AWARDS & JURY

Dear festival audience,
We are happy that the changes to our award scheme introduced two years ago were met with interest, as was testified by the broad range of responses in our then newly introduced visitors’ book. The book will be available again this time, but we’re also planning to take our experimental journey with you one step further.

After having discarded our jury awards in favour of more remunerative audience awards for two years, we decided for the 20th Provinziale to offer not one but two audience awards in each category so as to take an even closer look at all of the submissions together with our audience. The two awards are meant to reflect different cinematic perspectives, and therefore we would like to ask you to rate the films under two different criteria this time:

1. Emotional impact: your immediate emotional response as might be expressed by a statement like ‘I love this film, it went straight to my heart.’ This is the kind of quality we would like you to assess first.

2. Relevance: here you can take a more analytical approach and ask how a film relates to Provinziale’s overarching thematic line. What does it reveal about people’s relationships with their land and what does it offer for us to learn? This should be the subject of the second score you give.

Along with this change, we are abandoning the idea of a single award (called the ‘e’ in recent years) in favour of two. And just like there are Golden Palms, Lions and Bears elsewhere, we will have a Rose (“Die Rose”) and a Thistle (“Die Distel”) – the Rose for emotional impact and the Thistle for relevance. Both awards will be accompanied by an artistically refined certificate and prize money.

• Long Documentary Audience Award
◦ Die Rose including €2,500 of prize money
◦ Die Distel including €2,500 of prize money
both donated by the Brandenburg State Ministry for Economic Affairs, Labour and Energy

• Short Documentary Audience Award
◦ Die Rose including €1,000 of prize money donated by the Mayor of Eberswalde
◦ Die Distel including €1,000 of prize money

• Short Feature Film Audience Award
◦ Die Rose including €1,000 of prize money donated by Sparkasse Barnim
◦ Die Distel including €1,000 of prize money

• Animated Film Audience Award
◦ Die Rose including €1,000 of prize money
◦ Die Distel including €1,000 of prize money
both donated by WHG Eberswalde Building and Housing Company

STACHEL, meaning ‘thorn’ or ‘prickle’, is the name of or sole jury award, which is to honour one entry across all genres. We are looking for a convincing cinematic work to present the most successful discussion of sustainability issues. Because sustainability, if taken seriously, is a perpetual process, not a hard and fast answer. The winning candidate will thus be one that enriches the debate with a both doubtful and powerful stance.

• DER STACHEL special award for the most successful cinematic discussion of sustainability issues, including €2,000 of prize money donated by Eberswalde University for Sustainably Development and Kreiswerke Barnim

This year’s nominees for the award, as selected by our Programme Board members, are:

Long Documentary

• URLAU(B) / WELCOME TO URLAU – Germany 2023
• PAATHKATHA / THE GOLDEN THREAD – India 2022
• TARA – Germany, Italy 2022
• YOON – Portugal, Senegal, Mauritania, Morocco, Spain 2021

Short Documentary

• GEAMĂNA – D 2022
• KAYU BESI – Germany, Indonesia 2022

Short Feature Film

• 夏至前天 / A BRIGHT SUNNY DAY – China, USA 2023
• NEGRO EL MAR / BLACK THE SEA – Colombia 2023

Prof Dr Uta Steinhardt
Uta Steinhardt has been a teacher and researcher at Eberswalde University (HNEE) since 2002, always in close cooperation with real-world institutions and following her belief that landscapes are at the core of sustainable development and that sustainability depends on both profound expertise in the environmental sciences and involving all those who inhabit and use the land. Since the autumn of 2021, Uta Steinhardt has been Vice President for Teaching and Study Programmes at HNEE. Her commitment to civil society includes working as a board member for Lokale Agenda Eberswalde, an association for the promotion of municipal development, since 2008.

Christian Mehnert
Christian Mehnert, born in Schwedt in 1978, has been Managing Director of the Kreiswerke Barnim utility company since 2016. From 2012-16, he was head of Barnimer Dienstleistungsgesellschaft, a subsidiary of Kreiswerke Barnim responsible for waste disposal in the district. Kreiswerke Barnim GmbH is a 100% subsidiary of the District of Barnim founded in December 2016 in order to pursue the district’s goal of re-shaping the region’s energy supply by investing in renewable power generation and improving the efficiency of both power generation and use together with the district’s municipalities.

Udo Muszynski
Udo Muszynski, born in 1961, is a freelancing event organiser who, for more than three decades, has been furnishing Eberswalde with a continuous flow of cultural events. Two items on this ongoing programme have been Jazz in E. – a Festival of Contemporary Music (since 1995) and Guten Morgen Eberswalde – Cultural Interventions, which has been taking place weekly since July 2007. For ten years, from 2009-19, Udo Muszynski was also a member of Provinziale’s Long Documentary Programme Board.