100 Seconds
by Birgit Schrumpf
100 seconds, just over one minute, sounds hardly long enough for a movie. If ever you were annoyed at having to sit through a film dragging on over two hours or longer, then this is for you: “micromovie” is the word. These were screened during the Filmfest Hamburg before feature films or could be watched on the internet. The organizers, TV channel DAS VIERTE and the magazine TV Movie selected nine finalists out of about 2000 entries. Amongst the jury was Hamburg film maker Fatih Akin (Cannes award for best script Auf der anderen Seite/The Edge of Heaven) who commented that it is a great challenge for young, aspiring writers to condense the story into such a short script.
The theme was “A Message 4 You” and the script had to be very precise so that the film could be told in no more than exactly 100 seconds. It was up to the public to find the winner of the competition by voting their favourite film via online, per voting card or telephone.
The “DAS VIERTE micromovie-Award” went to Florian Siegrist, the creative author of the winning film Unser Kind. He received EUR 4,444 as well as an invitation to an exclusive scriptwriting workshop.
