07/11/23 Update to the International Film Community, Concerning Oberhausen
7 November 2023
An update by a working group from the original signatories of the ‘Message to the international film community, regarding a recent statement from the director of Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen’:
The collectively written letter, signed by over 1,800 international artists and curators, called out International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and its director Lars Henrik Gass for publishing language that “serves to dehumanize and stigmatize Palestinians and anyone showing solidarity with their survival.”
In a follow-up, Oberhausen festival’s website and Facebook account published a “statement concerning the criticism of our FB post from 20 October 2023”, signed by Gass on 3 November 2023:
Since a call to attend the Central Council of Jews’ rally in Berlin on 22 October was published on this Facebook page which condemned groups that had celebrated in Berlin after the terrorist attack on 7 October became known, the Festival and I have been subjected to criticism and confronted with a message to the international film community to distance themselves from the festival and my person. The post condemned the events of 7 October and the anti-Semitic reactions to them. My intention was not to stigmatise the Palestinian population in general, neither in Germany nor abroad. I regret that this impression was created. It was a spontaneous appeal which articulated grief, empathy, horror and anger about the terror of 7 October. Our Festival remains a place of free thought and discussion, from which no one should feel excluded because of their political views or cultural background. Racist, anti-Semitic and war-glorifying attitudes have no place here. We hope that the dialogue will continue.
Lars Henrik Gass
Festival Director
International Short Film Festival Oberhausen
The festival’s 3 November follow-up statement is deeply concerning and fails to adequately respond to the collective criticism in three ways.
First, the festival’s follow-up fails to differentiate between two discrete elements of its original 20 October Facebook post: one was a promotion that forwarded information to attend a rally organized by the Central Council of Jews in Germany, among others; the second was a text signed by Gass that framed the festival’s promotion with language that demonized Palestinians and their supporters as anti-semites and proponents of Hamas. The festival’s follow-up response not only fails to recognize the collective criticism of this problematic enmeshment of the festival’s promotion of the rally with the festival director’s inflammatory language, but intentionally continues to muddle it through misrepresentation.
Second, the festival’s follow-up statement fails to differentiate between Gass as an individual using the festival’s social media for his own political agenda and the position of the festival itself. This was a key criticism pointed out in the collective letter. Shifting between first-person singular and first-person plural, it remains unclear on whose behalf Gass was and is speaking.
Third, through its ongoing misrepresentations, the follow-up statement reveals a severe structural problem at the core of the festival: the use of the publicly-funded institution as a platform for discriminatory rhetoric with a continued lack of accountability. The festival’s follow-up permits the director’s non-apology, which puts the blame on those who may have had the impression that the rhetoric used was to be taken at face value. The festival’s follow-up thus subtly repeats and legitimizes the original wording of the social media post that was collectively criticized. It simultaneously deflects responsibility for its contribution to a significant shift of German public discourse to the right, which puts people in danger inside of and beyond Germany’s borders.
The assertion that the festival will remain to be a space of pluralist discourse is not credible in light of its follow-up statement. Consequently, all demands formulated in ‘Message to the international film community’ remain valid and in effect.
We repeat our call to staff and partners of the festival to clarify their role and position.
We maintain our encouragement to the international film community to reassess their relations to Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen.
The call for further signatories remains open.