A retrospective of works of one of the most relevant contemporary film directors
A renowned Austrian film director, Ulrich Seidl is this year’s special guest of 11th Beldocs Film Festival, which is hosting a retrospective of his films. Seidl is one of the most relevant contemporary film directors, known to the Belgrade audience mainly for his feature films: ’Import/Export’ and trilogy ’Paradise: Love’, ’Paradise: Faith’ and ’Paradise: Hope’. His visit to Belgrade was arranged by the Austrian Cultural Forum.
Born in Vienna in 1952, he began his prolific documentary career with his graduation film ’The Prom’, for which he was ‘asked to leave’ the film academy. ’The Prom’ is a satiric documentary, set in his hometown of Horn and following preparations for a graduation ball, during which class differences of the Austrian society are laid bare.
The Siedl’s style is characterised by a sharp film expression, uncompromisingness and controversy, while his main interest lies in suppressed gaps of the contemporary European society. Seild, in most cases, opts for narration on global problems through the prism of small, invisible people on the edge of society, using the specific-to-general approach, or, in his own words – he is focused on ’big, small life things’.
This retrospective presents six feature-length documentaries at the new Kinoteka’s building in Uzun Mirkova Street, encompassing his entire career, from his earliest to most recent works.
'Matura / Der Ball' (1982), Good News (1990), Loss is to be expected (1992), Animal love (1996), Jesus, you know (2003), In the basement (2014).
BelDocs Festival:
During the last decade, Beldocs Festival has become the most loved spring documentary film festival, which gathers the best works of contemporary documentary filmmaking. The most important contemporary documentary films have had its premiere precisely at Beldocs. In this year, again, a documentary film market will be organised, for the second time supported by the European Union through the Programme: Creative Europe, sub-programme Media.
This year, as well, Beldocs is continuing to develop and educate its audience through a quality and premiere programme, offering, in addition to domestic, an international selection, as well as numerous accompanying programmes of events. The festival will be held at Sava Centre Hall, Dom Sindikata, Kinoteka’s film theatres at Kosovska and Uzun Mirkova Street, the cinema Fontana and the Museum of Contemporary Art.
In this year, a #europeanfilmchallenge prize competition has been launched, in which the documentary film audience compete for valuable prizes – full paid trip to an A category film festival. After Berlinale, the next round is a trip to Cannes and the second round started on 12 February. The rules are the following: a competitor should see 10 European documentary films on any of possible platforms (VoD, SVoD, cinema, festival, television, etc.), name the film and the platform, place a photograph as a proof and hash tag #europeanfilmchallenge. After certain period of time, the competition organiser will select a winner, who will receive an attractive prize.
This year’s 11 Beldocs Festival takes place from 7 to 14 May.
