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THE 11TH YEAR IN JIHLAVA
“The films we have included in this year’s programme are very political – even the Czech films. They are often provocative, but they equally remain pure examples of cinematographic work. They comprise the best films that have appeared around the world in the past two years. Once again then during the festival we will embark on a journey around the world, albeit in just six days. The filmmakers themselves have spent not days but months and years at their various locations around the globe, so as the festival takes its viewers on a trip around the globe it is not offering them a tour of well-known sites but a dramatic inquiry into the state of the world and a search for answers to new questions.”
- Festival director Marek Hovorka commenting on this year’s film selection.
The Jihlava Festival has embarked on a new decade with its largest selection of films to date. The films were selected from almost 1500 selected works, and ultimately 170 films of all lengths were selected for this year’s programme. The online Doc-Air portal for documentary and experimental films has a gift for its users, who will now be able to view selected films from the programme’s prize sections and will be able to enjoy film retrospectives devoted to Chris Marker and Harun Farocki.
The graphic motif of this year’s festival represents a notional quest or a multifaceted, continuous, and at first glance indistinguishable exploration. The festival poster, designed by the Czech graphic artist Juraj Horváth, was unveiled back in June.
“Rising and interweaving cables, veins, branches, paths – lines… Opening out, tangling up together, and cut off. A useless map. Follow the threads rising out of the space of the poster”, advises Juraj Horváth
This year’s festival trailer also has a somewhat exploratory tone. In an age when almost anyone can get their hands on a video camera there is an incredible opportunity to satisfy the inner yearning to identify what lies hidden, capture what is ephemeral, reflect on one’s relationship to one’s surroundings. An unstructured map of human perception (of oneself and the surrounding world) can be sketched in a multitude of possible ways. And even the multiplied form of the trailer for the 11th Jihlava IDFF is a symbol of this.
“Let imagined film stories remain this time behind closed doors with the film professionals and let every (mobile, film) amateur flick the red switch on their mobile cameras…The following took up the gauntlet of the red switch: Vít Baloun, Marek Šístek, Adam
