Xavier García Bardón

Xavier García Bardón is a Brussels-based researcher, teacher, and curator. He is a professor at École de Recherche Graphique and a lecturer at Université Libre de Bruxelles. His research focuses mostly on experimental film practices. As a film curator, he has worked at BOZAR (2003-2020) and with numerous other institutions, including the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), Cinémathèque française, WIELS, Centre Pompidou, CCCB, CINEMATEK, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, EXIS, and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea.

Xavier García Bardón 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 Xavier García Bardón’s submission:

Great idea. But 10 films is so ridiculously short. There are so many titles I would have liked to include in my list! In the end, I deliberately put classics aside in order to push films and filmmakers that might need some help.

— Xavier García Bardón
Movie Original Title Director Country Year Duration
Arnulf Rainer Peter Kubelka Austria 1960 7’
The House Is Black Khaneh siah ast Forugh Farrokzhad Iran 1963 22’
Reassemblage: From the Firelight to the Screen Trịnh T. Minh-hà Senegal, USA 1983 40’
The Layer of Destruction To stroma tis katastrofis Costas Vrettakos Greece 1980 32’
Just Avoid Sex Y'a qu'à pas baiser! Carole Roussopoulos France 1971 17’
Inhabitants Obitateli Artavazd Peleshian Armenia 1970 9’
J’ai huit ans René Vautier, Olga Baïdar-Poliakoff, Yann Le Masson Algeria, France 1961 8’
The Age of Stone A Idade da Pedra Ana Vaz Brazil 2013 29’
Les Mains négatives Marguerite Duras France 1978 14’
The Way Things Go Der Lauf Der Dinge Peter Fischli, David Weiss Switzerland 1974 30’