Short Film News (SFN) - The 54th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen has called for entries, while the entry requirements for the festival competitions have been changed.

According to the festival website, there are now two separate entry deadlines for international and German productions: international submissions must have reached Oberhausen by 1 February 2008 and German productions by 15 February 2008.

In addition, preview copies will be accepted on DVD only, and DVD will no longer be accepted as a screening format.

"Our goal is to enable us to better cope with the enormous number of submissions we get. in 2007, almost 6,500 works were sent to Oberhausen. We're very happy to see so many filmmakers wanting to compete in Oberhausen. Our name stands for openness towards all kinds of genres and forms which we have no intention of giving up, so we didn't introduce any limitations in genre or content. We're hoping that these organizational changes will help us to continue to do justice to every submission we get in the future," said festival director Lars Henrik Gass.
"As for DVD, we tested this format in screenings for three years, but even in the third year there were too many cases when we were unable to achieve the high projection quality we try to maintain and which is very important to us. So we decided to exclude DVD as a screening format for now," he added.

The 54th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen will take place from 1 to 6 May 2008. Regulation and entry form are available in festival website: www.kurzfilmtage.de.