Two new online platforms dedicated to short films were launched last week, as the world's biggest short-film festival, Clermont-Ferrand, was taking place (see the news on the award winners).

Talking Shorts had its official launch at Clermont-Ferrand, where partners on the project – Vienna Shorts, Filmfest Dresden, NISI MASA and Be Short Now – presented the online film magazine dedicated to shorts. Arising from the need for a space for quality writing about short films, and the necessity to make them more visible and accessible for both general audiences and the film industry, the goal of Talking Shorts is to become the ultimate platform for “all things short (film-wise)”, as Daniel Ebner, of Vienna Shorts, puts it.

Based on a collaboration between film festivals and writers, the platform has so far published a number of reviews and interviews on recent short films and is planning to expand its activities into the industry field. “The project has been developed over the past two years – at the beginning through informal talks between Vienna Shorts and Dresden, then together with critics and various initiatives from different backgrounds. Currently, two more partners are on board, NISI MASA and Be Short Now, which are going to help us cover the workshop and industry side,” says Ebner.

“And we have also had many discussions with festivals, which, as supporting members, play a crucial role for the project – not only for basic financing, but also as important multipliers. And although Talking Shorts is only a few days old at the moment, we have already received assurances from several short-film festivals that they will be on board, including Winterthur, Hamburg, Tampere, Uppsala, Glasgow, Encounters and Bogota. We have also had expressions of interest from one or two A-list festivals. So, obviously, we are not the only ones who felt that it was time for a decent platform for quality short-film criticism.”

Meanwhile, in Croatia, the Zagreb Film Festival, which has a strong track record of providing support for local short films with its traditional Checkers programme, has launched the croatian.film platform for the promotion of professional short film. In addition to a database of films and professionals, there are currently 118 titles available to stream, and during the first week alone, they have been watched some 10,000 times. There have also been 15,000 visits to the website.

“Most visits to the site come from Croatia, and there have been many visits from around the world, the majority from the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Germany, as well as some from South Africa, Chile, the UK, Azerbaijan and India,” croatian.film told Croatia Week.