FESTIVALS

A Glance Over the ’Edge’

Zagreb Film Festival, October, 12th-16th

Specifically oriented at the first or second films of predominantly young directors from all over the world, equally open to short and feature-length films, to feature and documentary film, the second Zagreb film festival offered yet another intriguing choice from the panorama of world film. In the center of Croatian ’festival of the festivals’, there were cinema’s ’edges’, works made out of the dominant model of Hollywood or European film, concentrated at the focal topics of mainly marginal parts of the world they come from (Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe) or independent productions. The festival also witnessed that there is a lively film exchange: of film money, authors, topics, characters and global problems between these two world zones, regardless the shadow of ’post colonialism’ hanging over their relationship.
Despite the variety of motives and approaches, the feature-length film program was dominated by several current topics, particularly by widely understood problems of transition (Unfinished Story by Hassan Yektapanah, Blind pane by Li Yang) and the position and the role of women in different societies (Seclusion by Siddiq Barmak; Marija by Peter Calin Neetzer; Mary, full of grace by Joshua Marston; En Garde by Ayse Polat, etc). On the contrary, apart from a few exceptions (a Romanian film Coffee and cigarettes, by Cristi Puiu), short feature film, of predominantly escapist mood, did not show great interest in contemporary time and everyday life: the authors of short fiction are mostly outside their own time and space, in the area of metaphors and metaphysics, illustration and style-exercises, but their films were well accepted as foreplays to feature-length films at the colorful and very well attended festival.
ANALITICAL CONTENTS: ’Borders’ and how to cross them; Under the sign of women, diverse kinds; Blind shafts; Short film escapism; The filmography of the festival and the awards

Diana Nenadić