Hamburg Positions – The Organic City
The „Hamburg Positions“ are a new format at the Hamburg Short Film Festival with short films from and about Hamburg, alongside occasional outliers, on annually changing subjects relevant to the city. The programme is aimed at creating a platform for Hamburg’s short film makers, presenting new and old short films from and about Hamburg as well as encouraging debate. Furthermore, it’s a forum in which visitors from Hamburg and abroad can get in touch and exchange ideas.
The programme consists of two blocks, and after the first screening at the Lampenlager, there will an opportunity to talk about the films, the programme and the subject with the attending film makers and a guest.
The Organic City
The new format’s new programme is all about “The Organic City”.
Communities such as cities, regions and nations are constantly changing and evolving. Some people come, others go, inhabitants are born and die and meanwhile the attitudes, wishes and perceptions of individuals, subgroups and even the entirety of the inhabitants are in constant flux.
This increase in complexity always causes some people to close their eyes to these developments, and in recent years all over the Western World, hegemonic ideas regarding the identity of cities, regions and nations have been on the rise again. These beliefs view society not as constantly changing and evolving organisms but consider their own cemented perceptions as factual definitions which need to be accepted as unbiased truths by everybody else. At the same time these groups consider it their right to decide who belongs to the community and who doesn’t, thus excluding others based on religion, ethnic background, income, gender, etc.
These authoritarian definitions are naturally based on simplifications and sheer inventions regarding the character and history of any given community. In contrast to this, we present a programme that presents human communities as much more complex and variable by using Hamburg as an example. After all, it’s individuals, groups, subcultures and so on who shape the reality of a city, often doing so in direct opposition to economically motivated urban politics. Every subjective perception is equally “true”. This diversity stretches over both time and space, since conditions do not only change over time, but are just as often vastly different in different places and circumstances.
Short film is the perfect medium for illustrating this kind of often ambivalent multiplicity. With its inherent shortness and diversity, it is the perfect instrument for gaining profound insights beyond all simplifying rhetoric.
Hamburg’s cityscape, its architecture, inhabitants and even its flora and fauna are multifaceted and on no given day the same as they had been the day before. This way, they elude all simple definitions motivated by economic interests and narratives. The Hamburg positions set the city’s record straight.
We are looking forward to welcoming the attending film makers as well as the writer, artist and journalist Till Briegleb, who will bring in additional perspectives from beyond the world of short film making. 

Programme: Hamburg Positions 1
Friday, 7th of June | 5.30 pm | Festivalzentrum Post, Lampenlager
Sunday, 9th of June | 5.30 pm | Zeise 2
Programme: Hamburg Positions 2
Friday, 7th of June | 7.45 pm | Festivalzentrum Post, Lampenlager
Sunday, 9th of June | 7.30 pm | Zeise 2

- more info coming soon -