Awarded

DVD Mailorder  |  DVD-5  |  PAL 16:9  |  Dolby Stereo  |  Region: free  |  133 min.  |  2008  |  german  |  Subtitles: english, spanish  |  FSK: 6  |  Label: KurzFilmAgentur Hamburg e.V.

The eleven short films on the short film reel “Mach doch, was du willst” (“Do Whatever You Like”) are the results of a short film competition which was organized by the Federal Cultural Foundation in collaboration with the Hamburg Short Film Agency and ZDF/ARTE in spring 2006. The assignment was to hand in drafts for films that would come up with inventive ideas and visions about the future of our work environment.

The scope of interpretations ranges from satirical descriptions of work's everyday madness through the depiction of alternative approaches to employment all the way to fictional predictions about the future of work. In view of the increasing shortage of traditional employment situations, all the films point to the demands made on the individual. By inventing their own professions, as the travel guide and the forest cleaner do, they show the commitment needed today in order to fight the process of being made obsolete.
The films of this compilation were selected for more than 100 festival screenings and have already won 19 awards.

01 THE NEW ERA | Karsten Wiesel
    D 2007 | 1’56 min. | Exp. Documentary
The New Era is a short civics lesson taught in 2006. It both calls up the ghosts of Communist education and reminds us of the dream that mankind may in some paradisical future be able to reap the fruits of its labor.

02 YOU CAN’T TAKE HORSES TO THE CINEMA | Anna Wahle
    D 2007 | 10 min. | Documentary
What significance will the idea of work have in the future? The director asked Pupils of different schools between the ages of 12 and 20 to talk about it.

03 AN ACTRESS TRIES TO CRY | Arne Bunk
    D 2007 | 2’34 min. | Exp. Documentary
An actress is trying to cry. She is working. A tracking shot connects this production of tears with reflections on cinema’s conditions of production and reception.

04 BUS | Jens Schillmöller, Lale Nalpantoglu
    D 2007 | 9’14 min. | Short Fiction
If the work won’t come to us we’ll just have to go out and find work. A collective drives up and down the motorway looking for jobs which are not offered.

05 GERMANY – AN AUTUMN FAIRY TALE | Jochen Hick
    D 2007 | 16’11 min. | Documentary
The future of work seems to be developing into a future without it. Are we, who still believe in the exchange of labor for pay, even prepared for such a scenario? The exchange of labor for pay is dead. Long live labor.

06 RECYCLED PLANETS | Mojgan Ghanaatgar, Jeanine Reutemann
    Switzerland 2007 | 2’17 min. | Animation
A man goes from door to door, looking for work, but is turned away everywhere. As he sits down in the street at the end of the day, exhausted, he gets an unexpected invitation from above.

07 ECONOMIC MIRACLE | Andreas Teuchert
    D 2007 | 16’30 min. | Documentary
“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” Outdated utopianism or model for the future? 76 members of a commune in Niederkaufungen are constantly struggling to make this idea a reality.

08 PETER’S PRINCIPLE | Kathrin Albers, Jim Lacy
    D 2007 | 5’18 min. | Animation
The film is about a crocodile, mouse, cat and elephant who are all trying to make their way up the career ladder, using all of the contradictory knowledge they have gleened from various management bestsellers.

09 FOREST CLEANER | Markus Mischkowski, Kai Maria Steinkühler
    D 2007 | 8’38 min. | Short Fiction
Two friends, both unemployed on a long-term basis, have to participate in a “reintegration measure”. Their assignment: clean up the municipal parks and woodlands. But the market for woodlands refuse has become highly competitive.

10 OUTSOURCING | Hanna Reifgerst, Markus Dietrich
    D 2007 | 6’12 min. | Short Fiction
The family is the smallest business venture there is. What if we were to view this unit solely from an economical perspective? What if the family was to start firing its members to make its operations leaner and more efficient?

11 HOW I BECAME A FREELANCE TRAVEL GUIDE | Jan Peters
    D 2007 | 15 min. | Documentary
A filmed diary about the attempt to get an internship with a man on early retirement who buys a group ticket for the metro at Frankfurt airport every day and then lets passengers travel with him on his ticket.

Festivals & Awards

Bus: 57. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin, 2007
Peter's Principle: Skoda Kurzfilmpreis, Internationales Kurzfilmfestival Berlin, 2007
                     German Economy Film Award, 2007
                     Murnau-Kurzfilmpreis, 2008
Outsoucing: Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau Kurzfilmpreis, 2007
                  Festival de Cannes (Next Generation) Cannes;
                  23. Int. KurzFilmFestival Hamburg;
                  Capalbio Cinema Int. Short Film Festival;
                  31. Open Air Filmfest Weiterstadt;
                  Umea Filmfestival (Next Generation);
                  Milano Film Festival;
                  Interfilm: 23. Intern. Kurzfilmfestival Berlin;
                  XXS Dortmunder Kurzfilmfestival;
                  Documentary Film & Video Festival Kassel; 2007
HOW I BECAME A FREELANCE TRAVEL GUIDE:
Main Award German Competition Internationales KurzFilmFestival Hamburg,
European Media Art Festival: Preis der Deutschen Filmkritik 2007,
audience award exground filmfest 2007,
Award Int. Competition & Audience Award 17. Intl. Videofestival Bochum

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Do Whatever You like - 11 short films about changing nature of work was added to our catalog on Wednesday 17 September, 2008.