Beyond Festivals: Alternative Exhibition Practices for Moving-Image Works

Talking Shorts presents “Beyond Festivals”, a new series of panel discussions exploring alternatives in short film exhibition, programming, and distribution, as a proposition to zoom in on underrepresented, local, and intently political models of making and sharing films. The goal is not only to map the current landscape but also to identify emerging opportunities—from hybrid distribution strategies to new approaches to audience development and monetisation in the short-film sector.

For this discussion in collaboration with Odense Film Festival, we explored alternative exhibition practices for short films beyond international festivals. How can these initiatives become part of a wider communal effort to build, protect, and educate? What can filmmakers and curators across Europe learn from different practices, challenges, and approaches? And how can these alternative models foreground a more expansive notion of audience care and potential?

The conversation took place on August 28th, during the 41st edition of Odense Film Festival at Rosenbækhuset, in Denmark, with the participation of Anna Linder (founder of SAQMI, the Swedish Archive of Queer Moving Images), Afsun Moshiry (curator of Sinema Transtopia), and lau persijn (co-founder of ACAB KINO and one field fallow).