How can the short film canon be reshaped before it becomes fixed? In this keynote, curator and researcher Laura Walde reflects on the canon as a site of power, shaped as much by exclusion and forgetting as by preservation and care. She examines the particular position of short film, which has historically lacked an institutionalized canon, and considers how this absence can function both as a challenge and as an opportunity.
Drawing on her curatorial and academic work, Laura Walde invites the audience to critically engage with the politics of canonization and to collectively imagine ways of keeping the short film canon open, playful, and subject to continual questioning, deconstruction, and reconfiguration.
Organized in collaboration with European Short Film Network
Speaker: Laura Walde
Moderator: Emilia Mazik
About the speaker:
Laura Walde has been curating for the Winterthur International Short Film Festival since 2013, and in 2022 she completed her doctorate at the University of Zurich. Her thesis Brevity – Format – Program: The Short Film and Its Exhibition can be downloaded on the website of Talking Shorts. She was co-director of the Swiss Youth Film Festival, advised BA students at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts on festival strategies, and was managing director of Pro Short, the Swiss short film association. In addition to her work as project manager for education and communication at the Foundation for Art, Culture and History (SKKG), she is a freelance film curator and strategy consultant for cinemas, festivals and grant-making institutions.
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