International Short Film Festival Oberhausen 2005
Retrospective: The Fallen Curtain
Catalogue: The Fallen Curtain
PDF, 73 pages excerpt, German/Englisch, 936kb. Texts by Gulnara Abikeyeva, Mila Bredikhina, Christiane Büchner, Anja Casser, Marcel Schwierin, Irina Shilova.
The 2005 special programme inquires into the current status of a search for identity that began in 1989 with the fall of the wall between East and West. Ever since the carpet of firmly entrenched systems was pulled out from under their feet, the search for an individual and collective identity has preoccupied people on both sides of the former divide.
Thus, the short film since the 90s has been marked to a great extent by individualisation: new light is shed on the relationship between self and other, and looking inward takes on a political slant.
The point of departure for the programme is the Soviet Union. In a central state comprised of over one hundred nations, there emerged a belaboured, but fruitful dialogue, leading to a unique film culture in regions such as Armenia, Georgia and Kazakhstan.
The themes chosen by filmmakers there both before and after 1989 form a matrix for the examination of social conditions in the age of globalisation. "The programme is conceived as an inventory of crucial questions that art has posed to society since 1989", says curator Marcel Schwierin.
(press release Oberhausen)
"The Fallen Curtain" at the The International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen, showcased avant-garde films that represented shifting socio-political
contexts in the Soviet Bloc and the Western world.
Shai Heredia, The Hindu, 29 May 2005
Nature Calling Nick Bradshaw, fipresci 2005
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