The Festival for experimental film, home cinema, trash and classical independent film is running its 12th edition in 2011 at the Motorenhalle Centre of Contemporay Art in Dresden, Germany. From 20th to 22th of January the festival is focusing on productions with Super8/16 mm films. It has been the first German place of the international 8/16 mm-scene. Works by filmmakers from more than 20 countries have been presented in Dresden, including well-known European filmmakers such as Lisl Ponger, Mathias Müller, Jan Peters, Matt Hulse, Johanna Vaude or Helga Fanderl.
This year's topic is "Vagabonding Images - from the art crossing borders". Iceland, Afghanistan, Portugal, Italy, Pakistan, USA, Japan ... bizarre landscapes, extraordinary musicians and newly discovered artists. The cine-camera always ready for shooting, like filming how the composer and improvisational genius Fred Frith creates his ideas while sheep grazing or walking through the supermarket. The German filmmakers Werner Penzel and Nicolas Humbert wouldn't like to miss this during their trips abroad. Or as Fridrik Thór Fridriksson - Icelandic and Oscar-nominated director: The camera mounted on the car roof connected to the odometer, all 12 km shots a picture and so not only mapped his own country but also discoverd its diverse and bizarre natural and cultural landscape. Million feet of films were exposed like this on the road or differently.
This years festival also includes the current two hot spots of small-gauge film Italy and Portugal. Travelling with movies means crossing time and space. In terms of exciting schmalfilm never forget Portuguese productions. Names such as Paulo Abreu (2008 winner of the small-gauge film competition) and Edgar Pêra (2006 honored in Paris with the Pasolini Award for lifetime achievement) are well known all over. Both continue working with small-gauge analogue film formats, like in Pêra's latest film. The movie, 2009 shot in Super8, is inspired from the outstanding Portuguese painter Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso (1887–1918). The international history of art just discovered his vanguard oeuvre because of a first retrospective.
Since 2000 the Italian Zapruder Film Maker Group also does crossovers through arts, through the theater, through performative work travelling in space and time. They are influenced by philosophical and literary models. During the dresdner schmalfilmtage a Zapruder's retrospective will be presentend, a journey over the past 10 years, the exploration of the Super 8 and 16mm formats.
The way how Thorsten Fleisch crosses borders is different. He uses his own blood to paint abstract and pictorial images on film. He heats the films and cuts them or combines them with video tapes messing up the pixels on purpose. The result is a symbiosis of injured analogue and digital imagery. Thorsten Fleisch will present his work during the festival by himself and explain his breaks and destructions to the audience.
In addition to the highly successful international competition for 8mm and 16-mm film, this year the competition for the best live musical setting of found-footage films takes his second round and with the Super-8 Workshop on Orwochrome, led by Berlin filmmaker Dagi Brundert, the festivals continues ist workshop tradition.
The cinema Quasimodo, which also includes the dresdner schmalfilmtage, was awarded in 2010 with the Special Prize for a very good program in an alternative movie projection room by the Central German Media Promotion and the Middle German Film and Television Producers Association. The award proves once again that the festival is one of the few European platforms for current and historical 8mm and 16mm films, and has established itsself as one of the most important international forum for the independent short film and small-gauge formats.