Küstendorf Film and Music Festival
Since January 2008 every year is held the Küstendorf Film and Music Festival.
Festival with no red carpet (even if great neames of the cinema are always invited), the festival is positioned as anti-commercial. The official competition shows student films from all over the world, and the winner receives a “golden egg”.
Organised by Rasta International, the festival is sponsored by the Ministery of Culture of Serbia.
Official website
The festival has its own official website : http://www.kustendorf-filmfestival.org
3rd edition - 13 to 19 January 2010
For its third year, the festival will be held from 13 to 19 january 2010. This year, more than 300 films by young directors have been submitted. The officiel selection has 28 films, from 18 countries : Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cuba, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Lithuania, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Switzerland, UK, and USA. The jury will be led by Marjane Satrapi, famous Franco-Iranian cartoonist and filmmaker. A retrospective will be dedicated to Johnny Depp, guest star of the festival.
On 22 december, Emir Kusturica held a press conference with Serbian minister of Culture. He announced that beside the presence of Johnny Depp, there will also be Jim Jarmusch, Christian Carion, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, the winner of the Award for Best Director (Silver Bear) at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival, Fatih Akin, the winner of the Special Jury Prize at this year’s Venice Film Festival, the Palestinian director Elia Suleiman, the famous Russian director Pavel Lungin, as well as the young Tunisian director Raja Amari. Their films will be shown within the program “Contemporary Trends”.
Emir Kusturica said ”We want to emphasize a neglected aspect of cinematography- people who created it and who are preserving it. The destiny of films today is terrible, it is slowly disappearing as a form of communication, because a video-game can earn up to 370 million dollars in a week. The film can be preserved only if patrons of art help in this fight against these aggressive forms.”
More details on blics.rs
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The third Küstendorf Film and Music Festival closed with the victory of franco-israelian film “Lost Paradise”, a love story by Mihal Brezis and Oded Binnun. The golden egg was given to them by Marjane Satrapi, president of the jury, as well as an invitation to stay one month in Küstendorf in order to write peacefully a new script.
The second prize, granted by the silver egg, went to the czech film “Baba”, directed by Zuzana Kirchnerova-Špidlova.
And finally, the bronze egg went to lithuanian film “Lernavan”, directed by Armenian director Marat Sargsyan.
2nd edition - 8 to 14 January 2009
This year, announced guests are Jim Jarmush, Oliver Stone, Ingeborg Dapkunaite, Zhang Yimou, Alain Delon and many others. The films in competitions will come from USA, Great Britain, Chili, Venezuela, Argentina, Peru, Mexico, Egypt, Germany, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Russia, Poland, Italy and Serbia.
Pictures from the press conference :
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Beside the official student films selection, the festival will also allow to screen a selction of contemporary of classical movies such as Maradona, Gomorrah, Hunger, W., Burnt by the Sun, and a Jim Jarmusch restrospective : Stranger than Paradise, Down by Law, Dead Man and Broken Flowers.
Program of the 2009 Festival : 
The festival started with an opening ceremony as funny as last year. As you can see in the video below, a funerary procession went in tears to the cemetary of the “worst films ever”, where had been burried Die Hard 4 last year. When the fanfare started to play a solemn march, a Balkanic Bruce Willis carrying the name of Die Hard 5 raised from his coffin, took fire by the candles, and escaped away running ! As Emir said : ”As much as we try to destroy it or at least marginalize bad movies – which we depicted symbolically with this performance – it still persists, ever escaping the hawthorn stake”
The rest of the festival was as festive as this opening ceremony, with concerts (La Mano Ajena, The No Smoking Orchestra, …) and workshops by Jim Jarmusch, Emir Kusturica or even Thierry Frémaux. The jury was headed by Serbian actress Anica Dobra, and the members were German producer Karl Baumgartner, and Italian director of Bologna cinematheque Gian Luca Farinelli.
After a competition which everyone considered as of very good quality, the result were the following :
- The Golden egg was given to Japanese director Kokhi Hasei, for his film “Godog”. This film represents an uncensored footage of the everyday lives of children working and playing in dumps of the Philipines, fighting for their lives. According to the jury : ”the film is a perfect and tragic metaphor of our civilization and its alleged successes.”
- The Silver Egg went to Nina Vuković from Montenegro, for her film Mickey’s Ballad, a poetic story in the German production.
- US director Shih-Ting Hung won the Bronze Egg for her film Viola, about a seven-year-old girl taking a dreamlike journey.
- French director Jean François Rouzé won a special award of the jury for his film 5 Seconds, shot in Spain, in which the main character, after having an accident, is suffering from a disturbance which makes him see only immobile sights that alternate in 5 seconds.
- The press accredited at the festival gave their award to young author Dragan Mišić from Serbia, for his film „Muha”, about a Roma construction worker and a hip hopper, who is trying to change the stereotype about his people.
Let's mention that young Japanese director Kokhi Hasei - who recently got baptised as an orthodox in the saint Sava chapel of Küstendorf - will soon play in Mari-Eve Signeyrolle's movie Alice au pays s'émerveille. After receiving his prize, he said : ”I plan to spend some more time in Serbia, because I want to learn more about your country and people whose faith I have accepted as my own.”
Emir Kusturica, during the closing ceremony, said ”After I saw your films, I talked to Tara and Zlatibor1). The mountains say that your films are good and that you are on the right way. I would like to congratulate the winners and to wish luck to other competitors for the next festival, because this is the jury’s decision. You can be satisfied because friendship, authorship, aesthetics, ideology, politics and love are the subjects that attracted the attention and that utopia called Küstendorf is possible”
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After Jim Jarmusch, Emir Kusturica promised Johnny Depp would be next year's guest…
1st edition - 14 to 21 January 2008
On 14 December, Emir Kusturica has announced during a press conference that he was creating a cinema festival in Küstendorf. The first edition of this festival will take place from 14 to 21 January 2008, in the Underground theatre of the village. He has also announced that it would be a festival without red carpet (even thought some big directors such as Nikita Mikhalkov and Fatih Akin are invited). The winner shall receive a “Golden egg”… (note the “biorevolutionary” juice bottles on the table of the press conference…)
Pictures of the first edition opening :
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The First edition of the festival opened on January the 14th. In order not to make things like the others, the opening took place in a cemetery. Emir and his guests (among who Serbian prime minister Vojislav Kostunica and Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov) have solemnly proceeded to the burial of the ”worst Hollywood movie ever done” : DIE HARD 4. Emir first apologized not have had the time to send his condolences to the producer of this film, when Nele and Dejan were acting as priests… Then the music came in and the festival started. Emir then recalled the principles of the festival : it will allow young cinema students coming from all the countries (12 countries are represented) to show their short film, outside any kind of influence. The jury was headed by Austrian writer Peter Handke.
The winner of the first edition was the film “In Between”, a 17-minute existential take on love, solitude and the fear of commitment by Spanish director Jose Iglesias, a student at Poland's national film school. He took the golden egg, first prize of the festival. The silver egg went to British documentary filmmaker Martin Hampton for “Possessed”, his fascinating study of hoarders – people who are unable to thrown things away. The bronze egg was won by Colombian director Franco Lolli, a graduate of French film school La Femis for “Like Everybody Else”, the story of a teenager's relationship with his mother as he struggles to hide his relative poverty from rich school friends. Emir Kusturica has declared he found too many courageous and experimental young directors lose their way once they embark upon the many compromises of commercial or professional filmmaking. Emir Kusturica promised more films from Africa, Asia and Latin America, next year.
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