Radmila Djurica

The Kino Otok festival in Slovenia, 1st of June brings a live meeting of filmmakers and visitors joined by film art, taking place in a relaxed hectic atmosphere characteristic of Isola Town; brought to living with an excellent selection of films and guests from all around the world. During the festival, Isola's picturesque old town center is transformed into a film island, where the entire film festival community gathers together with the locals to enjoy the screenings under the bright light sky. The open-air cinema screens films of the main program, which compete for the audience award. First of June in the competition program festival showed Mongolian film The Two Horses of Genghis Kan (Das Lied Von Den Zwei Pferden) directed by Byambasuren Davaa. The film celebrates the disappearing of Mongolian ancient folk songs, with documentary fiction that actually represents Mongolian people, with special guest of Kino Otok Isola Urne Chahar-Tugchi, internationally renowned singer with impressive voice. The film is about the search for identity where Urna travels Mongolian steppe to find the missing verses of the old folk song The Two Horses of Genghis Kahn. Half of the song remained engraved of the violin that she inherited from her grandmother, but getting it taken destroying old 100 years old violins. Urma sang to us at the opening of the festival.

Few Steps Back With Past

The most exciting part for many journalists and guests from the territory of ex Jugoslavia would the screening of the old Yugoslavian film directed by Slovenian film director Matijaž Klopčič. Meeting guests, the crew of the film from 1969 went really nicely: the audience had a fantastic insight of the time past, of the Slovenian cinematography in 60s in an interesting conversation with the celebrity crew Rade Sherbegia and the two heroines from the Jugoslavian communist cinema and today the best actresses Milena Dravić and Snežana Nikšić. The roundtable conversation revealed many secrets of the past: along with many anecdotes relating the fantastic film aesthetics of now late Slovenian filmmaker Matijaž Klopčič. Klopčič was a Slovenian film director and screenwriter and at his time he directed 28 films between 1959 and 2005. His film Dediščina was screened in the UN Certain Regards Section at the Cannes Film Festival in 1985. Presented film on Kino Otok Isola 2012 Funeral Feast (Sedmina-Pozdravi Marijo) from 1969 is a film about young man Niko that joins the resistance movement against an Italian government in occupied by the fascists, Slovenia in II World War. Niko kills his sister's lover, an Italian officer, and has to go illegal. With the help of the anti fascistic resistance, he joins the growing number of partisans who wish to drive out the invading fascist regime. The film has very well hidden political contradictions and characte

ristic French new wave film nouvelle vague style for that period in cinematography, due to a radical experimenting with editing, with black and white shots and long emotional scenes. The film is full of sensitive and painful transformation of young love into a crude reality of II World War and is full of erotica with skillfully edited scenes, which was not characteristic for the ideological structure of old communist Yugoslavian films from that period.

Down Right Shorts Hundred Dogs Experiment

The end of the long day on Kino Otok Isola would be very likely crowned with a brand new short feature film directed by Slovenian film director Jan Cvitkovič HUNDRED DOGS (Sto Psov). Another experiment on a big screen with weird and yet artistic story about twisted and inversive realism presented in one SM nightmare. Charismatic and handsome Jan talks about subconscious and difficulte phases in life. His character Adam is getting tired and old and he decides to set Eve free with little SM game.

Among the variety of program 1st of June on Kino Otok Isola the short film section of the festival presented short films directed by young filmmmakers from Serbia Belgrade-N.Sad: Dane Komljen, Jelena Gavrilović, Jelena Maksić, Ognjen Glavonjić, Stefan Ivančić, Senka Domanović, Nemanja Trečaković and Marko Grba Singh. Of course the most exclusive guest, leading the group of young Serbian filmmakers was well known Serbian filmmaker Slobodan Šijan.