CINEASTIC DISCOVERIES AT GOEAST 2009
Filmmaking highlights from Eastern Europe are being presented at this year’s goEast Film Festival from 22 to 28 April in Wiesbaden. Mounted annually by the German Film Institute – DIF since 2001, the festival’s various sections and discussion forums make it a unique platform for dialogue and exchange between East and West. Over the seven days of the festival, goEast gathers together directors, producers, industry representatives and journalists to present any number of premiere screenings and films that would otherwise seldom find exhibition in German cinemas. In 2009 once again, repeat screenings of selected festival films will take place in the German Film Museum in Frankfurt, in this way extending the festival audience even further.
goEast is also an opportunity to discover cinematic highlights from the past: the 2009 goEast Homage pays tribute to Kira Muratova. This “grande dame of Soviet-Russian cinema” won a Silver Bear at the Berlinale in 1990 with ASTENIČESKIJ SINDROM / THE ASTHENIC SYNDROME (USSR/Ukraine, 1989) and the Main Prize at goEast on two separate occasions: with VTOROSTEPENNYE LJUDI / SECOND CLASS PEOPLE (Ukraine 2001) and NASTROJŠČIK / THE TUNER (Ukraine, 2005). Kira Muratova will be in personal attendance at Wiesbaden for the comprehensive retrospective of her work at goEast 2009.
The goEast Portrait profiles the Czech filmmaker Jan Svěrák against the backdrop of the political upheavals of 1989. The films of Svěrák are humorous and subtle comments upon the social realities in his country. His Oscar-winning KOLYA (Czech Republic, 1996) won international acclaim in the 1990s, and German audiences flocked to see his VRATNÉ LAHVE / EMPTIES (Czech Republic, 2007). The 2009 goEast Portrait also illuminates unknown sides of the popular Czech director.
In 2009, the year of anniversaries, the goEast Symposium (23 to 25 April) is looking back at the preliminary signs of political change in Central and Eastern Europe. Running in the new Murnauer Filmtheater in Wiesbaden under the title After Winter Comes Spring. Films Presaging the Fall of the Wall, the symposium explores aspects of a little publicised chapter in the history of Eastern European filmmaking. The introductory lecture, closing discussion and post-screening film discussions add an important element of discursive depth to the retrospective initiated by the Federal Cultural Foundation and Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek. Funded by the DEFA Foundation and the Agency for Civic Education in Hessen, the programme of films encompasses works by great names in the annals of cinema as well as those of less prominent filmmakers.
