The B3 Biennial of the moving image closes its doors with a positive balance

In the B3 Moving Image Forum 120 works of 80 artists from 30 countries were shown. The B3 Conference featured 70 speakers. The B3 Film Festivalpresented around 40 short and feature-length films from 20 countries.The honorary prizes of the B3 BEN Award went to the Belgian filmmakers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne and the pioneers of digital art, the artist duo Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau.
 
Through the interdisciplinary orientation of its festival structures, B3 offers the ever-changing arts and culture a platform for storytelling with moving images. Transformation as this year’s content focus of B3, played a central role in the presented contributions of the artists and creatives.
 
Ayse Asar, State Secretary at the Hessian Ministry of Higher Education, Research, Science and the Arts comments positively on the development of B3 over the past ten years:
"Ten years of B3, that’s ten years of innovative and unconventional art of storytelling, ten years of intensive cross-industry dialogue and ten years of interdisciplinary alliance for the moving image."
 
Boris Rhein, Prime Minister State of Hesse and a long-time supporter of B3, sees great potential in B3 especially for Hessen as a location: "B3 has an impact far beyond the borders of Hessen, it has truly become an international format and is therefore very important for Hessen as a cultural and creative location."
 
The B3 Moving Image Forum, the big moving image show of the B3, took place at three venues at once. In addition to the House of Creativity and Innovation (HOCI) of the Cluster of Creative Industries in Hessen (CluK) e.V., where the main exhibition of the B3 was located, further works were shown at the Frankfurt Book Fair in the area of THE ARTS+ and in the Palmengarten. There, moving image contributions from art, games, NFT/cryptoart, VR/AR and AI by established artists and graduates were presented. Among them were works by digital art pioneers such as Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau and emerging artists and filmmakers such as Cesar winner Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis.

B3 held its grand opening on October 14, 2022, at the Astor Film Lounge in MyZeil Frankfurt, followed by the presentation of the B3 BEN Awards in eight categories. Over five days, the Astor Film Lounge was also the festival center for its national and international guests and venue for the B3 Conference Program, the B3 Film Competition and the B3 HessenLab. 

The B3 Film Festival featured films by festival winners, new discoveries and film classics, including TORI AND LOKITA by Belgian brothers and filmmakers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, GIVE ME PITY, directed by Bette Midler’s daughter Amanda Kramer, or this year’s B3 BEN Award winner for Best Feature Film from Denmark, ESTHER’S ORCHESTRA by Alexander Bak Sagmo.
 
The B3 Conference featured top-class speakers such as multiple Cannes award winner Luc Dardenne from Belgium, Scorsese producer Niels Juul from LA or bestselling author Emilia Roig as well as Australian film producer Gabriel Shipton, who is campaigning for the interests of his brother Julian Assange.
 
The B3 HessenLab, which had yet to launch online in 2021, featured 25 participants from 13 countries, including Germany, Ukraine, the United States, South Africa and Japan. Newcomers from all over the world presented their projects in the early stages of development.
 
In addition to the B3 HessenLab, the HAB-Hessen Launch was held for the second time as part of the B3 and the B3 Talent Forum with around 60 participants. The HAB-Hessen is a cross-university graduation support program specifically for students of Hessen’s art, film and media programs. The Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach, the Kunsthochschule Kassel, the Hochschule Rhein Main and the Hochschule Darmstadt from the network of the Hessen Film and Media Academy (hFMA) are involved in the program.
 
Prof. Bernd Kracke, President of the Hochschule für Gestaltung and Director of the B3 Biennial of the Moving Image, is delighted with the successful anniversary edition of the B3: "After two years of mainly online presence, the great popularity and positive feedback we are now receiving is a very special incentive to further expand the B3 and its international appeal in the coming years. Storytelling with moving images is the core of B3 and continues to prove to be a very dynamic and innovative scene, as evidenced by established applications in film, art, games and VR/AR, as well as recent developments around NFTs, Artificial Intelligence and the Metaverse."

About B3 Biennial of the Moving Image

Controversial and multi-layered, creative artists speak out at the B3 Conference and present their works in screenings and exhibitions. The focus is on narration, storytelling. Every year, the guests at B3 provide an insight and outlook on the possibilities that exist in terms of content and technology to creatively develop ideas and stories. In doing so, they process their content in a wide variety of ways – from political, socially critical, philosophical to humorous.
B3 will take place from October 15 to 23, 2022, and celebrates its tenth anniversary this year.
The organizer of the B3 Biennial of the Moving Image is the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) Offenbach. The sponsor of B3 is the Hessian Ministry of Higher Education, Research and the Arts (HMWK). Sponsors and partners are the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain, the Wirtschaftsförderung Frankfurt as well as Sylvia and Friedrich von Metzler. Strategic partners of B3 are the Frankfurt Book Fair, THE ARTS+, Film London and many more. Central event partners are the ASTOR Film Lounge MyZeil, the Palmengarten, CLUK and The Vatrix among others.