Satisfied visitors, international media coverage at the 48th Festival

[Kurzfilmtage]

Satisfied Visitors from the Region plus International Media Coverage at the
48th Oberhausen Festival

What kind of audience is lured into the cinema by the prospect of viewing 
short films? In order to find out, the International Short Film Festival 
conducted a VISITOR SURVEY during the 48th festival, with the help of 
students from the University of Applied Sciences Gelsenkirchen. The most 
important finding: two thirds of all German festival visitors come from the 
Oberhausen region. The audience also turned out to be relatively young: 
almost 80% of those surveyed were between 20 and 39 years old, while over 
80% belonged to the group consisting of students, self-employed and employees.

Visitors expressed a high degree of satisfaction with the festival 
programmes  an average of 79% of those surveyed claimed to be satisfied or 
very satisfied with the festival's offerings. The Children's and Youth 
Cinema programmes topped the list here, with a satisfaction rate of over 
90%. 80% of visitors attended the festival for more than one day. Over half 
of all guests were at the Short Film Festival this year for the first time, 
while 42% of the total were drawn to Oberhausen based on personal interests.

These results confirm the importance of the festival's strategy of 
intensifying press and advertising activities in the immediate region in 
order to attract new groups of short film viewers to Oberhausen. "In the 
past few years, we've been working intensely on increasing awareness on the 
part of the general public of Oberhausen as a venue for short film. We're 
especially pleased to note that we have evidently succeeded in bringing the 
festival closer to the regional audience", remarked Lars Henrik Gass, 
Director of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. "We would 
like to thank the students of the University of Applied Sciences 
Gelsenkirchen for their work and dedication. We were very impressed with 
the professionalism with which they conducted the survey."
MEDIA COVERAGE
The positive developments are also reflected in the media coverage of this 
year's festival which, mostly owing to an enormous increase in the 
television audience, reached more than 50 million readers and viewers in 23 
countries, a pleasant surprise indeed. This is confirmed by an (internal) 
FIAPF (International Federation of Film Producers' Associations) study 
covering the period from 1997-2000. Oberhausen is one of the five short 
film festivals in the world recognized by FIAPF. This study also shows 
that, in comparison with other festivals, Oberhausen has achieved an 
unusual increase in media coverage over the past years: "Oberhausen is very 
well covered by the press (close to 200 representatives in 2000) and from 
year to year features more prominently in the international press: from 4 
countries in 1997, press coverage increased to 19 countries in 2000." And 
to 23 in 2002.

Oberhausen, 21 October 2002

Press Contact: Sabine Niewalda, niewalda at kurzfilmtage.de


Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen
Grillostr. 34 | 46045 Oberhausen | Germany
Tel +49 (0)208 825-3073 | Fax 825-5413
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International Short Film Festival Oberhausen