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1999.
19-20

FESTIVALS AND EVENTS

OPEN, PERSONAL, RADICAL, SUBVERSIVE, SPLIT 1999

This fourth time around for the Split International Festival of New Film and Video proved itself to be an open and significantly enriched multi-media presentation that incorporated not only new visual technology, but also broader creative space for new media (CD-ROMs, Internet projects and interactive video installations) as well. By paraphrasing the titles of two of the works shown that thematize the medium of film, it can be said that the Split festival offered everything that »film (and video) is«, i.e. »everything that film (video) can withstand«.

Notwithstanding the unavoidabitlity of intermedial research, it seems that this year’s film and video selection was marked by the culture of »difference«. This is a result of the festival opening itself up to the »politics« of identity, which were overshadowed by formal experimentation during the previous years. In light of this, it is important to note that all three of the previous grand prizes were awarded to female authors, which, in addition to the greater presence of women authors, also implies the greater presence of »female experience«, i.e. »female communication«.

In the video selection, the most notable works pervaded the space around themselves with body talk and body »politics«, intimacy and personality, and often with apostrophized meditative-poetic recordings. This was also the case with media experiments in which there was very intense dialog between experimental film, video and new media.

In a convention defying move, the exceptionally well attended Panorama and Focus Programs were selected to be screened at the same time as feature films, while lectures at the Multimedia Center focused on new advances in the fields of visual communication and the media of moving images. The numerous film and video retrospective (life achievement awards for Ivan Martinac, Ante Božanić, Breda Beban and Hrvoje Horvatić, films from the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb, the Hungarian Bela Balazs Studio, etc.) were a productive and necessary reminder of that which has already been touched upon, explored and accomplished. It is because of all these elements that one can unequivocally say that, despite the numerous organizational difficulties, misunderstandings with the audience and indifference toward guests, the Split film festival has mostly everything that a good festival needs: a look into the past, a legitimization of the present and a taste of the future for visual media.



Diana Nenadić

THE LAST PICTURE SHOW — PULA 1999
THE FIRST MOTOVUN FILM FESTIVAL
IN SEARCH OF HIS OWN LIGHT: TOMISLAV PINTER
TOMISLAV PINTER’S FILMOGRAPHY
FROM KUBRICK TOWARD FINCHER — VENICE 1999

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