goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film is making selected works from its programme available on-demand on the festival website from 5th to 11th May.
The cinematic highlights on offer include the complete goEast 20th anniversary section EUROPA, EUROPA, which honours the foundational mission of the festival with high-calibre cinematic art. Diverse aspects of the real European experience are examined from a critical perspective here. Among other outstanding works, one can enjoy the Hungarian animal parable WHITE GOD by Kornél Mundruczó (Hungary/Germany/Sweden, 2014), in which mistreated mixed-breed dogs take power in Budapest, after they are suddenly declared undesirables. Valeska Grisebach’s WESTERN (Germany/Bulgaria/Austria, 2017) depicts the everyday reality of German construction workers in Bulgaria. Juris Kursietis’ migration drama OLEG (Latvia/Belgium/Lithuania/France, 2019) shows the rough fate of a Latvian guest worker in Belgium. For SKOKAN (Czech Republic/France, 2017), Petr Václav has his amateur cast traverse the whole of Europe. The film’s main character is a Czech Roma gent, an ex-convict searching for fortune and his one true love at the International Film Festival in Cannes. Another unlikely romantic story comes to us from the Warsaw ghetto: Andrzej Wajda passed away before he could finish shooting this collaboration with Jolanta Dylewska – however, the latter, known for her camerawork with Agnieszka Holland, took over full directorial duties, bringing MAREK EDELMANN… AND THERE WAS LOVE IN THE GHETTO (Poland/Germany, 2019) to completion on her own with great sensitivity. Finally, a special highlight of EUROPA, EUROPA is THE PAINTED BIRD (Czech Republic/Slovak Republic/Ukraine, 2019) by Václav Marhoul, who will be giving this year’s master class as well, also online.
Further online gems: the Bioscop section promises remarkable Eastern European genre and documentary films, and the rebellious Anarcho Shorts will be serving up an excellent selection of urban short films.
The feature-length films from goEast onDemand are available for 6.50 euros a piece during the festival week. After borrowing, the films are available for viewing for a 24-hour period. The master class with Václav Marhoul, the workshop conversation with Radu Jude and further panel discussions will be available free of charge. The planned exhibition MEMES FROM SLAVISTAN is also currently being adapted for online presentation.
Open Frame Award: Wiesbaden’s Caligari FilmBühne Gets Virtual Reality Treatment
Aside from representing the disappearance of goEast’s primary venue, the closure of Caligari FilmBühne over the past weeks due to the Covid-19 crisis means that a true feast for the eyes, in the classic mould of the grand old community movie theatres, is temporarily out of action. Still, that isn’t stopping goEast from having a programme point take place in Caligari during the festival week. The Russian VR artist and winner of 2018’s Open Frame Award, Denis Semionov, has “recreated” the 94-year-old cinema in virtual reality, together with curator Georgy Molodtsov. The Caligari VR will be presenting the Open Frame Award Competition entries for the duration of the festival. In the foyer, the participating VR artists and visitors will be able to enter into virtual conversations. Thanks to special software, the virtual location will also be accessible from personal computers. Alternatively, viewers can also choose to watch a live-stream version of the programme. “Admission” is free!
Solidarity with Filmmakers – One Cash Prize for All
In the Competition for Fiction Features and Documentaries, a five-member international jury normally presents the three main awards: the “Golden Lily” for Best Film (10,000 euros), the Award of the City of Wiesbaden for Best Director (7,500 euros) and the Award of the Federal Foreign Office for Cultural Diversity (4,000 euros). The RheinMain Short Film Award (2,500 euros) is presented by a regional jury from the Rhine-Main area. However, because the film industry all across Europe is currently suffering sustained damage in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis, and independent filmmakers in Central and Eastern Europe are among the hardest hit by the events, in a move co-ordinated with our award sponsors, goEast has chosen to distribute the four main monetary prizes, with a total value of 24,000 euros, equally among all of the competition films, whether short or feature-length, in a show of solidarity.
Online Workshops and Seminars in the East-West Talent Lab
goEast’s development programme has made it its mission to support young filmmakers from Central and Eastern Europe. The programme of workshops and networking events will take place entirely online this year. 15 projects from eight different countries have been selected for the East-West Talent Lab, including the short film project FROZEN ORANGES by Dascha Petuchow of Kazakhstan. The budding filmmaker studies communication design in Wiesbaden at the RheinMain University of Applied Sciences and is one of 15 participants who will be presenting their projects in a public online pitching session to jury and audience alike on 11th May 2020.
blogEast: Giving Cultural Producers a Voice in Times of Crisis
The Covid-19 pandemic has already proven to be an existential threat for countless cultural producers all across Europe and beyond. In response, goEast aims to give those affected a voice, with the creation of blogEast. The platform offers goEast’s colleagues and friends from Central and Eastern Europe the opportunity to shed light on their situations with a political, social or even cinematic approach, and/or to report on aid efforts and positive initiatives. New contributions will be published every week. blogEast is organised and moderated by the goEast team and is a part of the Pan-European Picnic programme made possible with the generous support of Kulturfonds Frankfurt Rhein Main.
blogEast is available at the following link: blogEast
You can find photographs at: Downloads
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, the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship and Deutsch-Tschechische Zukunftsfonds. Media partners include 3sat, Deutschlandfunk Kultur and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
