It is a common statement by now that the sense of hearing is generally being underrated, and this festival won't be able to essentially weaken the dominance of the visual either. It is characteristic that recent innovations have been mostly dealing with the nature of sound, either to reach greater purity or to make the audience forget the auditorium with surround effects.

However, this shouldn't shut one's ear to the fact that sound design is not exclusively about technical perfection, but about the best music, as well. This is why this special programme aims to show the multiple layers of the audio-level and its interdependence with the visuals.

We took the title of the programme literally and went on a quest for sounds in our short film archive.

Our selection is “tracking the sound” and it reflects a number of ways in which sound, noise, music, silence, etc. can be dealt with in shorts. We are not intending to judge or set a standard for the quality of the examples of film sounds. After all, there is already the “Music in Short Films” award and the examples are too numerous, anyway. Rather, the programme makes the many levels of sound in film audible and visible by presenting a compact and heterogeneous compilation. 22 films from past and present submissions to the Hamburg International Short Film Festival offer audible pleasures and shocks in two units. They focus on audio and reveal it to be the essence of shorts.

Several approaches will become audible regarding the synthetic production of sound in documentaries and at the level of sound that remains uninterrupted in the face of the edited film. The composition of the soundtrack can dominate the pictures without violating the visual level. Alternatively, the composition can be used in a Hollywood-esque strategy of Shock and Awe, even if it doesn't last for longer than five seconds. Elsewhere, the sound is a product of etchings on the film material itself. It gets scratched and remixed, redundantly repeated or set to mute, deformed or varied threefold. Here and there, quotations echo through the auditorium, imitating and irritating the invisible while stereotypical elements from dance- and music films or video clips are used as a parody which resembles our visual and audible clichés of perception.

The sound of film follows its own dramaturgy, it alienates content and action, plays with our habits of hearing and with our experiences, memories and expectations. In the end it becomes clear that sound and picture are shaped in conjunction with each other in the master works of the audiovisual. An associative and intoxicating force that disturbs the perception and leads to new insights is created by the collaboration of the audible and the visible in a mutual spirit.

Wednesday, 6 June, 19.30 h, Lichtmeß

Saturday, 9 June, 19.45 h, zeise 2

 

 

 

Ciao Mamma...

Vito Rocco, England 1995

Fiction, 0:50 Min, without dialogue

 

 

 

Abu Kiffan

Gerard Holthuis, Netherlands 2005

Experimental, 7:01 Min., without dialogue

 

 

 

Jukebox

Run Wrake, England 1994

Experimental Animation, 4:57 Min., English OV

 

 

 

 

Dubus

Alexei Dmitriev, Russia 2005

Experimental, 4:09 Min., without dialogue

 

 

 

 

Alles was wir haben

Volko Kamensky, Germany 2004

Experimental Documentary, 22:00 Min., German OV with English ST

 

 

Optinen ääni

Mika Taanila, Finland 2004

Experimental, 6:00 Min., without dialogue

 

 

 

 

Boot Camp

John Scott Matthews, USA 1996

Fiction, 6:00 Min., English OV

 

 

 

Unter Uns

Sarah Thußbas, Germany 2006

Animation, 3:36 Min., without dialogue

 

 

 

Musique de Tables

Thierry De Mey, Belgium 1999

Fiction, 8:00 Min., without dialogue

 

 

 

 

 

Die Ballade von Struppi

Frank Behnke, Germany 2001

Music Clip, 3:50 Min., German OV with English ST

 

 

 

 

The Hills are Alive

Gregg Biermann, USA 2005

Experimental, 7:28 Min., without dialogue

Friday, 8 June, 17.30 h, 3001

Monday, 11 June, 22.00 h, zeise 2

 

 

Home Stories

Matthias Müller & Dirk Schaefer, Germany 1990

Experimental, 6:00 Min., without dialogue

 

 

 

 

Bodega Bay School

J. Tobias Anderson, Sweden 2004

Experimental, 5:29 Min., English OV

 

 

 

Moving Panorama

Jae-Kyu Byun, South-Korea 2006

Experimental, 4:05 Min., without dialogue

 

 

 

 

Schwarzy & Clyde

Julien Corbière, France 2006

Experimental, 5:38 Min., without dialogue

 

 

 

Imagine This

John Callaghan, Ireland 2006

Experimental, 4:39 Min., English OV

 

 

 

Offside

Erez Tadmor & Guy Nattiv, Israel 2006

Fiction, 5:43 Min., English OV

 

 

 

 

Bass Invaders

Simon Ellis, England 2001

Fiction, 5:10 Min., English OV

 

 

 

 

Human Radio

Miranda Pennell, England 2001

Documentary, 9:00 Min., English OV

 

 

 

1:1

Richard R. Reeves, Canada 2001

Experimental Animation, 2:30 Min., without dialogue

 

 

 

 

Live to Tell

Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Canada 2002

Music Clip, 5:30 Min., English OV

 

 

 

Who by Water

Bill Morrison, USA 2007

Experimental Documentary, 17:30 Min., without dialogue