Shnit international shortfilmfestival

The shnit international shortfilmfestival is an annual international film festival based in Berne, Switzerland.

History

The festival was founded in 2003 under the name shnit Kurzfilmnächte.

Over the course of the next couple of years the event for short films of all kind quickly evolved into a festival with an international competition, and a big variety of special programmes, workshops and public film talks.

Since 2005 the shnit shortfilmfestival takes place in the PROGR center for cultural production and in various cinemas in the old town of Berne.

Since 2007 the festival is host of the Slam-Movie-Night and also holds the REALTIME film challenge.

With 6 festival locations, more than 65 screenings and an attendance of around 15'000 the shnit shortfilmfestival is the largest festival of its kind in Switzerland.

Competition and Festival Concept

More than 2000 short films from all continents are annually submitted to the selection process.

The centre point of the festival is the international competition shnit OPEN COMPETITION. Each OPEN programme consists of about 6 to 7 short films (occasionally with good animations too), lasting about 80-minute. There are usually 10 OPEN COMPETITION Programmes that are programmed and screened in each participating city/playground. Among the OPEN COMPETITION entries, an official festival jury awards films in the following categories:

- SMART JOE (films under 4 minutes) - MAGIC JACK (films from 4 to 10 minutes) - LONG JOHN (films over 10 minutes)

The total prize money of the shnit-Open is CHF 100'000 (approximately US$100,000).

In addition, audience could attend the screenings and vote their favourite film in all the cities. Chosen film with the highest votes get a good chance to win 'AUDIENCE AWARD' conferred by the shnit competition organizer.

Film competitions held in each city award their best film (e.g. Swiss Award, South Africa Award, German Award, Austria Award) with their respective film awards/prizes.

Other Festival Programmes

Besides the OPEN COMPETITION screenings and to make the festival more enjoyable and dynamic, other interesting short films are also curated into different programme sections (which changes every year). Within the following section are various 90-min programme blocks which every playground/city can opt to screen the programmes:

- A REAL TREAT - OUT OF CURIOSITY - FOR SPECIAL INTEREST

Playgrounds

Besides Bern (CH), the festival soon attracted participation from different cities including Cologne (DE) in 2009, Cape Town (ZA) in 2010, as well as Vienna, San Jose and Singapore in 2011. These cities will be screening the OPEN COMPETITION short films over a few days at the same time, in the first week of October every year. These cities are known as PLAYGROUNDS, and each runs a set of similar festival programmes with their available local resources in terms of sponsorships, partnerships and grants. Audience are welcome to vote for their favourite film during the screenings. Results will be sent to Bern to award the 'AUDIENCE AWARD' film at the end of the week.

In 2012, Switzerland Embassy of Singapore supported the festival in Singapore.

Award winners

Audience Award Jury Award Swiss Award
Year Film Director
2003 Metal King Thomas Gerber (CH)
2004 Right Here, Right Now Anand Gandhi (IN)
2005 Breaking the Rules Gregor Ehrler (DE)
2006 Pizza Amore Achim Wendel (DE)
2007 Il neige à Marrakech Hicham Alhayat (CH)
2008 Antje und wir Felix Stienz (DE)
2011 Guet Apens Michael Barocas (France)
2012 Qual queijo você quer? Cíntia Domit Bittar (BR)
2013 La Prima Legge Di Newton Piero Messina (IT)
Year Film Director
2003
2004
2005 Nassrasur Boris Schaarschmidt (DE)
2006 Dachau bei München Frederik Ring (DE)
2007 Fair Trade Michael Dreher (DE)
since 2008 see below
Year Film Director
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007 Rasende Liebe Jonas Meyer (CH)
2008 Nachglühen Lisa Blatter (CH)
2011 Bam Tchack Marie-Elsa Sgualdo (CH)
South Africa Award German Award Austria Award
Year Film Director
2011 New Digs Martin Sen
Year Film Director
2011 Parchenabend Hardi Sturm
Year Film Director
2011 Der Letzte Gast Markus Engel
SMART JOE (under 4 minutes) MAGIC JACK (from 4 to 10 minutes) LONG JOHN (over 10 minutes)
Year Film Director
2008 Three Angels Yulia Ruditskaya (BY)
2011 15 Summers Later Pedro Collantes (Spain)
Year Film Director
2008 The Facts in the Case of Mister Hollow Rodrigo Gudiño (CDN)
2011 Der Besuch Conrad Tambour (Germany)
Year Film Director
2008 Ich träume nicht auf Deutsch Ivana Lalovic (CH)
2011 El Somriure Amagat / The Hidden Smile Ventura Durall (Spain)

Festival Jury

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011 LONG JOHN JURY

2011 MAGIC JACK JURY

2011 SMART JOE JURY

2011 SWISS MADE JURY

2011 MADE IN AUSTRIA JURY

2011 MADE IN GERMANY JURY

2011 MADE IN SOUTH AFRICA JURY

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Monday, March 31, 2014. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.