MANIFESTOS

When we speak of documentary film, we routinely think of films that picture life as is. Once in a while, it needs to be called to mind that documentaries involve interpretation. Nor do we normally see that the filmmakers engage in a relationship with their protagonists, which may suggest calling such films collaborative achievements. And, last but not least, the word ‘documentary’ does not express the effect those films have on ourselves, because any good film leaves us a different person than we were before we saw it. Empathy, courage, openness, clarity, insight and poetry – that’s what we, as audience, can take away.

The films we want to show have the potential of linking a diversity of stories and experiences from rural places and provinces all around the world and to foster a dialogue between filmmakers and audience, perhaps even involving the protagonists. They promote the will to expose ourselves to the world, not by means of agitation, but by describing things and appealing to our willingness to challenge and change our own positions.

Aesthetically, we conceive of our long documentaries programme to be neither pure enjoyment nor uncompromising denunciation. Enjoying a film is a good thing, but it may not always be possible. Some stories possibly cannot be told in terms other than those of terror. Then, the film has to build trust in us that the story is worth telling at all. It is this power which makes a good documentary.

Kenneth Anders, Udo Muszynski, Sven Wallrath

Programme Advisory Board 2015

In 2013, Filmfest Eberswalde enlarged its field of competition with a new category of Short Documentaries, all under 45 minutes in length but still dedicated to the theme of Province and presented to the audience as a separate competition block. The films we pick for this category cast varied lights on various living environments and discuss topical landscape issues. Our intention, as Advisory Board, is to consolidate and strengthen the peculiar character of the category. Broadly as the topic of Province may be understood, it will distinctly shape our selection of films.

Why do we have two time-based categories for documentaries at all?
The answer is that for those who design the programme it became more and more difficult to let short and long documentaries plausibly compete with each other in one block.
As with feature films, the short documentary seems to lead a shadowy existence compared with its big, longer sibling. Cinéastes often dismiss these films as mere warming-up exercises or belonging to TV and place little value on them.

But, as we have found from the first year on, it takes more than just interesting subjects and outstanding protagonists to make a short documentary worth watching. The genre compels filmmakers to reduce their scale. They must be able to put things concisely and get down to their core issues quickly while still entertaining their audience. This is far from being an easy task. Thus, when we select our candidates, we have a strong focus on the narrative form. Some writers leave it to one of their protagonists to tell the story, some give us only part of a bigger picture, still others compile original and often artistic essays from images, text and soundbites.
Ideally, we hope to present our audience with a fresh little anthology every year of short documentaries discussing how people relate to the environments they live in. Viewed as a whole, these programmes might then give a bigger picture without making individual contributions lose their originality.

Tobias Hartmann, Andreas Gläßer, Thomas Winkelkotte
Programme Advisory Board 2015

About the kind of short feature films we’d like best to show at the Provinziale but rarely manage to find.

The hundreds of films of up to 30 minutes’ length we receive and review for the Provinziale competition every year examine almost every conceivable dimension of human life and living together. In this universe of made-up commentary on our society’s here and now, we are in search of films whose aesthetic experience is enough of a challenge to make us wish to share them with others. Cinematic quality, of course, plays a vital role – for a badly crafted film cannot tell a good story – but is not decisive alone in our selection process. The artistic power of films also depends on whether they succeed in relating ourselves to the world around us, stirring our emotions and compelling us to take position.
Every year we find films that stand up to these demands, among them ones that let us look profoundly into the souls and entanglements of individual characters, reveal the blackest depths of humanity, explore concepts of happiness and trace the toils of everyday life. Some filmmakers consciously design their short cinematic narratives as mirrors of society and their protagonists as resonators of how it shapes, conditions and inspires human beings and, vice versa, how people leave their marks on society.

What is still very hard to find, though, is short feature films that place importance on environments as determining their characters’ lives. Humans are explorers of their environment. Our lives depend on our taking possession of the space and landscape around us. We produce and shape these environments by the way we live together and they also inscribe themselves into our minds and sensual capacities. It makes a difference where someone grew up – small town, village, hermitage, melting pot, home or abroad, with or without a place of their own – but the fact that environment determines life is still rarely made a topic in its own right. People’s environments are more than just a backdrop for their lives, more or less carefully chosen. It is there that personal and social life takes shape, no matter whether the individual may fail or succeed in the process.
To look for and bring to the screen short feature films that relate how environments determine our lives as individuals and as a society shall be our task, then, for the years to come.

Katja Ziebarth, Sascha Leeske und Lars Fischer

Programme Advisory Board 2015

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.