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Going Underground Stands for the Idea of Taking Short Movies and the Entire Short Movie art Culture and Present it to big Audiences in Everyday Life.

Let’s face the facts: these days hardly anybody remembers the times when short movies were shown as supporting movies for blockbusters at your local film theatre. Subsequently, taking short movies and the presentation of an annual movie festival to Berliner Fenster with its audience of approximately 1.5 million people every day seemed to be the next consequential and logical move. When the festival was first launched in 2002 we received almost unbelievably positive and enthusiastic reactions from audiences and experts as well as the press. All of sudden you would see happy and smiling people on Berlin’s subway trains; a sight that’s been pretty much unprecedented up to this point.

During the first year of the competition 100 short movies from 20 different countries were submitted; a number which extended to the amount of 700 short movies from 55 countries during the second year’s run. This is especially outstanding since so-called Ultra Shorts - means short movies that don’t exceed the length of 90 seconds - represent the most difficult or better ‘hardest-to-do’ category of all short movies; the ultimate challenge being the fact that due to the technical requirements of Berliner Fenster’s video screens, the movies have to be silent.

Within four years, Going Underground - the first international subway train movie festival – has become the world largest festival of its kind presenting short movies to the broadest variety of age groups, nationalities and social classes.

Fred Kuhaupt (Festival Director)