Even in the comprehensively catastrophic 2020 a light of hope occasionally shines upon the Slovene film nation. Thus, we have been honoured by four days of sunshine at noon, as we might metaphorically call the third PROFeKK, a programme for short film professionals, the execution of which was questionable for quite some time. Thank goodness third time’s a charm and that the world has managed to outlive its ending – for now.

From the end of March to the beginning of June Slovenia missed out on cinemas, these secularly-holy spaces that are the main, yet not the only physical, rooms that offer sanctuary to film art. As the latter is particularly noticeable at film festivals, the 2020 PROFeKK centres around special cinematic locations in the cities, villages, and elsewhere. This topic is going to be covered by several talkative Slovene and foreign guests, representatives of Postaja Topolove (IT), prostoRož and the EDO festival (SI), the Lago Film Fest (IT), the Katarina Cinema, and the Tabor Film Festival (HR). Additionally, we are going to talk to two Austrian guests, magical designers of distribution strategies, Marija Milovanovic from the LEMONADE FILMS Agency and Wouter Jansen from the Square Eyes Agency to discuss the inclusion of shorts into film festivals. Moreover, we are going to learn how to find space for film classics in the digital era as the Slovene filmmaker Rok Kajzer Nagode shares his experience about the digitalisation and restoration of Žarko Lužnik’s short V temi (1979), which we are going to watch after the presentation.

Cooperation with Short Waves (the famous Polish short film festival) brings a unique online-live event with an enticing title The Potential of Short Film in Community Building and Educational Activities. The FeKK galaxy is going to be represented by Viviana Carlet (Lago Film Fest) and Ana Cerar (Kino Otok).

After a friendly takeover, FeKK is going to host yet another Kratka scena, running for the fifth time in a row and still the only short-film screenwriting workshop in Slovenia. This year the mentor is going to be Wim Vanacker, an esteemed international screenwriting expert. To top it up, the young attendees of the film criticism workshop, Sharpening the Gaze, are going to further brighten our future and carefully inspect the FeKK shorts.

In short, it is going to be u n f o r g e t a b l e, despite the all-around catastrophe.  Do come.

Tanja Hladnik

News