Faces from Eastern Europe – 13 Short Films from 13 Countries in the European Union (11/21/14 – 11/22/14)
Friday, November 21 | 6 t0 9 PM
Saturday, November 22 | 2 to 5 PM
Boston University College of Communication
640 Commonwealth Avenue, Room B-05
Free and open to the public
Full Program Here
Since its establishment 60 years ago, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen has devoted itself to the latest developments in the world of short film. From the very beginning, the Festival has fostered a strong connection to East European filmmaking. The 1958 Festival motto “Path to the Neighbors” was a programmatic decision that testifies to the interest in East European film ever since the Cold War. The Festival continues to offer a unique “Window to the East”, affording all who are interested a glimpse into the cultures of Eastern Europe through the medium of film.
Against this backdrop, the Goethe-Institut Washington, The European Union National Institutes of Culture (EUNIC) Washington, DC, and the European Union Delegation to the United States developed the idea of celebrating the tenth anniversary of the eastward expansion of the European Union by assembling a selection of short films from the 13 newest member states: Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia.
In the resulting two-part film program, the thirteen countries present an array of thematic, aesthetic, and narrative responses to today’s Europe. As a whole, the films reflect the diversity and breadth of topics that can be addressed in the short film genre. Neither conventional narrative cinema nor simple entertainment, these films are instead self-reflections using the language of film.
The full program (Program 1, Program 2) will be screened at Boston University on Friday, November 21, and again on Saturday, November 22. Co-sponsored by the Department of Film and Television at Boston University’s College of Communication.
The artists dig deeply. Deimantas Narkavičus’s Europa 54°54′-25°19′, about the search for the geographic center of Europe is a case in point. The discovery of Europe’s middle creates a feeling of déjà vu and can be seen ironically. Other films, such as Day by Day by Kornél Mundruczó, ask what promise the future holds for the old, the young, and the very young. What new world are they being born into? How new is this world? Is it the reality for which we were hoping? Or asked another way: how do we get to a better future? What questions do we need to ask ourselves? Are they the right questions? The past impedes into the present. We dig it up and uncover, as Paweł Łoziński depicts, unpleasant memories. Yet we know that whoever runs away from his past will lose the race in the present. Is it even possible for an individual to win today? Is life from childhood onwards a balancing act between fortune and disaster, survival and destruction? How much luck and pleasure can today even contain?
The program contains documentary films such as Marjolena Boonstra’s powerful portrait of a Roma family, alongside what at first glance are funny films, such as an animation film by Zlatin Radev which uses allegory to address political systems. Jaan Tomik’s film about the life of soldiers at the end of the Soviet era is a multi-layered story which blends glimpses into the future with flashbacks.
Conflicts with film history can be seen in the short films from the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Croatia. The Czech film Summer of the Long Flights patterns itself after the New Wave film tradition and its use of the grotesque and social-political. Marina Gržinić and Aina Šmid’s film Obsession is an experimental performance work about the history of video art in Eastern Europe. Dalibor Martini’s found-footage film We the People observes at a meta-political level the character and social position of the countless individuals without personality who populate feature films, but compared to the heroes and stars, are barely visible.
These films have no heroes, but nevertheless offer up pictures, situations, fears and hopes that are familiar to all of us. So what can one say is worth announcing from Europe? Nothing heroic, except perhaps the important fact that thinking and reasoning, speaking and artistic articulation, are radical and free—free of religion, shame, and taboos; free to recognize and survive sorrow and terror. This is not a freedom of “anything goes“, but instead a painful freedom. It makes possible a scrutiny of the past, present, and future in a relentless search for the truth. This is sometimes mystical, excruciating or ironic, but it is always poignant. Herein lies film’s catharsis, which in the tradition of Greek tragedies expresses a spiritual cleansing and the restoration of a connection to Europe.
Program 1 (Friday, November 21, 6 PM; Saturday, November 22, 2 PM)
Europa 54°54′-25°19′, Deimantas Narkavičus, Lithuania, 1997, 8 min, BluRay, color, English; Production: Deimantas Narkavičus
Neighbor (Gomşu), Sholeh Zahraei / Kamil Shaldun, Cyprus, 2013, 5 min, BluRay, color, Cypriot Turkish and Cypriot Greek with English subtitles; Production: Lupa Pictures
Can Film (Konservfilm), Zlatin Radev, Bulgaria, 1990, 18 min, BluRay, b/w, no dialogue; Production: Zlatin Radev
White Man, White Men (Gadzo, Gadze), Marjoleine Boonstra, Slovakia, 2004, 6 min, BluRay, color, Roma with English subtitles; Production: Marboni
Day after Day (Afta), Kornél Mundruczó, Hungary, 2001, 24 min, BluRay, color, Hungarian with English subtitles; Production: Hungarian Academy of Film and Drama
Choir Tour, Edmunds Jansons, Latvia, 2012, 5 min, BluRay, color, no dialogue; Production: Atom Art
We the People (U ime naroda), Dalibor Martinis, Croatia, 2013, 17 min, BluRay, b/w, English/French/Spanish/Italian (no subtitles); Production: Dalibor Martinis
Program 2 (Friday, November 21, 7:30 PM; Saturday, November 22, 3:30 PM)
Oleg, Jaan Tomik, Estonia, 2010, 21 min, BluRay, color, Russian with English subtitles; Production: Allfilm
Inventory (Inwentaryzacja), Paweł Łoziński, Poland, 2010, 9 min, BluRay, color, Polish with English subtitles; Production: Krakow Film Foundation
Obsession (Obsedenost), Marina Gržinić /Aina Šmid, 2008, 16 min, BluRay, color, Slovenian with English subtitles; Production: CCC
Summer of the Long Flights (Léto, cas dlouhých letů), Ramūnas Greičius, Czech Republic, 1996, 4:55 min, BluRay, color, no dialogue; Production: Studio F.A.M.U.
Plangent Rain (Daqquet ix-Xita), Kenneth Scicluna, Malta, 2010, 14’30 min, BluRay, b/w, Maltese with English subtitles; Production: Lighthouse & Ashley
Alexandra, Radu Jude, Romania, 2007, 24 min, color, Romanian with English subtitles; Production: Hifilm Productions