01/11/23 Press Release: Concerning Oberhausen — Our Response
1 November 2023 (number of signatories updated 3 November)
More than 1500 influential artists and curators from around the world have signed a statement criticizing the official Facebook page of the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival (Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen) for its public post that “serves to dehumanize and stigmatize Palestinians and anyone showing solidarity with their survival”.
The decentralized and collectively written statement demands scrutiny of the festival’s 20 October 2023 Facebook post in which festival director Lars Henrik Gass published a rallying call to “Show the world that the Neukölln Hamas friends and Jew haters are in the minority. Come one, come all!”
The statement’s signatories note the ways in which the director exploits the wide reach of the festival as an international platform to “reductively and dangerously demonize any person who shows solidarity with Palestinian liberation. This, in parallel with a state-sanctioned crackdown on Palestinians and their supporters in Germany, has created an untenable connection between Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen and such violence.”
The signatories declare their stance against anti-semitism and racism in all forms, noting that “divisive rhetoric and repressive measures will not make anyone safer, but rather contribute to growing distrust, hatred, and violence.”
Collectively refusing the alignment of their cultural work with Oberhausen’s public position, the signatories list three demands. First, they call on the Oberhausen festival to “recognize the danger created by their director’s statements, to revise this position, and to take the appropriate measures to ensure responsible leadership in the future.” Second, they ask the international film community to “reassess their position towards the festival as submitting and visiting filmmakers, as distributors, curators, and guests.” And third, the signatories request the sharing of their collective statement and consideration of “further individual and collective actions in order to defend the right to show solidarity with Palestinians, including calls for an immediate ceasefire to end the siege on Gaza.”