BEAST INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 27.09 — 01.10.2023

/ Visegrad / Film / Hub /

/ VISEGRAD / FILM / HUB /, organized by BEAST International Film Festival with the support of International Visegrad Fund, provides support for the audiovisual works from the V4 region (Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia) through activation of networks and educational events. This collaborative experience with relevant institutions from the region will focus on presenting regular screenings while accessing new audiences on the Portugal territory. This is to be the fifth edition of VFH, a gathering of film enthusiasts, young professionals and a step further to building the identity of the New East.

Visegrad Film Hub 5.0 will take place between 27 September – 01 October 2023 during the 6th BEAST International Film Festival.

Project partners

SPEKTRUM FILM FESTIVAL
www.spektrumfestiwal.pl

Since its beginning, SPEKTRUM has been a community event, a space to meet people who love and celebrate cinema. The film here in Świdnica is a pretext for collective feelings and sharing emotions, it is a trigger that makes the viewers tightly fill the cinema halls every year, become a community, cry and laugh together, disagree together, discuss… are together.

Institute of Documentary Film
www.dokweb.net

The Institute of Documentary Film (IDF) has been supporting creative documentary films from Central and Eastern Europe since 2001. The IDF provides both emerging and experienced filmmakers with training, financing, networking and pitching opportunities, helps them get international attention and co-productions, rewards the exceptional projects with Awards and further opportunities and improves their orientation on the international market. The promotional and practical service of the IDF includes a wide range of online and offline catalogs being created annually, updating a thorough database of CEE documentaries and professionals and a calendar of important deadlines for producers, and bringing news from the world of documentary film in general via dokweb.net and social media.

TRAKT
www.trakt.sk

TRAKT aims to promote art in the widest possible range of social groups through the organisation of exhibitions, screenings, cultural events, theater performances, symposia, lectures, workshops, happenings and other similar events. TRAKT specializes in new media, digital technologies and a wide range of visual art media. The association has no ambition to be just an alternative for a specific, narrow group of people, but to offer cultural and artistic experiences to people with different lifestyles and worldview.

BRNO16 International Film Festival
www.brno16.cz

Brno16 is one of the oldest film festivals in the Czech Republic with its 61st edition in 2020. The main programme consists of a contest of fictional films with a single formal condition of being up to 30min. The festival has a vast expertise in guest lectures, art exhibitions, discussions and workshops. Their know-how on animation and educational fields is one of the reasons Brno16 is a perfect match for the Hub. Being a thriving film festival in the Czech Republic, it has accumulated knowledge and professionalism over the years.

Primanima
www.primanima.hu

Primanima Ltd. is the operator of Primanima World Festival of First Animation which is an international festival and competition of first animations in Budaörs, Hungary. The goal of the festival is to provide a platform and opportunity for young animation talents to present their very first artworks, to build professional connections and join international networks. In this regard, Primanima fills a void not only in the Hungarian, but the European festival scene too.

Disco Sailing
www.discosailing.com

Disco sailing was founded by three graduates of the Film and Television Faculty in Bratislava. Their aim is to develop a healthy short film environment in Slovakia, popularization of this format by diverse curatorial activities and alternative distribution, and to support the work of emerging filmmakers. Disco Sailing is offering the festival distribution service, dramaturgical advice, and a wide spectrum of consultancy activities connected to short films. Disco sailing annually organizes the Slovak version of international initiative The Shortest Day.

The project is co-financed by the Governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia through Visegrad Grants from International Visegrad Fund - www.visegradfund.org. The mission of the fund is to advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe.

Primanima — Silhouettes

Primanima’s SILHOUETTES panorama at BEAST focuses on experimental, provocative and controversial, subversive and extraordinary animated short films. In this programme you can find films from Primanima’s 10th anniversary edition’s official SILHOUETTES selection and also from our Competition programme. The audience can see a screening of formally and thematically unconventional films submitted for the Primanima festival. Here is a vibrant bunch of animated shorts that encourage you to ‘take a risk’, ‘push the boundaries’, ‘contemplate’ and ‘go further’.

The Raisin Prophecy: Ester Krumbachová

Half-forgotten for a long time, she was the gray eminence of the Czech New Wave. Ester Krumbachová (1923–1996), the scriptwriter, production designer, costume designer, author, and director, collaborated on the essential films of the second half of the sixties. Each film made by a different director, together they shared a comprehensive visual conception and attention to detail instigated by Ester Krumbachová. After the change of political climate in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s, her name was blacklisted and her work could only be appreciated again from the 1990s onwards, when the banned films returned to screens. Her rediscovery was supported by the documentary In Search of Ester (2005) created by Věra Chytilová. Alongside the documentary, the program presents Krumbachová’s sole directorial work, The Murder of Mr. Devil (1970) – an ironic allegory on the relationship between men and women. The Faustian story turned on its head written by a female voice is sometimes regarded as the first Czechoslovak feminist film.