54th Oberhausen Short Film Festival: Political Film and Curatorial Divides

The 54th Oberhausen Short Film Festival, held in early May 2008 in Oberhausen, Germany, featured two curated programmes alongside its juried competition: 'Whose History?' selected by London-based curator Ian White, and 'Border-Crossings and Trouble Makers' selected by New York-based filmmakers Sherry Millner and Ernest Larsen. Both programmes focused on political filmmaking from the late 1960s and 1970s, though their approaches diverged. White's programme emphasized form, affect, and the temporal experience of film, while Millner and Larsen's programme cast a wider geographical net, treating politics as subject matter. The festival also included a panel discussion moderated by Millner with Hito Steyerl, Zelimir Zilnik, Rasha Salti, and Martha Rosler, revealing national lines of affinity. Steyerl discussed film dissemination via Facebook, YouTube, and Piratebay, and the 'Marie Antoinette dilemma' of political films in specialized venues. The British filmmaker Judith Wilkinson (misidentified as Judith Williamson) invoked Roland Barthes's distinction between transitive political language and depoliticized myth. Ernest Larsen later responded to Melissa Gronlund's essay-review, defending his programme's focus on post-9/11 films and criticizing Gronlund's characterization of their approach as merely topical. Larsen highlighted films like Pawel Wojtasik's 'Dark Sun Squeeze' and Joseph Beuys's 'Ausfegen', and noted that Rasha Salti did not attend the festival.