International Competition | Jury of the Young | German Competition | Window to Bavaria | Window to the Region | Window to the Architecture
International Competition
Pedro Toro
Pedro Toro (*1984 in Madrid) is an artistic director and cultural manager specializing in film, comics and independent publishing. He studied audiovisual communication and international cultural management and social innovation at Complutense University. For years he has combined his work as a producer of audiovisual media and events with various artistic and cultural projects. Since 2005, he has collaborated as curator and programmer with the ALCINE Film Festival in Alcalá de Henares/Comunidad de Madrid, among others. Since 2022 he has assumed the position of artistic director, responsible for the conception and management of the new phase of one of the oldest film festivals in Spain.
Victor Orozco Ramirez
Victor Orozco Ramirez (*1974 in Mexico) has a master’s degree in documentary film from the HfBK Hamburg. From 2005 to 2012 he organized the short film festival ambulart in Mexico, Ecuador and Germany. With his documentary animation Reality 2.0 he won the First Steps Award 2012 as well as the German Short Film Award 2013 in the documentary category. In addition, his films have so far won awards at numerous international festivals, including Mar del Plata, Ann Arbor, Morelia Film Fest, Guadalajara International Film Festival, Animafest Zagreb.
Birgit Glombitza
Birgit Glombitza is an author, dramaturge and lecturer. After her studies (literature, philosophy, art history and film studies) she worked as a freelance writer in Frankfurt and Berlin and published numerous reviews and essays in taz, Der Zeit, epd Film, Spiegel and various collections of essays on film, photography, video art and others. From 2010-2018 she was the artistic director of the International Short Film Festival Hamburg. Since 2018 she teaches at art colleges and universities in Germany and Switzerland.
Jury of the Young
Valentin Goppel
Valentin Goppel was born in Regensburg in 2000 and studies documentary photography in Hannover. Ever since he can remember, he has loved telling stories, be it in photos, text or film. He especially likes stories about youth and age, about isolation and freedom.
Friederike Hirth
Friederike Hirth, born in 2000, was born in Oschatz, Saxony, and graduated from high school there in 2018. Afterwards, she directly began her studies of Media Studies and English in Regensburg, for which she is currently writing her bachelor’s thesis. Friederike’s passion for film and cinema provided the incentive for this course of study – which she has been putting into practice, among other things, with her work on the organizing team of the local Transit Film Festival since 2020. She enjoyed the viewing process as well as her tasks in the press and marketing area (at the latter as Head) so much that she stayed with it beyond the actual internship and joined the associated Hör und Schau e.V.. Additionally, Friederike is active at the Regensburg student magazine Lautschrift and enjoys writing articles for their film column. She has also recently started working as a projectionist at the Filmgalerie im Leeren Beutel and would definitely like to stay in the cinematic world after her studies. Even though she enjoys going to the cinema as often as possible to see a wide variety of films, it’s even more fun for her to be involved in the festival, cinema and film processes. Even though Friederike is always interested in in-depth film analysis, in her free time she likes to watch trash TV, listen to a lot of jazz and 50s rock-n-roll, and knit while doing so.
Jonathan Market
Jonathan Market was born in Regensburg in 2002 and took a whole 16 years to discover his passion for film. Through photography he came to videography and over time this hobby was even joined by commissions, so that since 2018 he has also been implementing photo and film projects on a part-time basis. However, he is most fulfilled by realizing his own short films, which he started when he was still in school. The film course at the Gymnasium Neutraubling, where Jonathan Market also received his Abitur in 2021, allowed him to implement many ideas and participate in some projects. In 2020, for example, he himself participated in the Short Film Week with the film “The Search” (2019) and “Die Pyjamaparty” (2018). With the film “Laplace” (2021), he most recently won the Youth Film Award Oberpfalz 2022.
At festivals, filmmakers always hope to convince the jury with their films. Now swapping roles and judging the submitted films himself is an extremely interesting change of perspective that he is very excited about.
Pia Schlegl
Pia Schlegl, born in 1999 and raised in Regensburg, has been studying industrial design in Munich for a few years.She loves to playfully rethink things and translate abstract ideas into concrete human experience. In doing so, she is aware of the ecological and social responsibility of design and incorporates this into the design process in order to create a world worth living in. Therefore, her interest in socio-political issues is high and she pursues it passionately. She sees film as an impressive medium for communicating information and emotion. She was able to get to know the world of film more closely during an internship at a film production of the ZDF from the point of view and area of responsibility of the recording director and since then she is even more fascinated than ever.
Luzie Marie Woitsch
Luzie Marie Woitsch graduates from school in 2020 with a specialized baccalaureate at the Gestaltungs-FOS in Straubing. Since then, she has been making intensive use of the window between school and studies. After a federal voluntary service at the Städtische Galerie im Leeren Beutel, she devotes herself to art and politics. In addition to her involvement in the climate justice movement (including Fridays for Future), three jobs and other projects, she is preparing to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg… Free time? Not a chance. The world of film holds a great fascination for her. She is often inspired by the mood and visual language.
German Competition
Lisa Hering
Lisa’s role as a project staff member at AG Kurzfilm – Bundesverband deutscher Kurzfilm is many things: promoter, organizer, lobbyist, contact person – and curator. In recent years, she has seen thousands of German short films and attended countless international film festivals. After studying English, geography and education, she worked as a festival assistant for Filmfest Dresden and completed an internship at the Goethe-Institut in Namibia. She has been working for AG Kurzfilm since 2017 and is mainly responsible for the presentation of the German short film abroad. Lisa grew up in the Saxon province and lives in Dresden.
Frank Scheuffele
Frank Scheuffele has been working at the Short Film Agency / Short Film Festival Hamburg since 2000. Thereof 17 years in the film selection for the International Competition. (He has probably screened 20000 short films) Since 2017 he is a producer at Fünferfilm where he produces long and short films together with Karsten Krause and Julia Cöllen. (e.g. Olanda, Drift; Human Flowers of Flesh).
Hannes Wesselkämper
Hannes Wesselkämper studied literature, art and media studies at the University of Konstanz and the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF. For many years he has worked as a film and music critic for radio and online. He also curates for various film festivals, most recently for the Max Ophüls Preis film festival. In addition, he is a research associate of the Kolleg research group Cinepoetics – Poetologies of Audiovisual Images at Freie Universität Berlin. In 2022 he successfully completed a PhD project on cinematic spectacle with Prof. Dr. Michael Wede.
Window to the Architecture
Susanne van Loon
Susanne van Loon (photographer and architect, Dipl.-Ing.) has lived in Regensburg for ten years and works for a local developer in the area of rentals/old town. She is a photojournalist for neue musikzeitung, JazzZeitung.de, Eclat Festival/SWR, Musik der Jahrhunderte, BMW-Welt in Munich and others; as a photographer she also works in the fields of food and architecture photography. She has pursued her passion for movies since her studies at the University of Stuttgart, where she designed several film projects. At home in the film and cinema landscape of Ludwigsburg for many years, Susanne van Loon also enthusiastically appreciates and follows the rich cinema and film offerings of the world heritage city as a Regensburg resident.
Nicolai Baehr
After graduating, architect Dipl. Ing. FH Nicolai Baehr made Paris his chosen home for three years, working for Atelier Jean Nouvel on projects in Wismar, New York and Murten. His cocoon-like design for the Swiss National Exhibition went on tour for a year as the “Expo-Mobile,” where viewers could catch video projections like butterflies. In Starnberg, he now runs his own company, “Baehr Rödel Architekten und Stadtplaner,” in the third generation. He accompanies the architectural film series of the Breitwand Cinemas and the Five Lakes Film Festival of Matthias Helwig and was able to realize the cinema in Gauting with him as the building owner. Active in the Weitwinkelverein and advisory board of the Wessobrunner Kreis, he led many film discussions and moderations with filmmakers.
Leo Kuelbs
Leo Kuelbs (b. 1968 in Minnesota, USA) is an art collector, curator, journalist, and musician. He grew up in a Harley-Davidson motorcycle store until he started studying theater, media, and business at the University of Wisconsin, graduating in 1992. Leo’s family is mostly of German descent with deep roots in the Palatinate. As a gallerist and curator of the “Leo Kuelbs Collection”, audiovisual works such as video works or public mapping installations are among his key areas of interest, such as “Light Year” (New York, 2015-present) or “Mitte Media Festival” (Berlin, 2016-2019). With his “Digital Fairy Tales” (2016-present) he was already a guest at the Short Film Week in 2018 and will be again this year. Today he lives and works in Berlin and New York.
Window to Bavaria
RiA
RiA – the “First Lady of Bavarian Rap” – is known for songs like “Bazz” or “Huastnguadlbua” from radio and TV. But only a few know that the native of Lower Bavaria worked as a set designer for various Hollywood productions before her music career, including Roland Emmerich. RiA rediscovered her love for the dialect, her native slang, in Africa. The whole thing culminated in a yodeling diploma in Namibia. From Puttenhausen out into the big, wide world and back. In 2011, her solo career began as Maria Reiser, beyond the country’s borders, to Las Vegas and since 2020, the “Reiserin” tours as Bavarian rapper RiA. This May starts her “Schwungscheim United Tour 2023” among other things with its own mobile stage!
Vincent Wild
Vincent Wild, filmmaker and artist, grew up in Munich. And never made it out either. With a great interest in all media and art forms, the medium of film in particular has remained his constant companion since early childhood. In 2015, he completed his training as a media designer for image and sound at Bavaria Film with a focus on scenic film. A year later, together with Alexander Kleinrensing, he founded the company Luminous Delusion, which offers visual effects and animation for film and television. Since 2018, he has also been a permanent member of the team at the Munich youth film festival flimmern&rauschen, where he is responsible for design. Driven by the love of storytelling, he tries to shoot, write, draw as much as possible on the side and is always happy to find new ways to make others laugh, think, cry, get spooked and most of all be amazed.
Veronika Osterauer
Veronika Osterauer has been active in cultural work since her studies of Italian, ethnology and communication sciences at the LMU Munich. She is particularly fascinated by the world of film and cinema as a place of discourse. Thus, after a year abroad in India, during which she already supervised various film projects, she took over the theater management of Kino Breitwand Starnberg in 2012, and in 2014 the marketing management of all Breitwand Arthouse cinemas in Gauting, Starnberg, Herrsching and Seefeld, which are awarded annually by the federal and state governments for their outstanding film program. Since 2007, this carefully curated film program culminates in the International Five Lakes Film Festival (fsff), which she has helped to shape as marketing director since 2015, and as organization director since 2020.
Window to the Region
Kerstin Fröber
Kerstin Fröber came to Regensburg in 2003 to study psychology. She earned her doctorate at the University of Regensburg in 2013 and finally habilitated in 2020. In addition to her academic career, she is involved in numerous festivals for film and cinema, including the Short Film Week Regensburg, the Hardline Film Festival and the Silent Film Week. She is also still active in her Upper Franconian home at the Hofer Filmtage and the Grenzland Filmtage in Selb, where she has been the 1st chairwoman of the supporting association since 2020. In 2018, Dr. Kerstin Fröber was also able to combine her two passions – research and film – in a research project for the first time. In the 1st Regensburg Cinema Experiment, she was able to demonstrate that a film is subjectively rated better and the emotional film experience is heightened when the film is viewed for the first time in the cinema and not at home. The results of the study were published in 2021 in the renowned scientific journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.
Säm Wagner
Säm Wagner loves music and film. In addition to his passion for pop music from the Upper Palatinate and around the world, he has been a permanent guest in movie theaters ever since he could walk. At the same time, he has developed a penchant for the weird and sometimes even the offbeat. As a cameraman, Säm Wagner has already shot several music clips and short films that, for some inexplicable reason, never made it into film history (and also failed to win a flower pot at the Short Film Week). As popular music commissioner of the district of Upper Palatinate, he is responsible not only for music but also for film promotion. But above all, as a film lover, he is looking forward to the short films submitted in the regional window of the International Short Film Week.
Cindy Michel
As a child of the 80s, the then Army Brat consumed pretty much everything that the cinema screens between the good ol’ Oberpfalz and New York offered. TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES, BACK TO THE FUTURE, THE THREE LORDS and THE GOONIES set the course for her professional life: After voluntary service the scholarship holder went to Berlin to study film & literary studies. Before 1e9, LEAD and W&V, the author and media consultant wrote for WIRED Germany, among others. Cinema, pop and nerd culture are her favorite topics. Currently, the project manager at Oberpfalz Marketing shows via film and text how crazy great life in the Upper Palatinate can actually be. Quote: “The future is a state of mind”.