It‘s 30 years ago that stu­dents at the Kom­mu­nales Kino mus­tered all their com­mit­ment and vigor to found the freiburg­er film forum. The fes­ti­val then soon went pro­fes­sion­al and evolved into an inter­na­tion­al plat­form for film makers work­ing on inter­cul­tur­al topics. The stu­dent audi­ence has always made its mark upon the atmos­phere at this film forum, and so we seek to install the stu­dents’ film forum as stage for young film makers‘ contributions.

Our pro­gram seizes on the fes­ti­vals forum con­cept by inten­sive­ly cov­er­ing and dis­cussing the exten­sive vari­ety of meth­ods and angles of tal­ent­ed young film makers in reac­tion to cul­tur­al and sociopo­lit­i­cal issues. The selec­tion opens a wide range of oeu­vres in the field of visual anthro­pol­o­gy, grad­u­a­tion projects at renowned film acad­e­mies, and inde-pen­dent film projects. The more varied movie makers‘ approach, the more varied their choice of topics.

UP-ROOTED shows in flick­er­ing Super 8mm pic­tures how young people deal with their own hybrid iden­ti­ty in a glob­al­ized world, while HOME IN MIND has a close look at the iden­ti­ty prob­lem in the vir­tu­al world of Second Life. There are numer­ous aspects to the issue of which trans­for­ma­tions and prob­lems young people are sub­ject­ed to in times of polit­i­cal upheavals: be it in the fic­tion­al film SADAKAT, in which a young woman must bal­ance her family‘s safety against her sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Gezi protests, or in the docu-men­tary ABDO, in which we follow the video diary of the young pro­tag­o­nist on his way through Cairo strick­en by rev­o­lu­tion and terror.

The thoughts and notions behind the camera relate also to the world of objects. What do things do if there isn‘t anyone around? The increas­ing focus of visual anthro­pol­o­gy on the ethnog­ra­phy of things requires inno­v­a­tive and exper­i­men­tal forms of depic­tion. The human per­spec­tive is increas­ing­ly scru­ti­nized; the camera is direct­ed at net­works and tech­nolo­gies, ani­mals and objects, which require their own par­tic­u­lar cin­e­mato­graph­ic vocab­u­lary. SOLARIS, for exam­ple, man­ages entire­ly with­out any dia­logue, but yet the for­sak­en objects at the shop­ping mall in down­town Tallinn have their very own story to tell. HINOKI FARM with great immer­sive effect also trans­fers us to the world of minute move­ments and the simple things. With an open eye for the sur­round­ings and the mo-ment, the up-and-coming film­mak­ers create qui­es­cent yet enthus­ing doc­u­ments of all that is pos­si­ble within sen­so­ry ethnography.

In por­traits of impres­sive young per­son­al­i­ties, such as the Roman­ian gut­ter­snipe IULIAN or the young seam­stress BINTOU from Burk­i­na Faso, the film­mak­ers dis­play remark­able sen­si­bil­i­ty by dis­clos­ing their life sto­ries in a per­son­al way. In par­tic­u­lar this year‘s open­ing film OUT OF FOCUS offers an inside per­spec­tive on life and dreams of young inmates at Mexico‘s most dread­ed youth deten­tion center.

Inno­v­a­tive approach­es to doc­u­men­tary work also play an impor­tant role in the student’s film forum‘s accom­pa­ny­ing pro­gram. The web­based inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­ta­tion REFUGEE REPUBLIC famil­iar­izes us with every­day life at the Syrian refugee camp Domiz in north­ern Iraq. Taking var­i­ous routes, we can vir­tu­al­ly roam this place which comes to life by way of a col­lage of pho­tographs, videos, draw­ings and sounds. Anoth­er dimen­sion of expe-rience beyond the con­fines of the cinema screen is opened by Oculus Rift vir­tu­al real­i­ty glass­es. In the vir­tu­al domain, we adopt the per­spec­tive of a young Chilean offi­cer who wit­ness­es an exe­cu­tion during one of the infa­mous “death car­a­vans” under Pinochet‘s regime in 1973.

ASSENT is an auto­bi­o­graph­ic project, which makes excel­lent and very impres­sive use of this rev­o­lu­tion­ary technology.

We par­tic­u­lar­ly look for­ward to the master class with David Mac­Dougall as part of the student‘s film forum. His sem­i­nar titled AN EVOLVING FILM PRACTICE will present exam­ples from his films to illus­trate major shifts in his work and to dis­cuss these with participants.

We very cor­dial­ly invite you to attend and we look for­ward to a first excit­ing student’s film forum,

Eva & Hannes
and the student‘s film forum team