Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg features Jennifer’s films + panel

We’re proud to have the excellent short film festival Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg celebrating the works of Jennifer this year, with three films, a midnight screening, and a panel.

Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg 2024

About the festival, from the organizers:

Short, concise, discursive, stimulating, style-forming. The Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg presents the state of the art of the short form and brings together cinema, exhibition, performative works, concerts and discourse. As one of the most renowned and important European short film festivals, Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg has been screening more than 400 films every year that react to the world in loud and sparkling, quiet and poetic, wild and calm ways. This way, selected programmes present the whole range of courageous, experimental and artistic films. Film makers, industry and audiences celebrate the short form together.

International short film festival

The festival offers a huge selection for cinema-goers:

More than 400 short films from over 40 nations are being screened
Among them, over 150 films run in seven competitions
The festival plays host to ca. 200 film makers from over 25 countries in addition to 400 trade visitors
Over 15,000 visitors attend roughly 100 programmes and events in six different cinemas, the festival centre and open-air screenings

This year, the theme of one of the specialty programs, Hamburger Positions, is about sex work. We’re thrilled to have three different Blue Artichoke Films movies screening at the festival: Headshot, Silver Shoes: Undressed, and Wild Card.

In addition, Jennifer will be present as a guest at the festival, along with our kind and fun Wild Card stars Kali Sudhra and Bishop Black.

On June 7, the “Pride and Politics: The Art of Producing Pleasure“ panel will take place, featuring Jennifer, Kali, Bishop, and ASMR/hypnosis sex worker, Undine de Rivière.

Headshot will screen June 7 (with Q&A by Jennifer) and also June 9.

A midnight screening takes place on June 7 as well, featuring Wild Card + Silver Shoes Undressed, as well as a short documentary about Jennifer and Adorn, “What’s Your Policiy On Orgasms?” by documentary filmmaker Zoe D’Amaro (Godmother Films)

Curated by Mara Marxsen – with our sincere thanks!

Events pages: Additional detail on programs

Read more about the two programs here on the other Events pages:

About the sex work program at the festival

From the festival:

Hamburger Positionen (Film Programs, June 6, 6:30 PM + June 9, 7 PM)

Last year, the Hamburger Positionen were dedicated to the topic of “work”, while another special program focused on cinematic “lust”. The audience found both worth seeing, and since the compulsion to constantly innovate rarely produces anything exciting, let alone significant, this year’s program is about nothing less than “sex work”. It can be as simple as that. Of course, the topic is also rooted in the urban sociological interest of the Hamburger Positionen.

Even without the red window lanterns, the Reeperbahn is probably the most famous redlight district in Germany. Herbertstrasse is particularly notorious, closed off at both ends with high gates. Few people know that these were set up by the Nazis to control sex work and make it invisible. Today, Hamburg’s city marketing praises the supposedly incomparable nightlife on the Reeperbahn. However, brothels, strip clubs and porn cinemas are not mentioned at all. Hardly surprising, given that the city is doing everything it can to spruce up, conform and sterilize the district. The myth of St. Pauli, yes please, but deviant lifestyles, no thanks. Final destination Disneyland. Where once sex workers leaned in windows and strolled along the streets, labyrinthine multiplex sex cinemas projected celluloid pornos around the clock and invited people to cruise, there is now a smooth and slick monoculture. Urban redevelopment is more effective than raids and batons. Perhaps those responsible took the redevelopment of Times Square in NYC as a model. Samuel R. Delany has described the void in the social fabric of the city left by the redevelopment of the Deuce as cleverly as vividly. His analysis does not serve the purpose of nostalgic romanticization, but raises the question of where in the future „people, male and female, gay and straight, old and young, working class and middle class, Asian and Hispanic, black and other, rural and urban, tourist and indigene, transient and permanent, with their bodily, material, sexual, and emotional needs, might discover (and even work to set up) varied and welcoming harbors for landing on our richly variegated urban shore.”

Of course, numerous clichéd films and series have also contributed to the myth of the wicked Reeperbahn. In general, the cinematic representation of sex work seems to be commonly and persistently contaminated by clichés (unproven thesis). This satisfies the male gaze and safeguards the anti-sex and misogynist order of bourgeois patriarchal society. In porn films, on the other hand, the performers are so obviously seen in their profession that the sight of sex obscures the view of their work.

The Hamburger Positionen are an attempt to create a different perception of sex work. Many of the selected films were made by or in collaboration with sex workers. Others use archival material, make imaginative connections between sex and work, or create visions of a new pornography. In view of the fact that the word pornography can be translated as ‘writing or painting of whores’ (that is, art that was produced by sex workers themselves or has sex workers as its subject), the Hamburger Positionen are presenting decidedly pornographic programs this year. They neither aim to reveal some sort of truth, nor do they claim to do justice to the complex realities of sex work. Rather, the programs are a beguiling potion to encourage sense and sensuality.

Updates on the Festival

More info:

Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg main website

Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg Instagram