• The 10th B3 Biennial officially opened!
• 14 artists won the B3 BEN Award

The time has come: The B3 Biennial of the Moving Image will open its doors for the tenth year on October 15 and, right at the start, will honor outstanding cultural and media professionals for their special achievements in storytelling with moving images. Prof. Bernd Kracke, President of the HfG Offenbach and Artistic Director of the B3, opened the B3 2022 together with Ayse Asar, State Secretary of the Hessian Ministry of Higher Education, Research and the Arts, Stefanie Wüst, Frankfurt’s Head of Economic Affairs, and Karin Wolff, Managing Director of the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain, in the Astor Film Lounge.

State Secretary Asar paid tribute to B3 on its tenth birthday: "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."

Festival director Prof. Bernd Kracke summed up the essence of the anniversary edition: "In its tenth year, the B3 Biennial 2022 once again impressively fulfills its cross-industry and cross-genre claim to present and discuss storytelling with moving images as the driving cultural force of the 21st century.  The latest developments from VR to AI to the Metaverse will be addressed by international experts and makers. As a platform for the entire creative industry, it offers creative professionals as well as up-and-coming talent both in Hessen (Germany) and far beyond an attractive opportunity for exchange and networking. The broad audience from young to old is enthusiastic about the latest developments on display at B3."

At the subsequent award ceremony, the two Belgian filmmakers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne were honored with the main B3 BEN Lifetime Achievement Award. Luc Dardenne gratefully accepted it from B3 Festival Director Prof. Bernd Kracke after a laudatory speech by Frédéric Boyer, Artistic Director of the Tribeca Film Festival New York. As protagonists of our society, the Dardenne brothers raise their voices in their works for those who need a voice on the margins of society. Their films are award-winning and much discussed, and their support for young talent is legendary.

The second grand prize, the B3 BEN Award for Outstanding Pioneering Achievement in Digital Art, went to artist duo Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau. Most recently, their work has been honored through retrospectives at ZKM Karlsruhe and OK Zentrum für Gegenwartskunst Linz. They inspire other artists through their cross-media approach and active connection of technology, science and art, thus stimulating new ideas.

Berlin-based artist Daniel Noël Fleischmann was awarded the B3 BEN Rotraut Pape Inspiration Award for his short film SINTER, which he financed in part through a crowdfunding campaign. The German premiere can be seen on Saturday, October 15 at 4 p.m. at the Astor Film Lounge.

For his film collage HYPERTOPIA, artist Roman Roth was awarded the B3 BEN Emerging Talent Award. His installation observes the repetition of human actions in the context of nature and infrastructure and simultaneously rearranges them in a surreal yet familiar-looking landscape, comparable to the popular Settlers games. These and other impressive works from the B3 Talent Forum are on display at HOCI at Bethmannhof.

Austrian director Johannes Grenzfurthner presented filmmaker Alexander Sagmo with the award for Best Feature Film ESTHER’S ORCHESTRA. The romantic film from Denmark will celebrate its German premiere on Saturday, October 15 at 8 p.m. at the Astor Filmlounge.

TILDYPOPS by Tiggy Bayley, in which she herself plays the lead role, was awarded Best Short Film. TILDYPOPS is an intimate portrayal of a young girl’s experience dealing with an alcoholic brother who suffers from functional autism. This deeply personal story, based on Tiggy Bayley’s teenage years, will be screened October 15 at 4 p.m. in the Astor Film Lounge.

This year, B3 will award the prize for Best Immersive and Time Based Art to A TRULY SHARED LOVE by Emilie Brout and Maxime Marion. In this work, the French artists show their true love story in their own domestic environment. They use the codes of commercial images of stock videos and play with the normative and idealized representations they produce. Their work can be seen at the B3 Moving Image Forum at HOCI.

Hesse native Sebastian Pfeifer aka Everfresh is a German digital animation artist and recipient of the Best Crypto Art Award. He has quickly made a name for himself in the uncharted territory of crypto art and now sells his work to international collectors and "internet gold diggers." With his penchant for cartoon-like moving images, Pfeifer’s works humorously draw attention to social ills.

The award for Best AI Based Crypto Art goes to Orkhan Mammadov. He is a pioneering media artist from Azerbaijan whose sculptures and paintings are driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning. His works reflect the rapid technological changes in the global context by rethinking the art and cultural heritage of the Middle East.

Maria and Jörg Courtial receive the award for Best VR Experience for their work GENESIS. Both are co-founders, managing directors and producers of the Darmstadt-based studio Faber Courtial. Under their leadership, the company developed into one of the leading VR and VFX studios in Germany. GENESIS embarks on an emotionally intense virtual reality journey to experience the dramatic milestones in the evolution of the Earth and humanity. An immersive 24-hour metaphor of 4.7 billion years of evolution that can also be experienced at HOCI at Bethmannhof.

More information and visuals on the B3 Biennial can also be found here: 
B3 Pressebox.