Report on the 9th Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival
April 30th - May 4th, 2008
Profound changes have been made in 2007/2008:
The festival is organised now by an association, founded in May 2007.
The festival takes now place in the heart of Göttingen.
The festival is founding member of CAFFE - Coordinating Anthropological Film Festivals in Europe.
The Festival Programme was composed by an international selection committee, including former and new members. More than 310 films had been submitted. 60 films were selected, 18 for screenings in the student film category, 35 for the main festival, the others for multimedia and online presentations during the festival.
As every year, the student film competition was of special interest and many commented on the very good quality of the films. The presentation of new productions the festival had three main topics: Films on East European countries were shown during the whole festival. Films on "Migration and Integration" were screened during the whole festival, but mainly on Friday morning. And films on "Globalisation: Threats and Temptations" were screened on Saturday morning.
The Student Award went to to the film:
Schule aus, ins Leben raus (Out of School)
by Sandra Eckardt, Germany 2006
It’s the last school day. Jessica and Len have graduated at 15. In this transition period, they need to choose from many possibilities, but there are also many limitations. For five months, the filmmaker follows both of them on their different paths: Jessica begins a job training, Len attends a vocational school. How do they cope with the growing world around them?
Meeting point Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival
More visitors than ever.
350 permanent guests from 24 countries, from all over Europe, but also from Australia, Canada, Japan, and Thailand, visited the festival. They attended not only the screenings, but the video library was overcrowed most of the time.
Discussions till after midnight
Neither the 40 filmmakers present nor the audience was even getting tired. Film screenings and discussion went on till long after midnight.
The jury had a difficult task
Never before we had a jury working so hard.
Metje Postma (The Netherlands), Gary Kildea (Australia), Henning Engelke (Germany), and Anja Dreschke (not on the photo, Germany) were discussing everywhere in a separate room, walking in the forest, in the cafeteria ... for days about the films. There were so many good films, of very high standard, as the jury found, so the decision was not easily be made.
The video library was booked out most of the time
All films submitted to the festival could be watched at in the video library. However, even with 8 stations working, this was still not sufficient.
Meeting students from other places
The festival is interested in bringing together filmmakers and students planning to use film in future for their research or to become a filmmaker themselves.
This year an overwhelming number of student groups were visiting the festival, interviewed the filmmakers, and had discussion the new trends ond possibilities.
Multimedia and online presentations
This year we started with the integration of multimedia and online presentations. At noon time the authors had the possibility to present their DVD or website to an interested audience and discuss it.
Relaxing
...