Love in Numbers: Creating a Short Film Canon from Scratch

Last year, short film lovers, filmmakers, curators, critics and scholars worldwide were invited to nominate 10 short films under 60 minutes that they consider the “greatest” ever. This collective love letter to the art of the shortform moving image is the first of its kind. It was inspired by “Sight & Sound’s” decennial “Greatest Films of All Time” and initiated and organised by Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg and the Belgian short film magazine “yanco”, together with online platform “Talking Shorts”. It has resulted in an inspiring and ranked list of 105 titles. But... What now? What are we looking to achieve when we construct a list like this? Why reduce the history of an art form merely to numbers? How does a poll become a canon and is that even a good idea? When and how should a canon – which is, after all, used and reproduced not only in education – be challenged? A collective conversation about the pros, cons and potentials of such a canon.