Film programme
The EMAF screens experimental and artists’ films from around the world and is interested in forms that move along disciplinary peripheries or between film and performance, document and experiment. Short and long, digital and analogue films that relate to social and political reality in an exploratory and questioning way find their place here. At the same time, the EMAF is open to works that test new forms of cinematic presentation. Our aim is to make cinema a space for encounter and exchange: a space for projections beyond the status quo.
EMAF’s film programmes are developed in collaboration with international curators, artists and theorists who, as members of the programming team„ select the contributions for competition and feature film programmes, or are invited to develop their own thematic programmes and series.
Three prizes are awarded as part of the Competition: the EMAF Award (endowed with 3,000 Euro), the Dialogue Award (endowed with 2,000 Euro) and the EMAF Media Art Award of the Association of German Film Critics (endowed with 2,000 Euro).
Exhibition
Our senses are the foundation from where we find our way in the world. They are the interface between our inner self and the outside world. Millions of nerve endings connect our brain to a constantly changing stream of sensory impressions, from which it assembles the external stimuli into a coherent picture of the world, and the internal stimuli into a picture of ourselves. These experiences feel real to each of us, but they are never objectively accurate. We are all sensorially unique, our perception is influenced by our way of thinking, distorted by individual emotions and expectations.
The artistic contributions to the exhibition Feelers, Sensors engage the question of what role sensory perception plays in human and non-human experiencing of the world, what role it could play in the future, and how technologies such as artificial intelligence or “sensing machines” are changing the way we access and interact with our environment and each other.
Campus
An important meeting place for emerging artists, the EMAF Campus presents current projects by classes from leading European art and film schools. This year, classes from Germany, Belgium, Norway, and Spain will be guests, presenting exhibitions and film screenings developed especially for the festival.
On the occasion of its 35th anniversary, the Academy of Media Arts Cologne is presenting a broad selection of experimental short films from recent decades, showing student productions in various media formats: from web series to material films, from found-footage music videos to autobiographical films.
The film programmes of the KASK art academy in Ghent, which were created in 2022 and 2023 by master’s students in film, animation, and photography, move thematically between alienation from and immersion into one’s own world.
Under the title In the Belly of the Vacuum Cleaner, the Norwegian Kabelvåg School of Moving Images is developing an exhibition around the image of the vacuum cleaner, which, like our consciousness, sucks in the environment, collects it, and reassembles it into new (dis)orders.
With BLACKBIRDS SINGING IN THE DARK, the joint exhibition of the University of Osnabrück and the Universidad de la Laguna Tenerife portrays the perspectives of a young generation marked by the current presence of crises, wars, social injustices, and social traumas. Harmony of Mindscape, another project by students from the Department of Art at Osnabrück University in collaboration with students from Osnabrück’s Music and Art School, allows visitors to experience how they react to certain stimuli and to sense the point when they change.