Berlinale Shorts Go Exterior

Listing details: “Berlinale Shorts go Exterior” screening programme
When: 7pm, Friday March 8
Where: The New Zealand Film Archive, 84 Taranaki St, Wellington
FREE ADMISSION

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Berlinale Shorts Go Exterior

In mid-February 2013 thousands of film lovers and journalists descended upon Berlin for one of the most important dates on the international film calendar: the Berlinale. Less than a month later, a selection of films from the glamorous, cutting edge festival will be shown in a free screening in Wellington.

Each year, the unusual, the unseen, the moving and the unconventional can be discovered at the Berlinale (or Berlin International Film Festival).

This is particularly apparent in the “Berlinale Shorts” category. Since starting work for the festival in 2007, short film curator Maike Mia Höhne has grown the “Berlinale Shorts” into one of the most esteemed showcases for short films in the world.

The “Berlinale Shorts go Exterior” programme is the first of a series of screenings presenting international short film gems to New Zealanders. A sample of the films shown in Berlin will be screened. The films are brought to New Zealand by Hamburg-based curator and filmmaker Stefanie Reis, in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut New Zealand and the New Zealand Film Commission, and with the support of The New Zealand Film Archive and Women In Film and Television Incorporated New Zealand.

“I am very happy to share this year’s ‘Berlinale Shorts’ with a New Zealand Audience - and enjoy them myself on the big screen at the Film Archive,” says Reis.

“This year, for the first time in ten years, I missed out on attending the Berlin International Film Festival because I’ve been in New Zealand, so bringing some films here makes up for that a little bit. The short film screenings at the Berlinale are usually sold out.”

The line-up for the evening includes this year’s Silver Bear winner Die Ruhe Bleibt / Remains Quiet (2013), by Stefan Kriekhaus, a vibrating miniature on filmmaking. The short fiction film features a trainee assistant passing time on large film set somewhere out in the sticks of rural France.

It screens alongside a range of other brand new films by international filmmakers, such as Zhou Yan’s Ba Bi Lun Shao Nian / The Rivers of Babylon (2012), which tells the story of a young Chinese woman’s excursions during a visit to her small hometown.

Forst (2013), by renowned German media and graffiti artist Ulu Braun, is a playful exploration and tale of the German forest, a “place” of larger than life national myths.

The “Berlinale Shorts go Exterior” programme will screen at the Film Archive, Wellington, on Friday 8 March 2013.

Meet for informal discussion about the films and the Berlinale festival from 6.30pm. The screening programme will start at 7pm, and there will be a brief Q&A session afterwards.

For more information on the Berlinale, visit www.berlinale.de

Image Credit: The Rivers of Babylon (Zhou Yan, 2012)

Image Credit: Forst (Ulu Braun, 2013)

ENDS

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