Krakow, 14th February 2011

With the deadline for submissions over, The 51st Krakow Film Festival has received a record number of entries with 2700 films – documentaries, fictions and animations - submitted for consideration for the 2011 edition of the festival which runs from 23rd-29th May. Submissions for the 6th Krakow Film Market have also ended.


In a surprising turn events Poland occupies third place behind Germany and France in terms of films submitted to the festival. Nearly 300 submissions from each France and Germany were registered as opposed to 250 Polish productions (a dozen or so co-productions are not amongst this number). Over 200 films were sent by British filmmakers, whereas 160 titles were received from Spain. Entries were also received from Israel, Brasil, Australia, Canada, USA and Mexico whilst traditionally unrepresented countries such as Lesotho, The West Bank, The Gaza Strip and The United Arab Emirates also make an appearance.


Krzysztof Gierat, director of the 51st KFF said:

“We’re delighted that so many films have been entered to the Krakow Film Festival as it shows just how important the festival is for feature and short documentaries and short fiction and animations. Many of the shorts submitted are the work of young and talented filmmakers whilst attracting the likes of Anthony Hopkins who stars in one submitted film,”


The documentary section consists of nearly 1000 films and Krzysztof Gierat reveals that, on occasion, some filmmakers dwelt upon the same subject:

“During a single one evening I saw documentaries where cows, goats and sheep were milked. I promise that it will not be the leading topic of the festival competition! Among the films already invited are the tale of the executioner of Adolf Eichmann, confessions of people who have undergone a sex change and a touching confrontation between a priest and his former underage lover. There are also films about reincarnation and affairs in virtual reality.”


The full list films selected for the 51st Krakow Film Festival will be published on the KFF website in the last week of March.


The 51st Krakow Film Festiwal will take place 23rd - 29th of May. 250 films will be screened during the festival, with one third taking part in one of three competition sections. There will also be special retrospectives, one-off screenings (such as the immensely popular music video night) and a selection of some of the year’s most interesting films screened at festivals across the world.


The festival will be accompanied by the Krakow Film Market, dedicated to the needs of all those working in the film industry. The market presents documentaries, animations and short films to the festival programmers and buyers from TV stations and distribution companies. A digitised screening room gives professionals to see more than 400 films alongside the chance to network and attend special events.

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Justyna Warzecha
Biuro Prasowe / Press Office

51st Krakow Film Festival: 23rd - 29th May 2011
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The Institute of Documentary Film has published a press release that looks back at Czech documentary film in 2010. It includes an overview of viewer numbers for Czech Television, cinema attendance, festival awards, funding suppport from the State Fund for the Support and Development of Czech Cinematography, and Czech TV.

Dear Filmmakers and Film Lovers,


The 8th Cinefest International Festival of Young Filmmakers will take place between the 17th and 25th September, 2011, in Miskolc, Hungary.
We’re looking forward to meet young people and film experts again in Miskolc. In the past years our festival won renown and prestige not only in the region and in Europe, but all over the world. Every year we have several hundreds of entries, representing all countries, from Japan and Mexico to the farthest corners of the world, and the filmmakers who participate the event are offered, besides the screenings, a various scale of cultural programs.

We are waiting long feature films, short films, experimental films, documentaries and animation films as well.

The rules and conditions are the following: The director of the film must be under the age of 35 at the shooting of the movie, and the film cannot be older than 3 years (1 January, 2008). In terms of long features films the director’s age could be over 35, in case the film is the director’s first long feature film. There is no charge of application. The prizes of the festival (money and certificates) are awarded by an international jury.

We are waiting for applications from all over the world.

The entry form and the regulations can be downloaded from:
www.cinefest.hu

Deadline of application: 31 May, 2011.

We welcome you to the 8th Cinefest Festival this September 17-25, 2011!


Bíró Tibor
Festival Director
Contacts

General information:
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Information in English:
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Information in German:
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Dear Sirs

It is our pleasure to inform you that the film “The House” by Zuzana Liová - the winner of the first edition of the Krzysztof Kieslowski ScripTeast Award for the Best Eastern and Central European Script will have a world premiere during the 61. Berlin International Film Festival. This Slovak- Czech co-production will be screened in the Berlinale Forum program.

This is the way that ScripTeast fulfills its goals, which is to select most interesting, already written projects by best authors of the region and to foster them into the world-class ones.

Director and scriptwriter Zuzana Liová was working on her project during the first edition of ScripTeast with Creative Advisors: Bernd Lichtenberg (author of internationally acclaimed “Good Bye Lenin”) and James Ragan (“The Deer Hunter” among others).

ScripTeast Advisory Board: Simon Perry, Agnieszka Holland, Antonio Saura, Manfred Schmidt and Dariusz Jabłoński awarded “The House” by Zuzana Liová for “creating a tender love story with the deep insight into the human nature, the story about youthful feelings and dreams, about complex family relationships and about the small world each of us lives in.”
"The House" is an intimate family drama. The story focuses on the conflict between two generations, their values, desires and dreams that can not be reconciled. The house is a source of the conflict – father, an unfulfilled architect is building it for his 17-year old daughter, wanting her to stay in his home town, while she wants to go away from there.

Winner of the second edition of this honorable award, the script by Hungarian Benedek Fliegauf "Womb", as a film directed by him, had premiere during last year's festival in Locarno, where it won the Junior Jury Award.

This year's Krzysztof Kieslowski ScripTeast Award laureate will be announced during the stationary session at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2011, which will close the fifth edition of the program. Then the next title will join laureates, these mentioned scripts: "The House" by Zuzana Liova awarded in 2007 and in 2008 "Womb" by Benedek Fliegauf (Hungary) and also in 2009 "Japanese Dog" Ioan Antoci (Romania) and 2010 "The Day of Chocolate" by Jack Piotr Bławut co-writen by Anna Onichimowska (Poland).

Four previous editions of ScripTeast have already resulted with eight produced films. Besides “The House” and ”Womb” they are: ”Tilt” written by Boris Chouchkov and Dimitar Koztev, directed by Viktor Chouchkov, “Retrace” written and directed by Judit Elek and Laszlo Berger, ”Run to Ground” written by Balazs Lovas, directed by Zsombor Dyga, ”Archeo” written and directed by Jan Cvitkovič, ”A Friend of Mine” written and directed by Mark Kivastik, “Vanishing Waves" directed by Kristina Buožytė, based on the script written by Kristina Buožytė and Bruno Samper.

We believe that soon we will have the pleasure to inform you about next produced titles and prizes for projects participating in the ScripTeast program.

Best regards

Dariusz Jabłoński Violetta Kamińska
Artistic Director of ScripTeast Managing Director of ScripTeast

BUDAPEST: The four state-owned film production companies that produced the majority of the Hungarian films before 1989 are about to merge. János Rózsa (head of Objektiv, http://www.objektivfilm.hu), Pál Sándor (head of Hunnia Filmstudio, http://www.hunniafilm.hu) and Tamás Tolmár (head of Dialog) were unexpectedly removed by the government on 31 January. From 1 February György Such is managing the three studios and he will also be the CEO of Budapest Filmstudio from 15 February. Budapest Filmstudio is run temporarily by Balázs Gulyás, head of the distribution company MOKÉP (www.mokep.hu).