a los gurkos short story

For the last three weeks I have been working 12 hours a day: 8 hours in the office (to get money) and 4 hours home (to screen films from other people).

Six years ago, in 2005, Hannes, Stefan and I were guests of a short film festival in which we submitted a film. We had our own table and a bottle of red wine. The screening went on, but they never showed ours. We were so devastated that we decided to start our own festival. 15 days later the first “Los Gurkos Short Film Festival” took place in Prometheus, a bar in Innsbruck. Even though it was Sunday, 40 people came.

In 2006, Patrizia and Anita took over the project and organised a second festival at the University, they named it “Schnitte” (“cuts” in English). In 2007 we hosted the festival in the PMK (a cultural platform) for the first time we had more than 100 guests.

The International Film Festival Innsbruck invited us in 2008 to screen our selection of shorts during their festival…in a cinema theatre!

In 2009 year we broke our record with guests, almost 150, but we had a gigantic problem: There was no sound in the cinema! Hannes went home a picked up cables, then drove to a technician and got a new sound-mixer but nothing helped. We and 130 people had to cross the city and headed to the PMK to see the short films. In July that year we also screen the winner films at a summer-cinema to a total of 2000 people.

The film festival is a small team of hard working people who work without salary for roughly 5 months. Our only goal is to host the only short-film festival in Tirol. We are doing good and I think lots of people like our festival.

The team: Sarah, Anita, Patrizia, Verena, Hannes, Lisa, Theresa and me. Isabella and the other Hannes will join us soon…