• The festival program of this year’s B3 is finalized
• Filmmakers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne receive Lifetime Achievement Award
• Artist duo Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau receive B3’s main prize for outstanding achievement in the visual arts
• Ticket sales already started

From October 15 to 23, the B3 Biennial of the Moving Image will take place in Frankfurt for the 10th time. For its anniversary, B3 is waiting with an extensive and exciting program. National and international prominent representatives of the creative industries and up-and-coming talents, as well as this year’s main award winners, will present themselves and their works in the film competition, in exhibitions and in the B3 Conference Program.

This year, Belgian-born filmmakers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne will be honored with the BEN Lifetime Achievement Award, one of B3’s two main prizes. Together, the Dardenne brothers have made numerous award-winning films as producers, screenwriters and directors, and belong to the exclusive club of filmmakers who have won multiple Palme d’Or awards at the Cannes Film Festival. Luc Dardenne will receive the B3 BEN Award in person on October 14 during the B3 opening and awards show. Furthermore, he will hold a Master Class together with the renowned film critic and journalist Jörg Taszman on Saturday, October 15.

Another main prize, the BEN for outstanding achievements in the visual arts goes this year to the artist duo Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau. A highly acclaimed retrospective has just been dedicated to them at the ZKM in Karlsruhe and the OK Offenes Kulturhaus in Linz. Their remarkable and enduringly current works are considered "classics of digital art" and inspire other artists through their cross-media approach and the active connection between technology, science and art, thus stimulating new ideas.

Sommerer & Mignonneau will also hold a Master Class on Saturday, October 15 and can be seen with one of their works in the B3 Moving Image Forum.

"I am very much looking forward to our main award winners and to this year’s particularly extensive and diverse program and inspiring guests, such as Maria Courtial, the CEO of one of the leading VR and VFX studios in Germany. She will present impressive VR Experiences as a world premiere at B3, such as an interactive guided tour through Ancient Rome." said Prof. Bernd Kracke, artistic director of B3 at today’s press breakfast.

In addition to virtual worlds, B3 is also dedicated to crypto art, NFT’s and will show them, among others, at HOCI at Bethmannhof and at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Together with its partner THE VATRIX GmbH B3 shows current NFT’s by Sebastian Pfeifer from Hessen, Germany, and Gavin Shapiro from the USA. Within the conference program, on Monday, October 17, an entire thematic focus on Monday, October 17, will explore this new form of art and presentation.

A strong focus of B3 is on young talent. This year, B3 has been able to further expand its B3 Talent Forum year and, in addition to final projects from Hessen, Germany, is showing 20 other national and international final projects from various art and film schools. Initiatives such as the B3 HessenLab, which invites international young talents to participate with project ideas in a four-day lab and which was launched together with HessenFilm und Medien GmbH, continued to grow this year. The same applies to the HAB Graduation Grant, initiated by the four Hessian universities HfG Offenbach, Kunsthochschule Kassel, Hochschule Darmstadt and Hochschule RheinMain from the Hessian Film and Media Academy, which is aimed at graduates of media and moving image courses and awards grants for particularly outstanding final projects.

Ayse Asar, State Secretary in the Hessian Ministry of Higher Education, Research and the Arts, emphasizes the importance of this work: "I am particularly pleased that we are able to offer competent and sustainable assistance to young creative talent with the programs combined in the B3 Talent Forum in cooperation with HessenFilm und Medien GmbH. The B3 HessenLab, for example, brings together young professionals with initial project ideas and drafts from all moving image areas and enables them to develop these further with the help of mentors and in workshops. I see a lot of potential here for the future."

Up to now, each B3 has had a thematic focus that connected the program. This year, the focus is on TRANSFORMATION. In talks, artworks and films, the invitees of B3 illuminate this focus and, with their interpretation of transformation, contribute to new insights and perspectives in a wide variety of scientific, political, cultural, philosophical and very personal ways. "The Transformation of Democracy. An Opportunity?" is, for example, the topic of the B3 Conference on Tuesday, October 18. Here, filmmakers, best-selling authors such as Dr. Emilia Roig, and influential full members of the Club of Rome such as Dr. Mariana Bocesan and Prof. Dr. Stephan Brunnhuber will shed light on the current state of society and the new possibilities for shaping its content that the changing times we are currently experiencing bring with them.

Niels Juul, one of Hollywood’s most successful producers, who has already worked with stars such as Martin Scorsese and Steve McQueen and who plans to finance Scorsese’s next film in part through NFT’s, will enrich the anniversary edition of B3 with a Master Class.

Visitors can look forward to these and many other contributions in the Conference Program and to more than 100 moving image contributions from 30 countries, as well as to a film competition program with international premieres in the presence of the filmmakers.

More information and visuals on the B3 Biennial can also be found in the B3 Press Box at B3 Biennial 2022 and https://b3biennale.de/

B3 Locations:
Astor Film Lounge at MyZeil Frankfurt
HOCI at the Bethmannhof
Frankfurt Book Fair
Palm Garden Frankfurt
The Vatrix im Thurn & Taxis Palais