Haapsalu Horror and Fantasy Film Festival announces features lineup

Approaching its 14th edition, the Haapsalu Horror and Fantasy Film Festival (HÕFF), the biggest genre film festival in the Baltic countries, has unveiled its feature film programme consisting of 30 films from 15 countries. HÕFF takes place from the 25th until the 28th of April.

The main programme is headed by the surprise zombie comedy hit from Japan One Cut of the Dead (dir Shin'ichirô Ueda), a student film shot in eight days that has earned its 27 thousand dollar budget back a thousand fold, earning over 27 million dollars in Japanese distribution alone, having won awards at over 24 festivals already. The story follows a small film crew with an overambitious director, shooting a zombie flick in an abandoned factory who come across an actual flock of zombies.

The US will be represented by several films, including Body at the Brighton Rock by up and coming director Roxanne Benjamin (director of segments in XX, Southbound), a SXSW-premiering survival tale of a young park ranger who finds a corpse in the wild. The forest is also the essential element of Headhunter by director Jordan Downey, a gory tale set in a mythical medieval kingdom where a hunter of forest monsters confronts his biggest nemesis.

The opening film, a genre hybrid Freaks directed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein and starring Emile Hirsch and Bruce Dern, is a sci-fi action family drama set in a dystopic near-future America, where the government hunts down people suspected of having genetic mutations after an unexplained global disaster. It’s impressive festival run includes Toronto, Vancouver, Sitges, Trieste and Brussels.

Another sci-fi entry that arrives after an impressive international run is the Swedish country invasion / action thriller / love story The Unthinkable (dir Victor Danell as Crazy Pictures). It is an international hit that has already sold rights in over 100 countries and blown the minds of viewers and critics alike with the smart directing and enormous production value that has created Hollywood-level special effects and action sequences, achieved at a minuscule 2 million dollar budget.

Another entry from Sweden is Koko-di, koko-da, the next film by auteur Johannes Nyholm who won the Special Prize of the Jury at San Sebastian for his last film The Giant. Offering a disturbing, violent and fantastical setting to a couple suffering grief after losing their daughter, the film has had an impressive festival run including Sundance, Rotterdam and Gothenburg among others.

Latin America is represented by two critical successes, the first of which isMurder Me, Monster. The Cannes premiering film is set in the bleakly shot Argentinian countryside, where the story follows police investigators on the trail of a serial murderer, director Alejandro Fidel’s (The Wild Ones) slowburner has been hailed for creating an unsettling, uncompromised atmosphere of terror, rural alienation and xenophobia.

Arriving from Brazil, The Nightshifter is a story chronicling the psychological breakdown of a morgue worker in a big, violent city. The frightening-fantasy-turned-supernatural-horror is imbued with an especially dark streak of humor balanced skillfully with gory horror elements by the promising first time director Dennison Ramalho.

Paying homage to an animation legend

An honorary guest of this year’s edition is Vladimir Tarasov, a Russian animator and animation director who is best known for his Soviet-era sci-fi short films like The Pass, Contract and Contact - the Yellow Submarine-inspired psychedelic journey that brought him several awards at international festivals and is generally considered his calling card as a filmmaker.

Tarasov has also been active in promoting the discipline of animation, having worked in the union’s biggest animation studio Soyuzmultfilm first as an animator, then as an art director and finally, from 1970 until 1991 as its director. He was also an organiser and founder of the film schools Zee Institute of Creative Art in India and Tarbiat Modares University in Iran.

HÕFF will screen five of the director’s films: Cowboys in the City (1973), Contact (1978), The Return (1980), Button (1982), The Pass (1988).

HÕFF is organised by the team at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

STILLS

Film still: One Cut of the Dead, director Shin'ichirô Ueda
Film still: The Unthinkable, director Victor Danell / Crazy Pictures
Film still: The Return, director Vladimir Tarasov
Festival still: average festival goers at the 2018 opening (photo by Aron Urb)

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Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), in co-operation with the Czech Film Fund, presents 11 feature films and 3 shorts of Věra Chytilová. The retrospective of the radical and anarchic Czech filmmaker is accompanied by 4 films by Czech filmmakers, Chytilová’s former students, and will be held in New York from Wednesday, April 10 through Thursday, April 18 2019.

The year Chytilová would have turned 90, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, in New York City, put on a retrospective to celebrate this icon with a survey of her career. First, the early films, centering on the theme of women searching for their limits and daring to surpass them (Ceiling,A Bagful of Fleas, Something Different).

Next, her exceptional contributions to the Czechoslovak New Wave canon, with Automat Svět(from the omnibus Pearls of the Deep) and the rebellious and convention-breaking Daisies (5th best film of all time directed by a woman according to IndieWire) and Fruits of Paradise, her most important collaborations with Kučera and Krumbachová.

Then come the films from the period after the ban on her was lifted: The Apple Game, which put male weakness on full display, and Panelstory, a blunt exposé of the shallowness and realities of a system striving for communism only in name. The director’s lesser-known work from the 1980s was represented here by The Jester and the Queen, The Very Late Afternoon of a Faun, and her take on teen horror, Wolf’s Hole.

The post-1989 period, when her country abandoned the communist dream for the promise of freedom in capitalism, Chytilová showed her satirical might in The Inheritance or Fuckoffguysgodday and the edgy rape revenge farce Traps. Her final film, Pleasant Moments, marks a return to her overarching theme of a woman looking to find her own voice and strength to follow her own path.

To complete the retrospective, BAM Film presented the extraordinary documentary portraitJourney, by Jasmina Blažević, and a sampling of recent works by Chytilová’s students at the Prague film academy FAMU, who carry on her torch of personal filmmaking: Olmo Omerzu’s ironic melodrama of family implosion, Family Film; the fearlessly feminist indictment of sexual assault and the Slovak mental health system Filthy (Tereza Nvotová); and the biting comedy of quarter-life anxiety Dreamers (Jitka Rudolfová).

Read more about the fierce personality and piercing intellect of Věra Chytilová HERE.

Find out more about the programme and the detailed schedule of screenings HERE.

The Lithuanian Film Centre (LFC) announces that the upgraded Lithuanian 30% Tax Incentive scheme is now active. The incentive came into effect in January 2014 as a new policy measure to foster local and foreign film production in Lithuania. As of 2019, the incentive provides an opportunity to save up to 30% of the film’s production budget through a private investment scheme. The legislation has been renewed for the next five-year period.

The tax incentive scheme is managed by the LFC and is available for the productions of feature films, TV dramas, documentaries, and animated films. These include domestically produced, co-produced or commissioned films (produced under the service agreement).

The film tax incentive is only applicable for films that meet the approved production and content requirements. In order to apply for support, one must have a Lithuania-registered company or a Lithuanian partner company, at least 80% of eligible film production costs must be incurred in Lithuania, and the total amount of eligible expenditure in Lithuania must be at least 43,000 EUR.

During the first 5-year period when the tax incentive for film production was offered, Lithuania managed to firmly establish its position in the market of audiovisual services exports and successfully compete with neighboring, Western European and other countries. Local film professionals have earned the trust of the most prominent film production companies. The country’s filming profile has been rising in recent years, with high-profile big-budget dramas. Lithuania has hosted numerous major international productions, including HBO’s Chernobyl, BBC’s War and Peace, Netflix’s Tokyo Trial, and many more.

More information: www.lkc.lt/en

The following grants for 2018-2019 were announced by the Cyprus Ministry of Education and Culture in April 2019.

The Ministry of Education and Culture announces that the responsible Minister for Cinematography, Minister of Education and Culture, approved, for the period 2018-2019, on the recommendation of the Cinema Advisory Committee, the partial financing of the following proposals:

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

wir laden Sie herzlich zum Project Market Pitch im Rahmen des East-West Talent Lab 2019 ein. Fünfzehn ausgewählten Regie- und Produktionstalente aus Mittel- und Osteuropa werden ihre neuen Projektideen präsentieren. Im Fortbildungsprogramm East-West Talent Lab haben die Teilnehmer*innen ihre Präsentationen vorbereitet und bekommen die Möglichkeit sich mit deutschen Produzent*innen zu vernetzen. Die Teilnehmer*innen konkurrieren außerdem um zwei Auszeichnungen: den goEast Development Award (3.500 Euro) und das Renovabis Recherchestipendium für Dokumentarfilmprojekte mit Menschenrechtsthematik (3.500 Euro). Der Project Market Pitch findet am Montag, den 15. April, von 10 Uhr – 13 Uhr im Museum Wiesbaden statt: Museum Wiesbaden Friedrich-Ebert-Allee 2 65185 Wiesbaden Im Anhang finden Sie weitere Informationen über die teilnehmenden Projekte. Wir würden uns freuen, Sie beim Project Market Pitch begrüßen zu dürfen. Mit freundlichen Grüßen Andrea Wink (Koordination East-West Talent Lab) Antonia Best (Assistentin)

//

Dear Madam/Sir,

We cordially invite you to the Project Market Pitch within the East-West Talent Lab 2018. Fifteen selected up-and coming directors and producers from Central and Eastern Europe will present their new project ideas. The training program East-West Talent Lab helps participants to prepare there project presentations as well as network with German producers. Apart from that the participants vie for two prizes: The goEast Development Award (3.500 Euro) and the Renovabis Research Grant for documentaries with a human rights topic. (3.500 Euro)

The Project Market Pitch takes place on Monday, April 15th, from 10.00 am – 1.00 pm at the Museum Wiesbaden:

Museum Wiesbaden

Friedrich-Ebert-Allee 2

65185 Wiesbaden

Please find attached more information on the participating projects.

We look forward to welcoming you at the Project Market Pitch.

Kind regards, Andrea Wink (Coordinator of the East-West Talent Lab)

Antonia Best (Assistant)

EAST-WEST TALENT LAB

GOEAST DEVELOPMENT AWARD/

RENOVABIS RESEARCH GRANT

Nominated Project Ideas

72 HOURS (Documentary, eligible for Renovabis Research Grant) By producer Volia Chajkouskaya, Belarus

AFTER THE MAGICIAN (Experimental Film) By director Lea Petrikova, Czech Republic

FRAGMENTS OF ICE (Documentary) By director Maria Stoianova, Ukraine

HATICE (Short Film) By director Mumin Baris, Bulgaria

IF SHE LEAVES (Short Film) By director More Raca, Kosovo

KIX (Documentary, eligible for Renovabis Research Grant) By director Dávid Mikulán, Hungary

LANDING (Documentary, eligible for Renovabis Research Grant) By director Ksenia Ciuvaseva, Moldova

REBBELLION (Documentary, eligible for Renovabis Research Grant) By director Keren Chernizon, Poland

SMILING GEORGIA (Short Documentary) By director Luka Beradze, Georgia

THE IMAGE OD IMAGES (Documentary) By director Dmitrii Kalashnikov, Russia

THE MOTHERS' CRUSADE (Documentary, eligible for Renovabis Research Grant) By director Alexander Mihalkovich, Belarus

THE NEW IMPERIUM (Documentary, eligible for Renovabis Research Grant) By director Anna Shishova-Bogolubova, Russia

THE SKY BEYOND THE HILL (Short Film) By director Nadya Todorova, Bulgaria

WHAT WILL THE TITLE BE? (Documentary, eligible for Renovabis Research Grant) By director Borbála Csukás, Hungary

Guest Project

HONEY BUNNY (Fiction Feature, out of competition) By director Igor Jelinovic, Croatia