Pressemeldungen

The 19th Neisse Film Festival is Opening in Zittau

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Grosshennersdorf - May 16, 2022

This Tuesday, May 17th, the Neisse Film Festival is beginning its 19th round. The opening event will be held in the Gerhart-Hauptmann Theatre in Zittau. Beginning at 7:00 pm, the festival coordinators will be setting the stage for the coming festival days, presenting the film programme, juries and further highlights. The Ukrainian-Turkish feature film "Klondike" by Maryna Er Gorbach is the film of the evening. The drama, a very current topic once again, tells of a young couple who in 2014 was expecting their first child, in their village which was located in the combat area of eastern Ukraine. After the film is the opportunity to join the film discussion with the leading actress Oxana Cherkashyna and enjoy music from DJ Yuriy Gurzhy in the theatre entrance foyer.

Through Sunday the approximately 90 films of all genres - full-length feature films, documentaries, short films - as well as accompanying events will be shown in 23 locations in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic, including in Grosshennersdorf, Zittau, Mittelherwigsdorf, Loebau, Bautzen, Goerlitz, Zgorzelec, Varnsdorf and Liberec. Nine current productions, three from each of the neighbouring countries, are competing in the competitions for the best feature and the best documentary film of the festival. For the short-film competition, 35 entries (out of approximately 400 submitted) were chosen to compete. Under the title of "Regionalia" there are films showing life in the tri-country corner on the Neisse or by filmmakers coming from this area. "Cinemascope" is the name of a series of films which show how broadly diversified the thematic horizons of the cinematography in Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic and other European countries are. In Varnsdorf's Centrum Panorama we will once again be showing film classics in 35mm or 70mm format. There are also a number of children's films on the programme and a retrospective honoring this year's honorary awardee, the German actress Katharina Thalbach.

This year's focus, entitled "Family Affairs", is dedicated to the changes in family concepts and/or the comparison of such conceptions in eastern and western Europe from before 1989 up through today. The films in this rubric deal with various perspectives on this topic, so very relevant on both an individual and a social level, and at the same time relate enthralling, touching period stories. Along these lines, through June 19th, an exhibition entitled "Familia" by the photographer Oksana Yushko is on display in the Kulturcafé Alte Bäckerei in Grosshennersdorf. And until June 22, an exhibition with photos by Harald Hauswald and texts by Stefan Wolle entitled "Voll der Osten. Leben in der DDR" ("Totally East(ern). Life in the GDR") can be seen in the Sparkasse Zittau. Lutz Seiler will also read from his book "Stern 111" on May 18 in the Gerhart-Hauptmann Theater. In this book, the author tells an atmospherically dense family story from the period right after the fall of the Berliin Wall.

One of the other highlights of the 19th Neisse Film Festival programme is the silent film concert with the duo SeBoom on 18 May in Varnsdorf's city theatre (Městské divadlo), the theatre performance entitled "Kontaktzone" on May 18 in Kino Varšava in Liberec, and the concert with DakhaBrakha on May 20 in Kühlhaus Görlitz. The final award ceremony takes place on May 21st in the Ebersbach Filmtheater. In addition to this year's best feature films, documentaries, short films, and audience favourites, the best acting, best screenplay and best production design will be honoured. One film will also receive our Special Award for its dedication to fostering understanding of cultural and ethnic differences in various countries, or the similarities which exist.

 

The 19th Neisse Film Festival's patrons are Michael Kretschmer, minister president of the state of Saxony; Martin Půta, Hauptmann of the Region Liberec, and Rafał Gronicz, Mayor of Zgorzelec.

The 19th Neisse Film Festival is sponsored through and with funds from the: Sächsischen Staatsministerium für Wissenschaft, Kultur und Tourismus (Saxon Ministry for Science, Culture and Tourism), Kulturraum Oberlausitz-Niederschlesien, Landkreis Görlitz - Wokrjes Zhorjelc (district/county), Sparkasse Oberlausitz-Niederschlesien bank, Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung, Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen, Deutsch-Tschechischer Zukunftsfonds, Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, Stiftung für deutsch-polnische Zusammenarbeit, Liberecký kraj, KubiMobil.
his festival is co-financed with tax money on the basis of the finances as decided by the budget adopted by the Saxon Landtag members.