Culture

goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film

This year the thematic focus of 24th goEast festival will be placed on the identity-defining Albanian-language film works

April 22nd, 2024
Sofiia Bartnovska, News from Berlin
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From April 24 to 30 2024, Wiesbaden will be transformed once again into the West German epicentre of Central and Eastern European film.

The program of the festival includes movie screenings and competitions, poetry reading, as well as cultural panel discussions. The sections are divided into: East-West Talent Lab, goEast Human Rights Sunday, Short Film Program, International competition, and Symposium: The Other Queers.

The film program consists of historical and contemporary works, including the feature-length films FIVE MINUTES OF PARADISE (Yugoslavia, 1959) by Igor Pretnar, DUBRAVKA (Ukrainian SSR, 1967) by Radomir Vasilevsky, KILL ME GENTLY (Yugoslavia, 1979) by Boštjan Hladnik and A SEVERE YOUNG MAN (Soviet Union, 1935) by Abram Room. The program will be complemented by diverse short film programs: including queer and subversive cinema from Ukraine, a program featuring short films from Central Asia and the Caucasus curated by the artists’ collective krёlex zentre from Kazakhstan, Queer Feminist Porn Shorts and short films from former Yugoslavia.krёlex zentre will also open the overall program with a performance at Murnau-Filmtheater. In addition, the section includes a music video compilation featuring pioneering works from Eastern Europe’s queer, alternative scene produced between 1985 and 1999, assembled by film researcher and music editor Natalie Gravenor.

In the annual Symposium section, goEast has devoted itself since 2001 to exploring topics, regions and currents in Central and Eastern European cinema from film-historical, sociological and political perspectives. For 2024, co-curators Jasmina Šepetavc (University of Ljubljana, LGBT Film Festival Ljubljana, Slovenia) and Yulia Serdyukova (Freefilmers, Kyiv) are gathering film scholars, activists, filmmakers, student groups and colleagues from other festivals with a focus on queer cinema at Museum Wiesbaden under the programmatic title “The Other Queers''. Discussion panels and lectures by renowned scholars like Nebojša Jovanović, Katja Čičigoj and others provide the theoretical framework of the event.

In the East-West Talent Lab, new documentary film projects will be pitched, the Festival Sunday will celebrate goEast “Human Rights Sunday” and the popular Rhine riverboat outing is back again too. Under the slogan “Rhine, Wine & Rhymez”, filmmakers and guests of the festival will be reading their favorite poems on board, while the Riesling flows.

To learn more about the program and for tickets follow the goEast website:
https://www.filmfestival-goeast.de/en/

References:

News from Berlin