manager since 2014. Her duties include coordinating, designing and linking aspects of sustainability with internal management workflows, teaching and research. One of her main concerns at her job is to offer opportunities for participation to the university’s students and associates as well as exchange with regional partners and other universities.

© Photo by Ulrich Wessollek

Christian Mehnert

Christian Mehnert, born 1978 in Schwedt, took over the director‘s post at Barnimer Dienstleistungsgesellschaft mbH, responsible for private waste disposal in the district of Barnim, in 2012. Since 2017, he has been Managing Director for the Kreiswerke Barnim GmbH utility company, whose key areas are renewable energy generation, recycling, sustainable mobility, regional value creation and aligning community enterprises with the district‘s zero-emission strategy.

© Photo by Torsten Stapel

Anja Neumann

Anja Neumann graduated in Scandinavian studies, music and media and European cultural history, where her focus was on the interdisciplinary field of environmental history. In 2017, she went back to her hometown Eberswalde and worked for a project of the district‘s transition-town initiative wandelBar for two years, exploring the question how to embed climate protection and sustainabilty in daily life. As a sideline, Anja is a musician and artist and gives presentations on environmental history and bottom-up changes in politics.

© Photo by Christoff Gäbler

Clara Sophia Marie Klenk

Sophie Klenk has been studying regional management at the Faculty of Sustainable Business at Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development since 2017. A true film festival enthusiast, she has been head of the faculty‘s student representation since October 2018 and Student Vice President of the university since the 2019 winter semester.

© Photo by Alisa Suwe