AN UNIQUE FORUM FOR DIALOGUE AND FILM ART
The goEast - Festival of Central and Eastern European Film is only two weeks away. It presents in eight festival sections an interesting range of cinematic highpoints and fascinating cultural discoveries. From 09 to 15 April goEast offers festival guests and visitors to Wiesbaden an unique forum for dialogue and specialist debate.
The various sections of goEast 2008 encompass over 140 feature-length and short films, documentaries and fictions, experimental and animated films, works by established directors and ambitious newcomers. Ten feature films and six documentaries compete for prizes worth 29 500 €. The festival opens with the screening in the Caligari FilmBühne (21.30, 9.4.) of Nikita Michalkov's Oscar-nominated 12 (Russia, 2007), a masterly adaptation of Sidney Lumet's 12 ANGRY MEN. With KATYN (Poland, 2007), goEast is screening a further Oscar contender. Andrzej Waijda's film about the massacre of over 20,000 Polish prisoners of war by the Soviet secret service in 1940 has already won recognition as one of the most important Polish productions of the present day.
The goEast Sunday Matinee widens the focus of festival's Homage to Sergei Paradzhanov. Two guests of honour - the filmmaker's nephew Georgi Paradzhanov, and Zaven Sarsyan, the director of the Sergei Paradzhanov Museum in Yerevan - and their host Ulrich Gregor will re-trace the course of the charismatic artist-director's life and work (Sunday, 13.4., 11.00 in Caligari FilmBühne). For the duration of the festival, the photography exhibition "World of Sergei Paradzhanov - Art Without Borders" is showing at the Bellevue-Saal. Encompassing 40 photographs, the show includes reproductions of his works, pictures relating to his films, and portraits of the artist.
goEast 2008 centres on topical European issues and developments. The still fraught situation in the ex-Yugoslav region, at present very much in the public eye due to the Kosovo question and the unstable political situation in Serbia, is addressed by the discussions and films scheduled to take place during the Symposium "Iconography and Nation (Re-)Building - Documentaries from the Ex-Yugoslav Region" (Thursday, 10.4. to Saturday, 12.4. in Roncalli-Haus). A special slot is devoted to the situation of Europe's largest minority: "Coming in from the Sidelines - Roma in Eastern Europe", with a panel discussion, the screening of the documentary VIERKA, and a reading by the Roma authoress Luminita Mihai Cioaba from Romania (Monday, 14.4., 19.00, Museum Wiesbaden).
The forums of the numerous goEast young filmmakers' programmes and the Film Discussions in Bellevue-Saal offer filmmakers, actors and audiences from East and West ample opportunity to meet up and talk. Those who like to dance take over the floor at the legendary goEast-Party in Kulturzentrum Schlachthof (Saturday, 12 April, 21.30), this year featuring the DJs from Vienna's club scene Ahilea Durcovski (Macedonia) and Zoran Tomašev (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and their compelling mixture of traditional and contemporary Balkan sounds. The party is preceded by the goEast Reading, with a guest appearance by Ljubko Deresch from Lviv, one of the foremost representatives of young Ukrainian writing, (Kulturzentrum Schlachthof, Saturday, 12.4., 20.00) who presents his latest novel Intent! Oder die Spiegel des Todes, due to appear in German translation in edition suhrkamp in May.
Tickets and prices: Tickets are available at the Wiesbaden Tourist Information (+49 (0)611 / 172 9780) in advance. Admission to any one goEast screening costs 6 € (concessions: 5 euros). A festival pass valid for all screenings and special events is available for 40 (35) €. Day passes cost 16 (12) €. The 2008 goEast programme brochure with full details of times and venues is now available for download at www.filmfestival-goeast.de. Detailed information on all festival sections will be retrievable from the same address one week before the festival begins.
