Požega '98

A long minute

After the 6th Croatian Minute Movie Cup

All the films (115) that arrived at the Požega one minute film festival are all together of shorter duration than Titanic that is shown in the cinemas in Croatia at the time of the festival. The competition selection was drastically shorter: 41 film (the 20 Croatian ones).

The whole competition took one day: the 41 films in competition were shown, then the jury publicly selected 16 films for award competition (the three Croatian ones), this selection was shown again, and then the jury publicly decided the 3 winners: That Little Black Devil by the Swedish Lars Forssberg and Johan Dalton (the 1st award), Split View by the Iranian Behzad Rasoolzade (the 2nd award) and April 29 1998 by the Croat Zoran Tadić (the 3rd award). The last one won the audience award. The interesting theoretical question is: what can be »put« into one minute, and what marks the structure of this short duration. The answer is obvious. The structure is marked by the ending, the dramatic or symbolic and mostly expectation defying point, which usually takes only few seconds.

The main body of the one minute film is frequently marked by the choice of the dynamic motif, presented through elliptic editing and by aggressive visuals, all chosen such as to prepare the final ending point, to set up the expectations that will be lucidly violated at the end. The concrete samples of these structural characteristics are found in the three awarded films, with the last, Croatian one presented in one shot. The genre is markedly »non-commercial«, of »no financial use«, and the festival is an oasis of pure love for film and for fun, well organised and in friendly spirit.

Ante Peterlić