Since 2001, Olaf Held has worked at the Chemnitzer Filmwerkstatt and has been a freelance director, dramaturge, and scriptwriter. He writes for short film magazines Unicato (MDR) and Kurzschluss (Arte).
Olaf Held
Olaf Held 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 Olaf Held’s submission:
| Movie | Original Title | Director | Country | Year | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bridges-Go-Round | Shirley Clarke | USA | 1985 | 7’ | ||
| Sieben Mal am Tag beklagen wir unser Los und nachts stehen wir auf, um nicht zu träumen Seven Times a Day We Bemoan Our Lot and at Night We Get Up to Avoid Our Dreams | Susann-Maria Hempel | Germany | 2014 | 17’ | ||
| Le batteur du boléro | Patrice Leconte | France | 1992 | 8’ | ||
One reel film, one shot, one actor and one piece of music. enough for a great movie. |
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| Imbiß spezial | Thomas Heise | Germany | 1990 | 27’ | ||
| Hinter den Fenstern | Petra Tschörtner | Germany | 1984 | 43’ | ||
| Two Cars, One Night | Taika Waititi | New Zealand | 2003 | 12’ | ||
| Creature Comforts | Nick Park | United Kingdom | 1989 | 5’ | ||
| Food Jídlo | Jan Švankmajer | Czechoslovakia | 1992 | 17’ | ||
| Prologue (Visions of Europe) | Béla Tarr & Ágnes Hranitzky | Hungary | 2004 | 5’ | ||
| Meshes of the Afternoon | Alexander Hammid , Maya Deren | USA | 1946 | 14’ | ||