For a whole week, it will be nothing but shorts, shorts, shorts, and maybe an answer to the question, “What do short films and short people (i.e. children) have in common?”

For the eleventh time, the Children’s ShortFilmFestival will be inviting children and young people between the ages of 4 and 14 to the cinema for a week of short films. The Festival will start with the opening programme “Shorts before Long” followed by a games party at Zeise-Hallen. The films in the Festival are grouped into different programmes for different age groups, and the morning screenings are geared towards school and pre-school children. All screenings will be presented in a way that is suitable for the children, and all non-German language films will be translated into German and voice-overed live by an actor. Many filmmakers from Germany and abroad will be present and willing to answer questions about their films from their audience. Altogether, the Festival will screen 50 short films from 22 countries.

Children’s Juries and Awards

Like last year, the generous support of GEOlino and Springer Backwerk has enabled us to present two awards at our Festival. The Mo Jury will be judging the films for children from the ages of 9 and 12, while the Friese Jury will be judging those for children from the ages of 4 and 6 and will be choosing a winning film in both categories. Both juries will be made up of children from the respective age groups, and the two prizes will be worth € 1,250 each in prize money. In addition, the Mo and Friese Juries will also be deciding on the three winning films from the “Give me Five” competition, which will receive a total prize sum of € 600.

The Screenings

The nine programmes will be shown in the following places: zeise kinos, 3001, LOLA Kulturzentrum, Gymnasium Ohmoor school and Honigfabrik. The school screenings (for which interested school groups need to register on our website www.moundfriese.de) will be held at zeise kinos and 3001.

The afternoon screenings will start at 4pm on weekdays, to allow children to get to the cinemas in time after school.

Ticket prices: € 3.00; films for children from 4 to 6 € 2.50; local arts centres between € 1.00 and 2.00.

Opening and Awards Ceremony

The Festival will be opened on 1 June at 3pm with the “Shorts before Long” programme recommended for children aged 6 and over. The films will be very different from each other, but share one common characteristic: they are theatrically distributed by KFA and are screened in cinemas as supporting films before features. However, they do not require a feature afterwards to make them enjoyable, and we’ll show them to whet your appetites for our festival programmes. As has become customary, this screening will be followed by an exciting games party at Zeise-Hallen.

The Awards Ceremony, during which the juries will announce their decisions and we will screen the winning films, will be taking place on Sunday, 7 June, at 3pm at zeise kinos.

Special Events

Mo&Friese Late Night

Late at night, as the fourth day of the Festival will be drawing to a close and the little ones will be dreaming of another day of shorts, the grown-ups will be presented with a selection of children’s shorts! The 3001 will be screening a varied mix of dramas, documentaries, animations and experimental films for children of all ages – or from 4 to 12, anyway. This screening will make it abundantly clear just how blurred the delineation between films for children and films for grown-ups can be. Many of the films in this programme were submitted for the 25th ISFF’s main competitions. And like last year, we’re again expecting some filmmakers to show up and present their films themselves.

Thursday, 4 June 2009, 10pm at 3001

“Give me Five”

In the “Give me Five” competition, children of up to 12 years of age were asked to make and submit short films with a maximum length of five minutes. The seven winning films on the subject of “What if...” will be presented at a special screening during the Festival, and the two children’s juries will announce the three winning films during the awards ceremony on 7 June. The prize money of € 600 was provided by GEOlino.

Introducing ShortFilmSchool

ShortFilmSchool is a project jointly organised by KFA and the Hamburg Ministry for Culture, Sports and the Media. It sprang from the idea of promoting film education in Hamburg’s schools by offering a hands-on approach to filmmaking led by local filmmakers. Over the last three years, many schools in Hamburg cooperated with ShortFilmSchool and organized five-day classes, during which many colourful, funny, exciting and interesting films were made. Clips from these films will be presented by students of Gymnsasium Ohmoor school on Monday, 1 June, at 5:30pm at zeise kinos. On 4 June, students from a school in the Hamburg district of Lurup will be presenting the project “Dreamwalking”, a collaboration between ShortFilmSchool and the mobile cinema project “A Wall Is a Screen”, which was organised in the context of the “Year of the Arts”.

Film Classes

Our film classes, in which children can get actively involved, are of particular educational importance. During the three morning sessions, children between the ages of 10 and 14 learn about filmmaking by shooting their own film. The classes run from Tuesday, 2 June to Thursday 4 June between 9am and 1pm. Children who wish to participate need to register with us. The subjects this year will be:

1. Animation and painting with light

2. Hands on camera! Don’t get lost!

3. Stories from Altona

4. The Children’s World Movie Project

5. Computer games

The shorts made during these classes will be screened on Sunday 7 June at 11am at zeise kinos. Admission is free.

Plus:

Call for Entries for the 4th “Give me Five” Competition on the Subject of “Milk Teeth and Silver Hair”

The motto of our “Give me Five” Competition for 2010 is “Milk Teeth and Silver Hair”. What we want to know from the children taking part is what happens when silver-haired old people encounter milk-toothed young people. Does that lead to fights? Or is it cause for laughter? Or does something completely unexpected happen?

Tell us about an experience you shared with an old person and turn your story into a funny, thoughtful or unusual short film. The only condition is that the film mustn’t be more than five minutes long. And if you submit your film until 15 March 2010 and you’re not older than 13, it might just be screened at the Mo&Friese Children’s ShortFilmFestival in June 2010. Go to our website www.moundfriese.de for the entry form and more information.

Children’s Press Passes

Like last year, we will be giving children the opportunity to visit the festival as young film critics. If you want to write about the Festival for your school magazine, you can get press passes for you and four of your classmates. The form you need to fill in is on our website. Please register by 25 May. .

Festival Trailer

“Mo calling Friese, Mo calling Friese! Come to the Children’s ShortFilmFestival!”

The trailer for this year’s Mo&Friese Children’s ShortFilmFestival was produced as part of the ShortFilmSchool project. Earlier this year, children at Louise Schröder School spent a week planning, building props, filming and editing, and the result was this year’s Mo&Friese trailer, which will be officially premiered on 1 June at a screening with all the young filmmakers. We will be going on a colourful journey through such exotic places as swimming pools, ghost trains and volcanic fields to get all the little Mos and Frieses together for this year’s festival.

Interviews and Images

We will be happy to arrange an interview with the Festival’s director Agnes Nuber for you. High-resolution images and the Mo&Friese logo are available to download from the press section of our website: moundfriese.de