Short films in focus at International Short Film Festival Oberhausen

Classical culture and avant-garde don't necessarily contradict each other, as Katrina Daschner's film "Pferdebusen" ("Horse Bosom") shows. Echoing the 1926 work "Traumnovelle" ("Dream Novel") by writer Arthur Schnitzler, Daschner depicts "the ambiguity of fiction and reality and the tensions caused by oppressed sexual urges of the bourgeois couple." The film runs in the international competition.

The international competition is the central event of the 63rd annual festival in Oberhausen, in the Ruhr Valley. It brings viewers together with a film genre that has largely disappeared from the regular film world. And yet, the short film lives on in many locations and in many diverse formats, now mainly online but also in the art scene and in museums - and, of course, on television.

Festival director Lars Henrik Gass is marking a special anniversary this year, having headed up the festival since 1997. Over the course of 20 years, despite many critics who doubted the short film genre had a future, Gass has incorporated new formats and new art forms in the festival.

One of these new art forms is the MuVi (music videos) section that Gass added into the festival's program in 1999. This year, 12 videos are competing for honors, out of an original 272 submissions. Among the 12 chosen for the competition is a video by British director Phil Collins (seen above) - not to be confused with the musician with the same name.

Naturally, a festival in Oberhausen, in northwestern Germany, will feature many short films by German directors. So many, in fact, that there is a special competition just for them. This year, 22 German short films were chosen from almost 1,200 submissions. Among those in the final round is "La Boxe" by Tim Nowitzki, which features the French Olympic boxing team.

The NRW (North Rhine-Westphalia) competition aims to promote young filmmakers. This year, the section features 234 productions, among them "Ayny" by Ahmad Saleh, a gold medal winner at the Student Academy Awards in 2016. Patrick Praschma is also in the running with "Manche Probleme" ("Some Problems"), which deals with the development of a young person's personality.

Yet another anniversary will be celebrated at this year's festival: since 1977, the city of Oberhausen has also included films for children and young people. In 2017, 48 productions from 24 countries were chosen in this category. Seen here is a film still from the French-British production "Event Horizon" by Josefa Celestin.

Nowadays, short films are mainly seen online, a phenomenon that will also be up for discussion at the festival. Archive material will also be on show, including "Piazza Virtuale," which was produced by four media artists in the early 1990s. The film took a look at the future of computers and the internet.