Anna Feistel is a programmer, curator, and arts mediator based in Hamburg. She studied Literature, Art and Media Studies at the University of Konstanz and Sapienza Università di Roma. Her passion for short films began many years ago, when she organised a student short film festival and worked at a communal cinema. She worked as an art mediator for Art Basel, MKG Hamburg, and Kunstverein Konstanz. Since 2016, she has worked in several positions at Kurzfilm Agentur Hamburg, including the distribution department, festival administration, and school cinema week. Since 2019, she has been part of the international competition selection committee and the programme coordinator of Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg.
Anna Feistel
Anna Feistel participated in “Greatest” Short Films of All Time 2025, a first-ever poll of its kind as a collective love letter to the art of short-form moving image. yanco and Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, in collaboration with Talking Shorts, invited filmmakers, curators, distributors, critics, and scholars worldwide to nominate 10 audiovisual works under sixty minutes that they personally consider the “greatest” of all time. This was Anna Feistel’s submission:
The challenge of assembling a short film canon lies in the very notion of what a “canon” should represent. When does a film become “historical” enough to enter a canon? Does it need to be historical? For what do we need a canon? Is it a collection of works that have already stood the test of time, or can it also include contemporary pieces that anticipate future influence? One immediately faces questions of selection, bias, and historical perspective. It is bounded by my personal perspective, by my own “film archive,” influences by academia, film festivals, own interest. I guess a balanced canon would ideally include both historically significant films and contemporary ones that resonate with today’s sensibilities. Ideally, selection should reflect the full diversity of the art form. But it would be an ongoing ever changing and dynamic list, always lacking positions... The canon is a snapshot of cultural value judgments. The perfect canon would be one, that is always moving, not a static one. I'm very curious what will come out of this collection of films.
— Anna Feistel| Movie | Original Title | Director | Country | Year | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Girl Chewing Gum | John Smith | United Kingdom | 1976 | 12’ | ||
| Meshes of the Afternoon | Alexander Hammid , Maya Deren | USA | 1946 | 14’ | ||
| Our Legacy Notre héritage | Caroline Poggi , Jonathan Vinel | France | 2015 | 24’ | ||
| At the Lőrinc Spinnery A lörinci fonóban | Márta Mészáros | Hungary, Germany | 1972 | 16’ | ||
| Ever is Over All | Pipilotti Rist | Switzerland, USA | 1997 | 4’ | ||
| Wasp | Andrea Arnold | United Kingdom | 2003 | 26’ | ||
| Symphony No. 42 | Réka Bucsi | Hungary | 2014 | 10’ | ||
| Tales of the Dumpster Kid Geschichten vom Kübelkind | Ula Stöckl, Edgar Reitz | Germany | 1971 | |||
| Kitchen Sink | Alison Maclean | New Zealand | 1989 | 14’ | ||
| Nuit et brouillard Night and Fog | Alain Resnais | France | 1955 | 32’ | ||