For the 22nd time, goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film is bringing works by Central and Eastern European directors to Wiesbaden and the Rhine-Main region. It is with great concern that the organizers of goEast follow the most recent geopolitical developments concerning Russia and Ukraine. The thoughts of the festival team are with the many partners, festival friends and filmmakers from both countries, whom it hopes to finally welcome back in Wiesbaden in the upcoming edition. After the past two editions were forced to largely take place online, goEast is hoping for many well-attended cinema screenings this year. From 19 to 25 April 2022, the festival, hosted by DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, invites attendees in Wiesbaden, Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Gießen and Mainz to get to know Central and Eastern European cinema through film screenings, film talks and encounters with filmmakers. In addition, this year's festival will again feature a range of online programming.
Which way to the East? - Godard, Cinema and Ideology in Central and Eastern Europe. The goEast Symposium
In the Symposium, goEast examines topics, regions and currents in Central and Eastern European cinema. In 2022, the event is devoted to a special relationship: the French-Swiss filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard has grappled with the East to an extraordinary degree, perhaps more than any other Western director, in all senses – thematically and formally as well as on ideological and political levels. The 91-year-old veteran auteur revolutionised French cinema in the 1960s, as one of the towering figureheads of the “Nouvelle Vague” movement. With films such as PRAVDA (FR, DE, 1970) and LES ENFANTS JOUENT À LA RUSSIE / THE KIDS PLAY RUSSIAN (FR, CH, 1993), the connection to Eastern Europe is already apparent in the titles, but there are also plenty of other references to be found among his other works, for example, to Russian literature and Soviet filmmakers.
The 2022 Symposium will be curated by film scholars Vinzenz Hediger and Daniel Fairfax of Frankfurt's Goethe University. The two will be inviting further experts to the event to shed light on Godard's mutual relationship with the East in the scope of lectures and discussions. The selection of films from Godard's oeuvre spans a productive period of 43 years, from 1967 to 2010, and encompasses short and feature-length films, both documentary and fictional works. Moreover, the programme also features a selection of Central and Eastern European films chosen by the director himself, works that influenced him personally.
Beloved classics like LA CHINOISE (FR, 1967), LE VENT D’EST / WIND FROM THE EAST (IT, FR, DE, 1969) or FILM SOCIALISME (FR, CH, 2010) are featured alongside rarely screened works such as JE VOUS SALUE, SARAJEVO (CH, 1993). A further highlight is the film ALLEMAGNE ANNÉE 90 NEUF ZÉRO / GERMANY YEAR 90 NINE ZERO (FR, 1991), featuring famous portrayer of secret agents Eddie Constantine, who spent his twilight years in Wiesbaden.
30 Years of “Post-Soviet” Cinema– Special Programme
30 years after the official dissolution of the Soviet Union on 26 December 1991 the European Film Academy (EFA) invited goEast festival director Heleen Gerritsen to compile a list of 30 trailblazing “post-Soviet” films from the past three decades together with film experts from Central and Eastern Europe. This nearly impossible task resulted in a collection of familiar and lesser-known productions that invite the audience to rediscover Central and Eastern Europe on film. goEast will be showing six rarely screened films from the list this April:
- ORANZHEVYE ZHILETY / ORANGE VESTS (BY, 1991) by Yury Khashevatsky,
- AKUMULÁTOR 1 / ACCUMULATOR 1 (CZ, 1994) by Jan Svěrák,
- TITO PO DRUGI PUT MEĐU SRBIMA / TITO AMONG THE SERBS FOR THE SECOND TIME (FR, YU, 1994) by Želimir Žilnik,
- CHICO (HU, DE, HR, CHL, 2001) by Ibolya Fekete,
- A FOST SAU N-A FOST? / 12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST (RO, 2006) by Corneliu Porumboiu and
- PAPUSZA (PL, 2013) by Joanna Kos-Krauze and Krzysztof Krauze.
New Co-operation: CEEOL Award for the Best Documentary Film
In 2021, goEast began to make the catalogues and Symposium essays from past festival editions available for free online. The CEEOL GmbH, the operator of the Central and Eastern European Online Library, based in Frankfurt, has been supporting the festival in these efforts.CEEOL provides both institutional and individual access to periodicals, eBooks and grey literature in the area of the social sciences and humanities from Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, making the data bank a trusted partner for years for academics, students and teachers specialising in Eastern European subject matter. The goEast catalogue texts from the festival years 2001-2021 have now been incorporated here and can be read in their entirety at www.ceeol.com.Another particularly delightful announcement in this regard: from 2022 on, the CEEOL will be presenting a new award in the goEast Competition, the CEEOL Award for the Best Documentary Film, which the organisation has also endowed with 4,000 euros in prize money. As such, the festival once again features a trophy exclusively intended for documentary works in the scope of the Main Competition section.
