Since its foundation 35 years ago, the Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg has been celebrating short films as an independent art form, while offering an opportunity for film makers from all over the world to get in touch with an eager audience and with each other. The International Competition mirrors current global aesthetic tendencies and narrative structures, as well as more resistant, marginal and raw works. The German Competition offers an overview of the state of the nation’s short films and film academies. The Three Minute Quickie is another one of our unique specialties. In it film makers from Germany and from abroad can submit films of no more than three minutes length to a predetermined subject. Furthermore, the Mo&Friese Children’s Short Film Festival is one of a small number of short film festivals for children in the world. It offers programmes for several age groups in cooperation with the Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg.
At the Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, around 15.000 visitors get to watch ca. 400 films in international and national competitions as well as in carefully curated special programmes, which showcase contemporary film art alongside earlier influential avant-garde-pieces.
Among all the festivals in the world, the Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg has to position itself with a sense of itself and an overall value that is more than just the sum of its individual parts. The competitions, special programmes and its highly atmospheric festival centre are these parts. Together with its short films, film makers and audiences they add up to much more in both actuality and in meaning.
Given all these sensual challenges, there is still one more thing the festival has always been and will always be: One gigantic party!