The first edition of the Shorts! International Film Festival was organised by Filmtheater Kriterion in 1996. In the next seven years another three successful editions took place. The fruitful partnership between Kriterion and De Balie was formed in the most recent fourth edition of the festival. After five quiet years the two cinemas teamed up once again to reinvigorate the local landscape of short film: the fifth edition of Amsterdam Shorts! was born.

Kriterion is a cinema that was founded in 1945 by former members of the Dutch resistance movement. It gained name as a place completely ran by students and distinctly established itself in Amsterdam’s arthouse scene by screening quality movies that are accessible to varied audience. Apart from hosting many film festivals, Kriterion organises it’s own festival each year, where over the past years we have seen Cinestud (2005) and Unheard: the new soundtrack Festival (2006 and 2007). This year’s edition of quality homebrew entertainment will be the international short film festival Amsterdam Shorts!

Coming from a need to enrich the types of film on offer in Amsterdam and to broaden itself as a platform for discussion with retrospectives, festivals and imported films, De Balie constituted its own Cinema in 1996. Since then the programming in De Balie as well as the local filmprogramming have drastically changed. Nevertheless, Cinema De Balie goes on presenting opinionated film. Festivals such as The Transgender Film Festival, Cinemaztlan, Dutch Open and now, Amsterdam Shorts!, have always played a huge part in doing so.