Last year, when we at Daazo.com – The European Short Film Centre – decided to make short interviews with some of the directors from the Berlinale Shorts competition, we did not really believe at first that we had found such a big black hole in the film industry.
On the one hand, it was a disappointment that the accomplished ‘established’ media had nothing else in their sights but red-carpet with A-listers and the world of feature films. On the other hand, we felt that this was the perfect time to create a World of Shorts.
It started as no-budget blog entries, continued as low-budget, but beautifully designed, .pdf magazines at the Cannes and Sarajevo IFFs, and now we have got to the point when we are able to print a real live, proper, paper magazine, with the same creativity and enthusiasm as standard of course!
The Berlinale is the perfect occasion to come up with the printed version of World of Shorts. This is a well-cu-rated short film competition, which presents one-minute spicy animations
to 30-minute-long heavyweights – no matter who they come from, whether it’s an accomplished director or a newcomer.
Nothing else counts: just the overall quality and style of the work and – even more important – the general standards of the Berlinale: being personal, self-reflecting and telling a universal story, having it worked out with the filmmaker’s own handwriting. So we asked this year’s Berlinale Shorts directors to map their minds and send us a drawing if their films. It could be a symbol, a landscape or the main character’s childhood phobias – anything. There were no rules. Just pure, spontaneous thought-drawing.
There is no doubt that the Talent Campus is one of the most important forums of today’s short film marketplace. Nowhere else do so many young filmmakers come together to get to know each other and to get familiar with the freshest waves in the film industry – both from an artistic and technical point of view. Besides having lectures about the newest 3D technologies and the new ways of short film distribution, the Talent Campus has an even more important aspect: it provides
self-awareness for young people who have just started their career in the filmmaking business.
After participating in the Talent Campus they can identify themselves as professional filmmakers, who are part of an international network with dozens of contacts. You can read about the expectations of this year’s talents, and we also asked Zaid Abu Hamdan to tell his own charming success story after having taken part in the Talent Campus.
We strongly believe that the current climate – despite the economical difficulties – is perfect for the brand new world of short films. As we experience day by day, there are more and more new platforms for presenting shorts: smart phones, smart TVs, tablets, VOD platforms etc. People need and want these gadgets, but the really exciting news is that these gadgets (and their manufacturers) need talented people who create content to watch and enjoy. So there are plenty of opportunities for young filmmakers, which is good news, but that alone doesn’t make things simple: being up-to-date is crucial in this business. That’s what we do with the World of Shorts magazine.
But this is just a part of our job regarding short films. We also have a freshly redesigned community web platform: www.daazo.com, where you can watch quality short films, upload your own works to build your portfolio or submit them to film contests to win valuable prizes. You can find us on mobile platforms, smart TVs, tablets, etc., and we also organise short film events.
So we welcome everybody to the World of Shorts. We would be very glad to be your guide during the Berlinale’s short film-related programmes and we hope you will stay with Daazo.com and the World of Shorts magazine for the rest of the year too.
Digitally yours, the Daazo team
