Is the joke over and why not
We’re in 2018. FeKK – Ljubljana Short Film Festival, which was born out of the necessity for a suitable platform for short film production and which, production-wise, grew primarily from the enthusiasm of a wacky team of film-loving friends, has now in its 4th edition, for the first time and after some years of endeavour, become a serious festival. Serious mostly with regard to production funds because 2018 is also the first year the festival has made it into the three-year programme plan of the Slovenian Film Centre, which signifies a regular production funding that will help us realise it in the next three years. Thus, if the festival has so far kept an excessively easy-going and roguish, even nihilistic, posture, it is now faced with the sweet burden of greater responsibility and scrutiny from the broader public. Bear in mind that this does not mean that in the past the festival maintained an irresponsible stance towards its mission, but mostly that future larger funds demand a more ambitious production, further professionalization, and, naturally, greater responsibility towards films, their authors and the audience. Expectations are therefore great, risks are high, but perhaps the responsibility towards the aim that the festival stays true to itself is the biggest. It was precisely the fact the audience and the film experts identified with the organisation and diction of the FeKK festival (often also with the relationship towards the frequently comically depressing state of the Slovenian film scene) that gave the festival the legitimacy for existence. All in all, the festival must therefore stay true to its starting laid-back stance, so as not to become a joke but still FeKK around in an extremely serious way. Nothin’ to it. So, let’s get “serious”: this fourth time round we still believe that a short film is the most accessible, democratic, boundless, and exciting form of film creativity. As digital revolution brings production means within reach, and smaller financial risks minimise the interference of production studios, the artistic freedom and exploration of film language borders enhance. Short films may therefore journey on further, deeper, more daringly, more experimentally and bravely than its full length peers because they are free from the customary diction of the market and various expectations. Which is also the reason why the market in general excludes them, but here FeKK comes into play. With it we try to cultivate a platform that could put the short film production on the pantheon of film creativity as an equal contestant. A platform that presents filmmakers and their work to the audience in a suitable way, one that enables the audience and the authors to broaden their horizons, that ofers opportunities of education and bonding on various levels and that brings shorts closer to lay understanding. Therefore, the 2018 FeKK remains on the path laid out by its predecessors. It continues to bring comprehensible competition programmes of domestic production (FeKK SLO) and the production from more or less neighbouring countries (FeKK YU), with which we share common production conditions, culture, semi-distant history and the attitude towards the current social reality. reality. It ofers an overview of the best, award-winning European short films of 2017 (EFA: Short Matters!), hosts the prestigious Swiss short film festival, the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, and continues with the presentations of short films by the cult filmmakers (Hommage: Tsai Ming-liang). Focusing on activism in films (FeKKtivism), we will give the screen to Nika Autor’s newsreel, films from 1968 and the new socially critical documentaries by the Luksuz production. As in previous years, we will direct our gaze towards east with the East of Eden programme, but are introducing the section Fer FeKK, showing films with subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing and audio description for the blind and visually impaired. By no means have we given up on rummaging through the stifling depths of the Internet that has resulted in a bundle of excellent oddities for the midnight projections (FeKK Of), and the Saturday matinee is going to pamper to the youngest, or the most childish, in the audience (FeKKids). The festival is growing also inside the frames of its ProFeKK industry programme as it features three round tables with eminent guests who will try to shed light on: 1.) the production of virtual reality, 360-degree films and possibilities that this new media opens to the film language. The round table will be complemented also by the first curated VR- cinema in Slovenia and will take place in the small screening hall of Kinodvor 2.) the relation between the film criticism and curating of film programmes, and the question why the length of films is important and why it shouldn’t be 3.) ways and possibilities for short film distribution Since there’s not enough space to highlight all of FeKK’s contents, we should, of course, immediately stress the entertainment part that will with its partays justify the bacchic reputation of the festival. Since we are bent on wide accessibility of contents and on placement of artwork and discourse into public sphere the majority of events will be free. So, if the statement that short films are defined by bursts of creativity and attempts to reflect both one’s inner world and struggle as well as the struggle around us, and that the shorts can be contemplations and attempted definitions, but also mere documents of zeitgeist or plays on form and content, then FeKK is the one to give them the screen and try, in its essence, once more to reflect all the above mentioned qualities of short form. It’s gonna be sick.
Matevž Jerman, Peter Cerovšek