15th Festival of Author’s Film

By: Valentina Radulovic
Belgrade, Nov.11, 2009 (Serbia Today) - Festival of Author’s Film is founded in order to introduce the Belgrade audience with the top level film pieces.
Founded in 1994, a turbulent time in which war and the embargo had isolated most Serbs, the Festival of Author’s Films was literally the only way for Belgrade an audience of drama students, artists and intellectuals, to see what was going on around the world.
The festival gathers movies based purely artistic values, regardless of the fact that their authors have different theme preferences (racial, national, political, religious, sexual etc.).
The pieces that are shown in this festival differ from the mainstream films we usually watch in our cinemas. The aim is not just to entertain, but to search for deeper, more truthful and more complex depictions of human beings and the world they live in. This festival searches for ‘new energy’ of the author’s film and renews the classical patterns of the film narration in the world of technological and civilization changes.
The Festival emphasizes not commercial but less known, cinematography of the ‘third world’, taking care in selecting the quality and the ‘message’ of the film.
Today, when the films of Hollywood can be seen all around us and uniformity threatens to overflow the European market, the importance of author’s festival is much more significant.
The aim of the festival is to select films that communicate openly with the audience, through words and dialogue, and to make communication with the artists behind the film possible.
To that end the organizers of the festival prepare many additional programs such as retrospectives and round tables discussions, where the authors can exchange their experiences, ideas, and aspirations. This festival holds the promise of making Belgrade an important spot on the map of art-film in Europe and in the world.
This year the Festival audience will have a chance to see a great number of author films from all over the world, including the winner of the Cannes Festival, ‘The White Ribbon’ by Michael Haneke and the winner of the Berlin festival, ‘The Milk of Sorrow’ by Claudia Llosa.
The Festival is going to be held from November 25th to December 2nd and the authors will compete for the main award which has been named after one of the best Serbian directors, Aleksandar Sasha Petrovic. The jury for the festival consists of highly eminent international representatives from the world of cinema. The official program consists of twenty films and they can be seen in DKC Belgrade, Balkan cinema, Dom Omladine, and the Museum of Cinema and Art.
An additional program of the festival will consists of six programs; a new Romanian film, a dedication to John Cassavet, the famous director, the retrospective of Aleksandar Sasha Petrovic’s films, the music films program, the retrospective of documentary films by Sergei Dvortsevoy and the program ‘Paint the Film’ (film as an inspiration in painting).
This year there will be an award for the best film by a director under than 35 years.