The festival was founded in 2003 under the name shnit Kurzfilmnächte. Over the course of the next couple of years the event for short films of all kind quickly evolved into a festival with an international competition, and a big variety of special programmes, workshops and public film talks. Since 2005 the shnit shortfilmfestival takes place in the PROGR center for cultural production and in various cinemas in the old town of Berne. Since 2007 the festival is host of the Slam-Movie-Night and also holds the REALTIME film challenge. With 6 festival locations, more than 65 screenings and an attendance of around 15'000 the shnit shortfilmfestival is the largest festival of its kind in Switzerland.
Competition and Festival Concept
More than 2000 short films from all continents are annually submitted to the selection process. The centre point of the festival is the international competition shnit OPEN COMPETITION. Each OPEN programme consists of about 6 to 7 short films, lasting about 80-minute. There are usually 10 OPEN COMPETITION Programmes that are programmed and screened in each participating city/playground. Among the OPEN COMPETITION entries, an official festival jury awards films in the following categories: - SMART JOE - MAGIC JACK - LONG JOHN The total prize money of the shnit-Open is CHF 100'000. In addition, audience could attend the screenings and vote their favourite film in all the cities. Chosen film with the highest votes get a good chance to win 'AUDIENCE AWARD' conferred by the shnit competition organizer. Film competitions held in each city award their best film with their respective film awards/prizes.
Other Festival Programmes
Besides the OPEN COMPETITION screenings, other interesting short films are also curated into different programme sections changing every Edition. Within the following section are 90-minute programme blocks where every Playground screens the selected programmes: - A REAL TREAT - OUT OF CURIOSITY - FOR SPECIAL INTEREST
Playgrounds
Besides Bern, the festival soon attracted participation from different cities including Cologne in 2009, Cape Town in 2010, as well as Vienna, San Jose and Singapore in 2011. These cities will be screening the OPEN COMPETITION short films over a few days at the same time, in the first week of October every year. These cities are known as PLAYGROUNDS, and each runs a set of similar festival programmes with their available local resources in terms of sponsorships, partnerships and grants. Audience are welcome to vote for their favourite film during the screenings. Results will be sent to Bern to award the 'AUDIENCE AWARD' film at the end of the week. In 2012, Switzerland Embassy of Singapore supported the festival in Singapore.
