Since 2012, the B3 Festival of the Moving Image has been encouraging genre-spanning discussions about trends and developments in film, art, virtual reality and augmented reality, and artificial intelligence.

National and international artists and media professionals join together at B3 to contribute to the future of storytelling in the digital age.

B3 aspires to create an interdisciplinary alliance for the moving image and to initiate a cross-industry and cross-genre dialogue. It offers an overarching platform for innovation and exchange to international cultural and creative industries.

As a cross-media festival of the moving image, with film screenings, exhibitions, conference and workshop programmes, including competition formats, it is aimed at professionals and young talents of the creative and media industries, from the fields of business, politics and science, as well as interested members of the public.

Each edition of B3 is centered around a theme of focus. Past themes have been Expanded Narration (2013), Expanded Senses (2015), On Desire (2017), Realities (2019), Truths (2020), Identity (2021), Transformation (2022), Horizons (2023) and Democracy (2024).

B3 honours established artists and young talents with the B3 BEN Award. The most recent main award winners include outstanding, internationally renowned artists such as Oliver Stone, Willem Dafoe, Steve McQueen, and Anne Imhof.

Winners of the B3 BEN Award 2023

The current categories of the B3 BEN Awards are:

• B3 BEN BEST SHORT FILM 
• B3 BEN BEST EMERGING TALENT 
• B3 BEN BEST VR EXPERIENCE 
• B3 BEN ROTRAUT PAPE INSPIRATION AWARD 
• B3 BEN BEST IMMERSIVE AND TIME BASED ART 
• B3 BEN BEST FEATURE FILM 
• B3 BEN HONORARY AWARD FOR TIME BASED ART
• B3 BEN LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD 

B3 Festival of the Moving Image is organised by the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach (HfG) and supported by the Hessian Ministry of Higher Education, Research and the Arts (HMWK).

History

B3 Festival of the Moving Image started in 2012, being a Biennial from 2013 until 2019, and running yearly since 2019.

In 2013 the focus theme was "Expanded Narration. The New Narrative." Artist Laurie Anderson was awarded the B3 BEN award.

The programme explored storytelling in the categories of TV series, games, immersion, transmedia, art and cinema. A total of eleven prizes were awarded in the categories B3 Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award, BEN Grand Prize, BEN Young Talent Award, and Ultrashort #B3expandednarration and #B3live.

In 2015 B3 focused on the theme "Expanded Senses. Art Body Communication". The winner of the B3 BEN Award was British musician, producer, and artist Brian Eno.

The focus was on the categories art, film, TV, games, the Web, design and science. The promotion of young artists has been an integral part of the B3 since 2015. That year it was running under the name "Autumn School".

In 2015, B3 cooperated with GamesCom and the Chinese Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing. 60 contemporary Chinese artists presented their works in the exhibition "B3+Beijing: Moving in Time" in Beijing in June 2015. The ten winners of the exhibition were then represented at B3 in Frankfurt in the autumn.

The 2017 B3 focused on the theme "On Desire". This year's main prize winners were Jonas Mekas and Ingvild Goetz.

In 2017, B3 presented its programme in the categories of art, film, games and virtual reality. This year, the programme took place in the vacant, now derelict, Deutsche Bank buildings, among other locations. Frederico Solmi's media artwork "The Great Farce", a 110-meter-wide video panorama on the facade of the Frankfurt Opera, received a particularly strong media response.

In 2019, the B3 exhibition with the focus "Realities" took place in cooperation with THE ARTS+ at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The B3 BEN Award was awarded to British film director Steve McQueen.

In that year’s itinerary, the moving image was celebrated in the categories of (video) art, film, immersion, games, VR/AR/MR and AI. In addition to the exhibition, the B3 film programme and the virtual reality exhibition VR_PARK also presented an intriguing mix of political commentary and personal lives, in the theme of focus "Realities".

In 2020, artists and media professionals at B3 dealt with the focus theme "Truths". This was the year when Willem Dafoe and Anne Imhof received the B3 BEN Award .

Due to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, B3 had to switch to a hybrid format for the first time. Film and conference programmes were held virtually. The opening ceremony and the B3 BEN Awards ceremony were streamed from the Astor Film Lounge in Frankfurt. The categories that year were film, art, games and XR (Extended Reality).

In 2021, B3 focused on the theme of "Identity". Oliver Stone and Hito Steyerl were the main award winners at this year's B3.

In 2021, the film, art, and conference program of the B3 were available only online. In the B3 Moving Image Forum, artists explored the theme of "Identity" in a variety of ways.