PRAGUE: At its 2019 edition MIDPOINT TV Launch will organise a specialised training for development executives. This part of the programme is intended to create a new generation of broadcaster executives and commissioning editors in the CEE region.
XIII Batumi International Art-house Film Festival will be held in Batumi during September 16-23 September, 2018, closed film submission on 5 August. Festival organizer is “Batumi Art-house ARGANI”, official partner – Batumi City Hall.
BIAFF festival management finalized the submissions to festival. The complete program will be published by 1 September, 2018. Starting from the middle of August, BIAFF management will periodically announce the films of various sections of program.
Festival will be opened on 16 September, at Batumi State Musical Center. As a tribute to 110 anniversary of Georgian cinema during opening will be screened Georgian classical silent film “My Grandmother” (director – kote Mikaberidze) with musical accompaniment of famous Georgian pianist Dudana Mazmanishvili. Famous Georgian DoP Lomer Akhvlediani will be awarded with BIAFF special prize for contribution to cinema.
BIAFF film screenings locations:
- Cinema “Apollo”
- Hotel “Wyndham” conference hall
- OPEN AIR cinema at ERA Square
BIAFF festival program - consists of following sections: International Competition (Feature, Doc, Shorts), Master Collection, Georgian Panorama, Special Screenings etc.
During BIAFF 2018, in different sections will be presented around 40 full length feature and Doc films and 40 shorts films from around 35 countries.
Master classes – part of festival program are workshops and master classes organized by festival guests (film makers, producers, actors etc.).
BIAFF Prizes – festival award prizes in following nominations:
- Feature film competition - Grand Prix, Best Director, Best Male Actor, Best Female Actor, Jury Special prize
- Doc Film Competition - Best Doc , Jury Special prize
- Short Films Competition - Best Film, Best Director
- Special prizes - Award for lifetime achievement in world cinema (foreign film maker), Award for outstanding contribution in cinematography (Georgian film maker), Special prize of BIAFF committee
How to Attend BIAFF festival - Attending Film Screenings are free of charge. To attend film screenings in cinema APOLLO person should take “FREE TICKETS” (it is used for better control and access to film screenings) in cinema APOLO at BIAFF info center.
Media Accreditation – representatives of various media, can apply for accreditation via online - http://biaff.org/media-acreditation
Festival Supporters– Ministry of Culture of Georgia, Georgian National Film Center, Ministry of Cultura of Ajara AR, Tourism Department of Ajara AR, National Tourism Agency of Georgia, British Council, Goethe Institute Georgia, Embassy of Italy
Festival Sponsors – Hotel Wyndham Batumi, Cinema APOLLO, Hotel “Holland Hoek”, Hotel “Rcheuli”, Hotel “Mardi Plaza”, HQ propaganda, Tour Company “Wonderland”, Batumi Auto transport
Festival Media Partners – Georgian Public Broadcaster, Radio Fortuna/Fortuna+, Adjara TV, Batumi TV, Publicity Group (www.publicity.ge), www.newswire.ge, Film New Europe (www.filmneweurope.com), Cinemania, AT.GE, Newspaper BATUMELEBI, netgazeti.ge
Contact information: Tel: 599-482181, info@biaff.org , For accreditation – This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Polish Days co-organized by the Polish Film Institute are the most important industry event of New Horizons International Film Festival, where industry representatives including programmers, sales agents, producers, film funds and distributors from all over the world meet to watch the latest Polish films at closed screenings. This year's edition of Polish Days took place on July 30 - August 1.
Five completed Polish films and nine works-in-progress were shown at closed screenings during the event. Eleven projects in development were also pitched to the international audience. All presentations were followed by one-on-one sessions.
The event has been gaining international interest and strengthening its position in recent years. This year over 200 key Polish and international guests were present in Wrocław, including producers, film funds and festival programmers, as well as a number of international and domestic buyers.
Among the works shown in full at closed screenings were Monument by Jagoda Szelc, The Mute by Bartosz Konopka, A Coach's Daughter by Łukasz Grzegorzek, White Cube by Wojciech Pustoła, Hurrah, We Are Still Alive by Agnieszka Polska.
Post-production award from ColorOffOn Film went to the project: Simple Things by Grzegorz Zariczny. Main award from Aeroplan Studios (50% discount on foley recording) went to the project: Patagonia by Agnieszka Zwiefka, a special mention (a closed screening of the finished movie in Di AERO Theater) to I Never Cry by Piotr Domalewski.
The scholarship from EAVE was awarded to Agnieszka Dziedzic from Koi Studio.
Event partners include the Wrocław Film Commission, the Mazovia Warsaw Film Commission, the Łódź Film Commission, the Krakow Film Commission, the Podkarpackie Film Commission, Warmia - Masuria Film Fund, Coloroffon and Aeroplan Studios, Adam Mickiewicz Institute, EAVE . Media partners include Film Pro, Film New Europe and Film & TV Kamera.
The 13th Tartu Love Film Festival, organised by the team at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, has announced its full lineup, consisting of 11 features and three documentaries, including the Baltic premiere of the Berlinale Gold Bear winner, provoking docu-feature hybrid Touch Me Not, directed by Adina Pintilie.
Tartu Love Film Festival aka TARTUFF, running from the 13th until the 18th August, is the biggest open-air film festival in the Baltics. It occupies the Town Hall Square of Tartu for a week, with two films screened to an audience of around 3000 people every evening. The screenings of documentaries take place in the historic Athena theater.
Russian director Ivan I. Tverdovski, who’s Correction Class won the audience award at TARTUFF in 2014 will attend the festival in person this year to present his latest film Jumper, the third part of his trilogy about the abnormalities of life in contemporary Russia. Operating again on the border between fantasy and realism, Tverdovski tells a tale about a biologically anomalous boy whose tolerance to pain inspires his mother to lead him on a criminal path. The film has already gained critical praise and won the Special Jury Prize at Karolvy Vary Film Festival. Leading actress Anna Slju will also attend the screening.
Another hit on the festival circuit (Berlinale, Tribeca etc) is Laura Bispuri’s Daughter of Mine that sees two women (the biological and foster mother) fighting for the love and custody of their daughter.
Gabriela Pichler’s tragicomic Amateurs arrives after an impressive festival run, having screened at Rotterdam, Tribeca and Gothenburg, where it won the Best Nordic Film award. Telling a bittersweet tale about adaptation and the transforming identities of migrants and “natives” in a quiet former mining town in Sweden.
Rupert Everett’s directorial debut The Happy Prince arrives in Tartu after a busy festival run that included Berlinale, Sundance and BFI London. Everett has gained significant critical praise for his role as the film’s protagonist Oscar Wilde.
In addition to Touch Me Not, TARTUFF’s documentary programme includes RBG, a portrait of the legendary women’s and human rights defender, judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg and road documentary Tanzania Transit that offers, through the portraits of Tanzanian train travellers, a colorful look at the country, that is, like most other societies, troubled by racial and ethnic prejudice and intolerance.
The festival will be opened with the screening of a 50-minute performance "Põhjavaim" (Northern Spirit) where scenes from 50 Estonian films are blended with dream-like visual projections on the walls of adjacent buildings backed by choir music performed live by a 400-member mixed choir. The video is directed by Estonian director Jaak Kilmi, while Küllike Josing oversees the musical direction and artist Alyona Movko provides the visuals.
FULL PROGRAMME
Features
Adam - dir Maria Solrun, Iceland-Germany-Mexico, 2018
Amateurs - dir Gabriela Pichler, Sweden, 2018
Becoming Astrid - dir Pernille Fischer Christensen, Sweden-Denmark, 2018
Daughter of Mine - dir Laura Bispuri, Italy, 2018
Dear Mr. Q - dir Rao Heidmets, 1998
Heavy Trip - dir Juuso Laatio, Jukka Vidgren Finland-Norway, 2018
Jumpman - dir Ivan Tverdovski, Russia, 2018
Out of Africa - dir Sydney Pollack, USA-UK, 1985
Red Dog - dir Kriv Stenders, Australia, 2018
The Happy Prince - dir Rupert Everett, UK-Belgium-Italy, 2018
Tulipani, Love, Honour and a Bicycle - dir Mike van Die, Netherlands
We - dir Rene Eller, Netherlands, 2018
Documentaries
RBG - dir Julie Cohen, Betsy West, USA, 2018
Tanzania First - dir Jeroen Van Velzen, Netherlands, 2018
Touch Me Not - dir Adina Pintilie, Romania-Germany-Czech Republic, 2018
MIDPOINT TV Launch being prepared for 2019 with new additions
MIDPOINT TV Launch is now open to submissions and preparing for its 2019 edition with a number of new and exciting additions. Evaluating the previous history of the program and presenting its future outline is the Program Coordinator Katarina Tomkova. Read the interview with her here.
MIDPOINT TV Launch presents new development executive training MIDPOINT TV Launch 2019 open for submissions
For the 2019 edition, MIDPOINT TV Launch is presenting a specialized training for so-called development executives. This part of the program is intended to raise a new generation of broadcaster executives and commissioning editors in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region. Read more here.APPLY FOR MIDPOINT TV LAUNCH 2019 HERE!
A director of Dawn, Latvia’s official entry for Oscar consideration, will teach at the Film Spring Workshop
Press releases 07-08-2018Laila Pakalnina, a renowned Latvian film director and screenwriter will come to Krakow, Poland in October to tutor the documentary group at the Film Spring Workshop.
This will be the 13th edition of the audiovisual training which offers lectures, workshops, film screenings and meetings with artists as well as access to the state-of-the-art technology and film equipment to be used by young filmmakers to make their own films. Application deadline is the 5th of October.
Documentary group is one of the most popular creative groups of the workshop. For 10 days the group participants will work on their projects, starting with developing their ideas and ending with the post-production. These who will join the group without the idea for a documentary, can still find the subject on the spot, as according to Pakalnina, film is waiting for us around the corner.
- I call my method of work “Fishing in the river of time”. As life is extremely talented, we just put camera, set composition and wait. And life happens. So film happens. Sometimes immediately, sometimes in hours and even days. But it happens – the group's tutor declares .
Young documentary makers, apart from practical work on their films, will learn how to pitch their ideas and will participate in consultations, discussions and screenings of the films made by them as well as other activities included in a very diverse and interdisciplinary programme of the event.
- I like to make films on simple subjects - delivery of the mail, bicycle road, just a bridge etc. In fact like in very beginning of film history brothers Lumiere did – Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat; Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory etc. Maybe it is because filming simple things or actions you always catch something more, something meaningful. As for example in the shot with postwoman there is something more than just postwoman, there is universe – because it is documentary, it is not created by me but by life. I am just fixing this universe from the certain angle in certain framing - the group's tutor says about her films.
Laila Pakalnina has graduated from the Moscow Film Institute (VGIK), Department of Film Direction. She is a director and scriptwriter of 28 documentaries, 5 shorts, and 5 fiction features. As she describes herself: altogether she has 38 films, 2 children, 1 husband, 2 dogs and 2 bicycles. And many ideas for new films. Her films have been screened at Cannes, Venice, Berlinale, Locarno, Karlovy Vary, Rome and many other international festivals, where they have won numerous awards. She was nominated twice for European Film Award for a documentary Dream Land and a short film Fire. Laila Pakalnina’s Dawn (Ausma) was Latvia’s official entry for Golden Globe & Oscar consideration for Best Foreign Language Film.
Film Spring Workshop will take place from the 17th till the 26th of October in Krakow, Poland. Apart from the documentary group, other creative groups at the workshop include: VR & AR, interactive narration, screenwriting, animation, feature film previses, new production model, CGI and modern editing, commercials, music videos, Selfie TV, keeping control in extreme filming conditions, web filmmakers group.
MY UNKNOWN SOLDIER: A new documentary film following the events of the 1968 Soviet invasion to Czechoslovakia is told from the perspective of an occupier, the title’s Unknown Soldier
Press releases 07-08-2018In August 2018, the Czech Republic and Slovakia commemorate the 50th anniversary of the invasion of the Warsaw Pact army into Czechoslovakia, justified by the Soviet political elite as the suppression of a counter-revolution taking place in the country. This important point in the history is presented from an unusual point of view in the documentary "My Unknown Soldier" directed by Ukrainian filmmaker Anna Kryvenko.
The film consists of well-known as well as never-published archive footage from all over Europe and Russia, and it is narrated by one of the soldiers who participated in the occupation, and by proxy by his niece, the director of the film. The documentary offers a fresh perspective on the events of 1968, and it shows not only the history of Soviet military machinery and propaganda, but also its reflection in the the politics of contemporary Russia.
"The original inspiration for the film was suppressed family history. Specifically, the history of my own family. When I visited my relatives in Ukraine, I discovered old photo albums in which one character was cut out of many of the photographs. It took me some time to find out at least the fragments of his story - the story that my family was trying to forget," Kryvenko explains the genesis of the film. “It was important to me to show that there’s an opposite side in any life situation, and it is not always an absolute contrast - Good vs. Evil, Victim vs. Assassin, East vs. West. Within these constructs, there are actual human beings who suffer. One of the film's motifs is the feeling of inherited guilt, guilt for something one did not do. I, as well as many other people from the former Soviet Union, still feel this way. To my film, the present day is just as important as the history."
Using archive footage, the director reconstructs possible scenarios of what her grandfather could have experienced as a member of the invading army. With the main storyline as its key, the film opens up the topics of power abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder in soldiers, as well as question of sympathy towards the occupiers and the occupied population of Czechoslovakia. "The story of my ancestor could be the story of any of the young soldiers who came marching into the country in August 1968. They were human beings trapped in the machinery of war and the games of the global superpowers," adds the director.
The events of 1968 present a permanent, unhealed trauma of the Czech and Slovak history, and are still not forgiven today. This fact is also reflected by Kryvenko in the documentary through her own experience as an immigrant living in Prague. The global political situation has also found its way into the film, particularly the Russian occupation of the Crimea and the ongoing struggles in Eastern Ukraine.
The premiere of the film is going to take place on August 17, 2018, on the roof of Prague's Lucerna Palace, and then will be screened at multiple venues throughout the city. Later on, the film will be distributed through the KineDok platform and streamed online via DAFilms.cz.
The film was made in a Czech-Latvian-Slovak co-production with the participation of Czech Television, Radio and Television of Slovakia, and the Film and TV Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. The film was also supported by the European fund Eurimages, the Czech State Fund for Cinema, the Slovak Audiovisual Fund, and the Latvian Film Center.
Media Contact:
Michaela Dostálová, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., tel .: 774 555 570
Find out more about the movie My Unknown Soldier on Facebook www.facebook.com/MyUnknownSoldier and on the director's personal Instagram profile www.instagram.com/anna.kryvenko
WARSAW: Piotr Szulkin, the most acclaimed Polish sci-fi film director, has died at 68. His debut feature Golem gained cult status in 1980.
KAZIMIERZ DOLNY/JANOWIEC: French film Lower Heaven, directed by Emad Aleebrahim Dehkordi, was awarded the First Prize in the Short Films Competition of the 12th edition of Film and Art Festival Two Riversides in Kazimierz Dolny – Janowiec (28 July-5 August 2018).
TRIESTE: The 2019 edition of When East Meets West will have a new exciting East and West focus on Central Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine) and Benelux.
