Doping didn’t just suddenly rain down from Olympus, but it is pervasively grounded in our culture. This rather banal insight lead to the subject of this year’s competition, which would hopefully result in a great variety of colourful film submissions. We were hoping that the ingestion of certain ingredients would lead to great results, especially by artists. After all, there have always been plenty of splendid examples for that. In his ›Hymn to the Night‹, Novalis praises the »brown poppy juices«. Baudelaire, van Gogh and Matisse consumed pretty much anything with psychedelic effects, from absinth to opium. Klaus Mann used to blow away his writer’s block with Heroin. Walter Benjamin favoured hashish, while Gottfried Benn preferred cocaine and Burroughs and Kerouac would do anything to expand their consciousnesses, eventually finding it hard to shrink them back to normal sizes again.

But film makers? The submissions were colourful, bizarre, garish, stereotypical, at times musical, often sports historical, frequently animated and finally impressive enough to enable us to select 28 pearls that succeed in removing all rules of perception.

There’ll be three opportunities for you to find out why and what finish entertainment stars suddenly begin to sing in German in a sauna, or what methods old English pubs apply in order to turn into philistine Café Latte shops. And what about the addiction and grace of those classical ballet dancers who are moving to the wail of police car sirens in the urban jungle? Unsporting and unfair behaviour is guaranteed, just like entertainment, excitation and performance enhancement. May the best win in the end.

We would like to thank everybody who submitted films, especially the 28 chosen ones from 13 countries. We bow down, slightly stunned and with our eyes wide open, and hope that you’ll enjoy mild summer evenings in the arenas
of the Three-Minute-Quickie-Arenas.

Text: Michael Schwarz