31st Hamburg ISSF – No budget competition
NO BUDGET COMPETITION – GENERAL
The NoBudget-film is both the festival’s origin and its laboratory. It creates an environment for radically subjective views, for experimenting, marginal, borderline, demanding, non-commercial and innovative short fi lms. NoBudget puts attitude and the creative process into the limelight. There are two prizes in this category: One is awarded by the audience, the other one by a jury.
NO BUDGET COMPETITION 2015 IN DETAIL
Our usual perspective is transformed, visual conventions are challenged, and we witness something that has never been before. The experiment starts. A recurring visual pattern is the kaleidoscope, whose layers fragment and reflect the individual image.
Recurring sounds are monotonous computer voices. As a result, we can only find the right definition for this phenomenon in digital search and translation engines.
The only possible reaction is complete surrender, dedication and devotion. Submit yourselves to the flood of images. Hybridised fragments and bizarre visuals lead us to new worlds. Only some hundred kilometres away and full of creatures with strange habits that perform complex rituals.
A colourful collage under the influence of mind-altering substances. In the midst of ravel and bustle, we wonder how the mouse got on drugs and the whale entered the suburban train car. Who is hypnotizing whom and in which film? When did we lose the grip on reality?
The aesthetics of VHS create nostalgia, formats dissolve, the material is digitally and analogically distorted, rendered, newly compiled and combined with sound. It is a cosmos of its own in which moving images do not only communicate with the outside, but between each other as well. The conventional audience of watchers dissolve. It is drawn into the vortex and integrated into the experiment.
Artists celebrate a unique handwriting, take disputable formal decisions, photograph courageously and edit unconventionally. Compositions of current affairs illuminate the present, leading to philosophical contemplations, universal questions and existentialist considerations.
Subtle oscillations occur, the experiences made increase our attention for dysfunctional systems and bull-headed characters. Found and incidental footage as well as re-enacted and staged events confound our memory. Interpretation and re-interpretation lead to varying perceptions and we start to doubt the experienced.
All this leaves us confused, touched, and impressed. Only time will tell if something important happened here, and what of it will remain.
Text Sarah Adam
Film selection Sarah Adam, Anja Ellenberger, Anna Leimbrink, Sandra Lösel, Felix Piatkowski
Selected films NoBudget Competition:
243 – Ein stiller Mann / 243 – A Silent Man • Philipp Ramspeck • Switzerland 2014
La Baracca / The Shack • Federico Di Corato • Italy 2014
Bétail • Joana Sousa • Portugal 2014
Bikini • Daniel McIntyre • Canada 2015
Bine a i venit în casa mea / Welcome To My Home • Alberto Gutiérrez, Jaume Quiles • Spain 2014
Blue Signal • Michael Yaroshevsky • Canada 2014
Chi-ken • Andrei Sopon • Great Britain/Romania 2014
Un Cuento de Amor, Locura y Muerte / A Tale of Love, Madness and Death • Mijael Bustos • Chile 2015
Dokument: Hoyerswerda | Frontex • Thomas Kaske • Germany 2014
Elävältä piirtyneet / Those Drawn Alive • Jukka-Pekka Jalovaara • Finland 2014
F For Fibonacci • Beatrice Gibson • Great Britain 2014
Fok Nabo Distorio • Francesco Rosso • Estonia 2014
Libre maintenant / Free now • Pierre Liebaert • Belgium 2014
Linnut, sylilaitteet • Jussi Reittu • Finland 2014
Mainsqueeze • Jon Rafman • USA 2014
Masks • Amitai Arnon, Ester Bires • Israel 2015
Mesh Aalysis • Thomas Wagensommerer • Austria 2013
Milky Way is our Galaxy • Olli Ilpo Salonen • Finland 2014
Moshka • Andrey Flakonkishochki • Russia 2014
My brother in red and blue • Alina Ozerova • The Netherlands/USA 2014
Nü • Daniel Ulacia • Mexiko/Deutschland 2014
Occurrences of Light • Cory Dahn • USA 2012
Ochen’ dolgaja plastinka / Very Long Play Vinyl • Vladimir Morozov • Russia 2015
Operation Castle • Filip Gabriel Pudlo • Poland 2013
Peter • Jane Topping • Großbritannien 2014
Punkt 9: val av andre vice talman / Second Deputy Speaker • Maximilien Van Aertryck • Germany/Sweden 2015
RekonGrodek • Devin Horan • Margherita Malerba • Germany/Poland/USA 2014
SexPol • Jörg Weidner • Germany 2014
A Short History of Decay • Shih-Chieh Lin • Taiwan/USA 2014
Somewhere Between Something and Nothing • Paul O’Donoghue • Ireland 2015
Une souris verte / A green mouse • Devos Morgan • France 2014
Sous Couleur de l’oubli / Digital Memories • Ismael Joffroy Chandoutis • Belgium/Belize/Gabun 2014
They call us the enemy • Pim Zwier • The Netherlands 2015
Transitus Angeli • Stewart Collinson, Andrea Szigetvári • Great Britain/Hungary 2014
La Vague • Irene Munoz Marin • Switzerland 2014
Vermin • Mauro Fariñas • Germany 2014
Who can be happy and free? • Lyubov Matyunina • The Netherlands/Russia 2014
Zinoviev’s Tube: Tape 2 of the Inner Trotsky Child Series • Jim Finn • USA 2014
The Jury Award of the NoBudget Competition is worth 2,000 euros.
NoBudget Audience Award ›The Optimistic View‹ (1.500 euros)
Mick Hannigan
Mick Hannigan is Co-Director of the IndieCork Film Festival, an event he founded with Úna Feely. For many years he was the Director of Cork Film Festival, which he developed as the premier festival for shorts in Ireland. He worked as Cinemas Director of the Irish Film Centre before establishing the Kino Arthouse Cinema in Cork that he ran for 13 years. He has served on the boards of the Federation of Irish Film Societies, the Irish Film Institute and the Irish Film Board.
Rainer Kohlberger
Rainer Kohlberger was born in Linz, and he lives as a freelance film maker and media designer in Berlin. His algorithmically composed works notch themselves from the reductionist aesthetics of flatness, drones and interferences. In this way the noise is inherent in the pictorial worlds and the soundscapes – it exerts a fascination, a sense of the infinite, which is both the ultimate abstraction and inveterately fuzzy. His works have been shown internationally in different formats and contexts, as films, room installations and live performances.
Elina Rislakki
Elina Rislakki has been working as the CEO of the Finnish Film Contact since 2010. The Finnish Film Contact is a publicly funded non-profit organization that distributes documentaries, short films and children’s films nationally. Rislakki is also the director of the Helsinki Short Film Festival, one of the longest running film events in Finland. She has a radio show about film (›Filmikelat‹) at Radio Helsinki, and also moderates film-related discussions at festivals and other events. Furthermore, she is produces independent films, writes about films and occasionally teaches films courses.