The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen has posted its greatest ever response for the sixth edition of its short film tour “Oberhausen on Tour”: 49 venues in 21 countries are taking part, more than ever since the introduction of the event in 2003.
The tour kicks off on 13 January 2012 in Wiesbaden’s Caligari Filmbühne, with the last stop at the Lichtspiel Kinemathek in Berne on 14 June. Between these two dates, the seven short film programmes will travel from Munich to Hamburg, Santiago de Compostela to Istanbul, and from Johannesburg to San Luisi Potosi.
It will be mainly non-commercial repertory cinemas and arthouse theatres who are participating in “Oberhausen on Tour” – from Leipzig’s Kinobar Prager Frühling (Prague Spring) through to the Teatro San Martín in Buenos Aires. The other venues include Goethe Institutes as well as numerous arts and culture centres around the globe. “Oberhausen on Tour” will be making stops in 18 cities in Germany, and there will be a small focus in NRW with screenings in Bochum, Bonn, Düsseldorf, Cologne and Münster.
They will be joined by 19 cities in the rest of Europe and 12 worldwide. No less than ten of these are in South America which will thus represent a special focus for this edition of “Oberhausen on Tour”. The Festival has had Spanish subtitled prints specially produced for the screenings in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Mexico.
Seven short film programmes from the Oberhausen distribution catalogue are featured in the tour schedule. They include prize-winners and highlights from the 2011 competitions, a programme with artists’ films, the music videos from the MuVi Award 2011 and, for the first time, a programme of children’s films. In addition, the Festival has compiled two thematic programmes with discoveries from its archive under the headings of “Surreal/Political” and “Migration.”
“Oberhausen on Tour” brings the festival to the audience. The aim of the programme is to make the works from Oberhausen accessible to an interested audience in those places where the journey to the Festival itself is difficult or impossible. “So, it is especially important for us to support our partner cinemas in their work as best as we can: with ready-made feature-length programmes, with posters and promotional material”, project manager Carsten Spicher says. “The programme’s success shows that the short film in cinemas is far from dead.”
