It is currently expected that travel restrictions and prohibitions on events will continue to be in effect into the scheduled festival period – however, for the festival organisers, simply cancelling this year’s edition of goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film is out of the question. For this reason, in light of the situation surrounding the outbreak of Covid-19 the organisational team has opted to pursue a hybrid solution for the festival, featuring online and on-demand offers in May and a local programme spread out over the entire rest of the year, shifts that will fortunately enable the festival to preserve a large portion of the planned programme. For instance, the annual Symposium will take place in July, while the films of the Competition will be shown in autumn at exground filmfest. Because cinematic art belongs on the big screen!
With this decision, the festival organisers wish to do justice to their original objective of promoting Central and Eastern European (cinema) culture in Germany and supporting both cultural exchange and the film industry in Central and Eastern Europe. In the scope of an online press conference on 29 April 2020, goEast will share detailed information about the individual sections, juries and competitions.
goEast on Demand
During the originally scheduled festival week from May 5th to 11th 2020, access to goEast’s online programming will be available at the website filmfestival-goeast.de. In addition to films on- demand and virtual reality projects from the Open Frame Award competition, the online programme will showcase film talks and panel discussions. These include a workshop conversation with Radu Jude and the annual master class, as well as the panel discussions “What Would We Do Without Europe?” and “Blurred Lines - Ethics in Dealing with Amateur Performers and Protagonists”.
The East-West Talent Lab will also be venturing into the digital realm, with its 30 participants from Central and Eastern Europe. The talent development programme will take place entirely online, including all workshops and seminars. The festival audience will be able to access the Project Development Pitching Session and follow the jury’s questions for the project participants in the scope of a video conference.
Symposium and Competition Films in Cinemas Later This Year, Because: Film Art Belongs on the Big Screen!
The full goEast Competition will be presented to the Wiesbaden audience in November 2020 at exground filmfest. All of the films of the Competition will be shown on the big screen for which they were conceived, in the presence of the filmmakers, and all of the works will be screening out of competition. We would like to thank the team of exground filmfest for the solidarity they have shown with their proposal to support and partner up with us in this time of crisis.
The Symposium “Film Heritage in Transition”, made possible with the support of the Federal Foundation for the Study of Communist Dictatorship in East Germany, will be shifted to a later period, and is scheduled to take place as a largely independent section of the festival from July 24th to 27th 2020. This move guarantees that all planned programme points can be preserved without cuts. The event location will be the cinema of DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum in Frankfurt am Main.
The Pan-European Picnic will also embrace a hybrid solution. In agreement with Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain, the bilingual meme exhibition and the exhibition of the artists collective vreditel_li will be available online from the first day of the festival. The picnic in downtown Wiesbaden, the RheinMain Short Film Tour and the short film walk “A Wall is a Screen”, through Wiesbaden-Klarenthal, will be postponed to a later point in time.
goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film is hosted by DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum and made possible with the support of numerous partners. Primary funding partners are the State Capital Wiesbaden, the Hessen State Ministry for Higher Education, Research and the Arts, Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain, Renovabis, BHF BANK Foundation, Adolf und Luisa Haeuser-Stiftung für Kunst und Kulturpflege, the German Federal Foreign Ministry and Deutsch-Tschechische Zukunftsfonds. Media partners include 3sat, Deutschlandfunk Kultur and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
