Editor

Celebrating the 15th anniversary and having the competition programme "New Europe - New Names" in place, festival feels the need as well as strong wish to share its experience and widen up its range of vision with the festivals of similar size around Eastern and Central Europe.

The two-day intensive workshop of "Dynamics of Cinema Festivals" will be hosted by IFF "Kino Pavasaris" and in collaboration of Media Desk Lithuania on 30th - 31st of March 2010. Our goal is to bring together Eastern and Central European film festivals to discuss current issues within these film festivals.

More information about International Cenatral and Eastern Film Forum 

In 2010 Vilnius IFF will celebrates its 15th anniversary. Now that fifteen years have passed since the first festival took place, it earned a widely respected reputation for its high quality films, in depth discussions with renowned Lithuanian and international filmmakers, its thematic and educational events.

The Festival has earned its reputation by screening films that had been carefully selected at other international film festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Venice, San Sebastian, Toronto, etc.) and had been awarded the prizes by both, the audience and film critics.

During all these years,  "Kino Pavasaris" has been a living organism, which has grown, expanded and improved. The jubilee of the 15 years of is a great occasion to remember the very beginning of it all, when the event was small and modest, focusing on screening the films by young directors. The first festival presented the from 4 countries only. In this way, improving the programme year by year we arrived to the last year's festival when we introduced the competition programme. It is a very important stepping stone that has moved the festival into the higher level.

Therefore, celebrating the 15th anniversary and having the competition programme "New Europe - New Names" in place, we feel the need as well as strong wish to share our experience and widen up our range of vision with the festivals of similar size around Eastern and Central Europe.

The two-day intensive workshop of "Dynamics of Cinema Festivals" will be hosted by IFF "Kino Pavasaris" and in collaboration of Media Desk Lithuania on 30th - 31st of March 2010. Our goal is to bring together Eastern and Central European film festivals to discuss current issues within these film festivals.

International Film Festival Forum:

The main goal - to share the good experience among the festivals of Central and Eastern Europe, to articulate the most pressing problems and find the new ways to solve them.

This forum will be focus around broadly defined theoretical and practical concerns related to the film festivals and will provide a rare opportunity for productive conversation about the status qua of the film festivals sector. We aim to give an overall view of the situation of Eastern and Central European festivals, their programs, concerns and organizational issues. 

Agenda of the Forum will include two round-table discussions as well as prepared presentations, allowing participants to discuss about issues in their festivals at various stages.  Topics will include festival programming, distribution, funding, and case studies of specific areas.

Discussions, consultations and educational parts of the Forum will help to identify common and specific aspects of the film festivals, to find innovative ways of cooperation in order to promote national films outside their countries, to draw experience from our European colleagues.

Gathering these representatives from the medium-size international film festivals from Eastern and Central Europe will help to forge stronger collaboration in future project management.

The second day of the forum is dedicated to the national film production.

During this forum we will try to find the similarities, differences and main aspects of forming the program of the national cinema. We'll also look for new ways to promote national cinema all over Europe. As part of it, we will make presentation of recent Lithuanian cinema productions. 

During the presentation, programme coordinators from other European festivals will have a unique opportunity to see the latest production by Lithuanian filmmakers, get to know Lithuanian producers and directors. 

We hope that this opportunity will help to have a better insight into Lithuanian cinema.

During the discussions with Lithuanian filmmakers we hope to analyze these aspects:

-  The specifics of the film selection at various festivals;

- How to effectively represent a film at festival;

-  Private sector motivation to support different art sectors;

- The importance of right communication between the artist and the sponsors;

- The specifics of the sponsorship for art and cultural events;

Also all the participants of the Forum will have an opportunity to get introduced to the latest information on Media programs from Media Desk headquarters, and also get the information about "Film New Europe" association and its activities. "Film New Europe" is a non-profit organization established in Prague to promote the audio-visual industries of the new EU member countries. The goal of FNE is to support the activities of its members by providing timely and impartial information to as wide a professional audience as possible;

Equally important part on second day of the forum - is the meeting between Lithuanian filmmakers and business sector representatives, who wish or already support the creative sectors including cinema. This will be the discussion about the current fundraising situation and interests in it and how they support artistic sector in the present day.

The International Film Festival Forum - will be the event intensively seeking to raise serious discussions about the local problems of the independent festivals around the New Europe on the European scale.

The 15th annual Vilnius international film festival "Kino pavasaris"  ends on April 2.