It is one of the formulations of the political and social issues of our time: the relationship between the individual and community or society, and how the individual can live in the latter's reality. Zhong Su's artwork, set in contemporary China, portrays this as the tale of an individual's search for knowledge and transcendence by displaying the reality he faces in a kaleidoscope of three synoptic perspectives. It starts as a "landscape" of the present and the technical, social, socialist-capitalist reality as an underwater world. It continues in the "passions", talking of social desires, goals and dogmas, before "history" captures the community through the ages and contexts in further stunning images. Zhong Su closes this interpretation of reality with a fourth chapter entitled "adaptation": based formally on J.L. Borges' "Book of Sand", but also related to the life of the individual as they are explorating, adapting and reworking reality in their quest to transcend it. He finds his obsession not in archaic collections of writings but in the endless preciousness of Holy Writings he encounters. His obsessive search for an experience of himself in a reality transcending the given reality becomes a mystic immersion in which he encounters self-knowledge. And yet it doesn't take him outside of himself: despite his obsessive self-knowledge he cannot escape himself. An epic short film work of art.
64th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen
At the International Short Film Festival 2018 the Ecumenical Jury awarded its Prize of 1500 € to the Chinese film "Magnificent Obsession". In addition, the Jury highlighted two films by Commendations, "Erh Hao chiu Yi" (On the Waitlist) from Taiwan and "Caterpillarplasty" from Canada. Further, the Jury awarded a Certificate to a film from the Children and Youth Film Competition, "Carlotta's Face" from Germany. It serves as a recommendation to acquire the non-commercial distribution rights by the church film distribution companies in Germany, Matthias Film (Protestant) and Katholisches Filmwerk (kfw).
The Grand Prize of the City of Oberhausen went to "Dėmės ir įbrėžimai" (Stains and Scratches) by Deimantas Narkevičius from Latvia, and the Principal Prize to "Hirografo" (Manuscript) by Eva Stefani from Greece. The jury of the international film critics (Fipresci) decided for the Russian film "Gimny Moscovii" (The Hymns of Moscow) by Dimitri Venkov.
The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen 2018 opened on May 3. The Ecumenical Jury awards its prize to a film of the International Competition and makes a recommendation for a film of the Children and Youth Film Competition. The festival also programs three other festival sections (German Competition, NRW Competition and Competition for Best Music Video MuVi).
In addition to the competitions, the festival offers numerous other programs. Under the title "Leaving the Cinema - Knokke, Hamburg, Oberhausen (1967-1971)", the discussion and film program "Theme" dealt with initiatives for alternative film culture beyond the established cinema system at the end of the 1960s. "Profiles" portrayed individual filmmakers or film institutions. The section "Archives" presented archives dealing with the archiving and restoration of experimental film. This year it included the new series "re-selected", which dealt with the significance and tradition of individual analogue film copies as a testimony to film history. The analogue film was also the issue of the newly designed series "Labs", which presents cultural countermovements to the comprehensive process of digitization.
Link: Festival website
Awards
The never-ending path of growing up means unfolding oneself. The waiting room of life is full of intentions to grow beyond oneself and to learn to live in reality with one's own limitations - neither achievable nor bearable without the experience of friendship as a comparison, support or source of unhappiness. Erh Hao Chiu Yi is the intense and successful portrait of the challenges of friendship, cohesion, community, comparison, ambition, mediocrity and the talents of two young women on this path.
The dis-position of man refers equally to the loss of inner life and the cheap selling-out of human individuality. The compulsion of constant self-optimisation is therefore expressed in a compulsion to perfect the standardisations of a promise of beauty. They are suggested in the revelation of their real beauty, but beauty decays to become the de-personalised, slippery smooth surface of a self-parody. In its masterful form as much as in its intention, Caterpillarplasty is a dark, wet, equally fascinating and slippery glamour portrait of this alleged beauty.
Carlotta's world is marked by a physical limitation: the animated images of this short film charmingly illustrate the impressive story of a face blind woman, her path through school and life, while adopting her perspective on the world. The masterly quality of this dignified and unbiased short film consists in revealing the impossibility, caused by her lack of a physical image of herself, of this artfully animated perspective and at the same time in portraying her in a successful and loving way without reducing her by mere pity. Thus the film reveals its protagonist as a strong woman who finds pragmatic ways to herself and others and chooses a flower as a portrait whose blossom resembles her real-life hairstyle and which reminds us of her exposure in many situations in life - as well as of her beauty, tenderness and vulnerability. A touching film about the challenges and apparently obvious elements of the construction of identity, self-image, social encounters and relationships. The film is a jewel that deconstructs the significance of the face for our culture by textual images and selfies and even bans on images and images of god in order to rebuild them together.