May 20th - May 25th 1998

For the 4th time now, the Göttingen International Film Festival has been successfully organized. A total of 11 student and 31 ethnographic productions by more than 30 cultures were presented. Most of the authors and/or the directors from 20 countries were present. 350 visitors from science and public, from Göttingen, Germany, Europe and overseas were given the possibility to meet and discuss new developments in ethnographic film making. The subsequent workshop "Authorship in the face of Electronic Media" was concerned with current problems of electronic media diffusion. The festival was financially substituted by the land Lower Saxony, the Sparkasse Göttingen and the town Göttingen. Sony Broadcast Germany once again donated the student film award.

The festival began with the students competition, which deliberately offers the rising generation a chance to match with other productions in a competitive situation. That was followed by the main festival, which was once again free from competition and instead concentrated on intensive discussions with the film makers, that were held after the end of each film. The main emphasis was set on the connecting function of the institute between West- and East (-Europe as well as the Far East).

More than 140 films had been notified to the festival, amongst those more than 30 students contributions. In February 1998, the films were selected and arranged to a festival-programme by an international selection committee consisting of the following 6 members:

• the visual anthropologist Peter Crawford (Aarhus University/Denmark)
• the head of the audiovisual laboratory of the Ljubljana University/Slovenia, Nasko Kriznar
• the media scientist and africanist Philippe Lourdou (Paris University)
• the organiser of the "Filmforum third world" in Freiburg, Gudula Meinzolt
• the folklorist Ruth Mohrmann (M¨nster University) (for the student selection represented by the folklorist and film maker Edmund Ballhaus, Göttingen University)
• the ethnologist Frode Storaas (Bergen University/Norway).

The selected programme consisted of 42 films dealing with more than 30 different cultures and societies. Ethnologists and film makers from 20 countries as well as about 300 additional visitors came to the IWF between the 20th and the 25th of May. Next to a lot of guests from Göttingen, a pleasingly high share of young participants could be perceived, most of them being students of German universities which teach ethnology, folklore and cultural studies. With that the festival demonstrated it's special value as a meeting place for the rising academic generation with established film makers and visual anthropologists.

On the 20th of May the festival began with the students competition, which consisted of 11 films. They presented subjects from Chile, Germany, Siberia, Morocco, Austria, Cuba, Hungary and Slovakia. The authors, most of which were present, came from Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Morocco, Australia and Hungary.

A three headed Expert jury decided about the "Student Award" giving. Those were Sarah Elder (New York state University/USA), the president of the Commission on Visual Anthropology Antonio Marazzi (Padua University/Italy) and Manfred Krüger (IWF/Germany). The presence of the two young Moroccan ethno-film makers Azeddine Detsouli and Mehdi Kadmiri, whose production "Middle Atlas Modesty" woke a lot of interest because of it's playful handling of documentary and feature elements, was appreciated very much by both the organizers as well as the audience. The two students contributions by graduates of the University of Film and Television 'Konrad Wolf' in Potsdam-Babelsberg were also remarkable: "Negative Nights" about young people in Budapest and "Who's last in line" about a Cuban musician. The Slovakan 16mm production 'Feathered Season' on carrier pigeons gained appreciation on high filmic aestetics and exellent film formation.

The jury eventually decided to give the "Student Award" to the hungarian production 'Exclusive Suburb' by Zoltan Füredi. Sony Broadcast Germany had placed a SONY-DV-Camera at disposal.

The main festival took place between the 21st and 24th of May and presented the audience 31 films. Their authors came from the United States, Canada, China, Taiwan, France, Latvia and other countries. As special guest the Samoan embassador for western Europe, his excellence Tauiliili Uili Meredith had come from Brussels to attend the worlds premi?re of the 16mm film 'Destination Samoa - New Zealand Samoans Between Two Cultures' by Peter Mesenh?ller and Rolf Husmann. In addition to that, a 9 headed delegation of the 'Chinese Association for Visual Anthropology' had come from China to participate in the festival and exchange thoughts and ideas.