Macedonian Film Festivals Shine on a Shoestring

Manaki Brothers festival in Bitola is dedicated to cinematographers | Photo by: Aleksandar Grozdanovski

Macedonian film lovers have had a bumper time lately with two festivals in the last two months: the Manaki Brothers festival in Bitola, dedicated to cinematographers, and Cinedays in Skopje, celebrating European film.

Both were short of funds compared to other similar festivals in the region but many of those attending say the offer and atmosphere were up to anything provided by their rivals.

Cinedays pulled off an ambitious repertoire on a modest budget of €27,000 while Manaki Brothers, widely considered Macedonia’s top film event, had some €200,000 to spend.

Bu comparison the Sarajevo Film Festival, which is a much younger than Manaki Brothers, had a budget of €4.5 million for this year.

Observers say Manaki Brothers has made major improvements over the past three years, becoming more visible in the country, the region and in Europe.

A solid management structure is credited most for the success - something that observers say is often lacking in other festivals across the Balkans. By bringing in exclusive guest stars, they also added a much-needed note of glamour to the event.
 
The upward trend begun in 2009 when Manaki Brothers festival hosted Victoria Abril and it continued last year with Hollywood guest star Daryl Hannah.
 
This year the festival recorded 17,000 visitors over seven days, with an army of film lovers, students, film workers and foreign journalists flooding Bitola.
 
Much younger than its counterpart in Bitola, Cinedays matched this trend on its 10th anniversary this year.

This year Manaki Brotherd recorded 17,000 visitors | Photo by: Aleksandar Grozdanovski

The anniversary film menu was packed in 10 festival days with only €27,000, raised from the city of Skopje, the Ministry of Culture and the delegation of the European Union in Macedonia.
 
While both festivals in the past struggled for audiences and some screenings took place in half-empty show rooms, this is not the case today.

This year, audiences fought to get tickets, especially for some of the more exclusive screenings.
 
That is not to say that all went perfectly. Local and international experts say Cinedays has yet to create a complete festival atmosphere, complete with workshops and prominent film stars.

Their presence at the moment is obviously restricted by the tight budget.

The festival this year did try to bring Hungarian cult director Bela Tar and Serbia’s Nikola Kojo to Skopje. Their absence was later explained by sickness.

What nobody can dispute is that Cinedays has succeeded in bringing audiences back to cinemas. Observers say this is the most solid benchmark of the festival’s success and a basis for its further development as part of the European film festival scene.

The rise of Cinedays has coincided with the decline of another film festival held in the capital, the Skopje Film Festival.

With its unimpressive offering of movies and events, this festival held in April, fell to a low ebb in the past years, losing much of its former credibility.

A solid management structure is credited most for the success | Photo by: Aleksandar Grozdanovski

Not so long ago this festival had many more visitors and was regarded as the biggest annual film event in the capital.
 
The Skopje Film Festival then topped Cinedays in every category, from the quality of the movies to the number of film lovers it attracted.

All eyes in the Balkan move scene these days turn towards the Sarajevo Film Festival. Considered by most critics and artist to be the best in the region and comparable to the festival in Thessaloniki, Greece, Sarajevo sets a high standard for its Macedonian counterparts.

Asked how they managed to create a solid festival with a budget that is some 165 times less than that of Sarajevo, the head of Cinedays, Zlatko Stevkovski, jests: “With outstanding effort and a bit of magic”.

Manaki Brothers director Labina Mitevska is in a solider financial position with a €200,000 budget that mainly comes from the Ministry of Culture and the Bitola municipality.

But she says the festival’s growth with funds of this magnitude has now reached its ceiling.
 
Manaki Brothers is regarded as the country’s top film festival and with that reputation to maintain, she says, the country will have to invest more if it wishes to see it grow.

“We have done all we can and all of us have invested a lot in Manaki Brothers, but with more support we could make the festival even better and more colourful,” she said.

Mitevska says it would be wrong to let the festival stagnate at the level it has already achieved. “It simply must move forward,” she added.

The only source of funds is government cash | Photo by: Aleksandar Grozdanovski

Cinedays head Stevkovski has already made a public demand for more donations. He hopes Skopje’s mayor, Koce Trajanovski, will put more money aside for the festival for next year.

While Manaki Brothers has raised at least part of the money from commercial partners and sponsors over the past two years, for Cinedays the only source of funds is government cash.

“We have knocked on many doors,” Stevkovski says, but no sponsor came forward.

Experts say one comparative advantage that Manaki Brothers enjoys is that it is dedicated to Directors of Photography, which sets it apart from other festivals.
 
“The festival has great potential because it is the only one of its kind in the region, offering a unique opportunity to camera students and cinematographers to see these kinds of movies and talk to directors of photography afterwards,” said director and screenplay writer Darko Lungulov, whose script was awarded the first price at the Manaki script corner this year.
 
“It is a unique opportunity for the directors as well, to meet photography directors and to talk to them and start cooperation,” he added.

Experts say good management is the principal ingredient to success in festivals.

When audiences lose interest, the key thing is to think creatively about how to lure back audiences.

Participants praised the hospitality of the organizers | Photo by: Aleksandar Grozdanovski

This year’s Guest Star at Manaki Brothers, Serbian actor Miki Manjlovic, didn’t stir a lot of interest, which was not a surprise as he had visited Skopje twice in the last 12 months.
 
But Mitevska says that having a European star in the first year, a Hollywood star in the second and then a Balkan star with worldwide credibility in the third year, was part of her strategy.

”Viktoria Abril was a real attraction, Daryl Hannah brought in people who aren’t part of a regular cinema audience and the selection of Miki Manojlovic as guest star was an attempt to stress values from this region, which is one of the most valuable segments of this festival,” she said.

“Our first challenge was to bring the audience back in addition to boost the rating of the festival, so we can gradually shift towards the promotion of what’s really valuable,” Mitevska added.
 
Cinedays on the other hand, tried to bring in audiences by using unconventional tools such as a drive-in cinema, a novelty in Macedonia.

Last year the festival joined the fight against piracy by granting half-price tickets to visitors who came and left one pirated movie.

This year, according to the director Zlatko Stevkovski, the focus was more on the quality of the programme and less on attracting stars.

“Cinedays has a manager but in the same time that person is not from the (film) industry” notes Suncica Unevska, film critic and a former selector of Cinedays, now selector for Manaki Brothers’ “New Visions” festival programme.

She argues that a manager and a festival selector are two separate phenomena, each of which adds its own value to the festival.

Cinedays had a modest budget of €27,000 while Manaki Brothers had some €200,000 | Photo by: Aleksandar Grozdanovski

“Every festival must have its own concept, and a team that will invest dedicated work in preparing each of the next editions of the festival,” she said. “The invited guests also need to be respected, valued and treated in an appropriate way.”

Swiss producer Saskia Fisher, part of the Manaki script corner and mediator of one of the workshops in Bitola, certainly did not fault the welcome on offer.
 
“The hospitality took my breath away on this festival,” she said. “There was excellent organization, a beautiful atmosphere and possibilities to network that open up important possibilities for co-productions and cooperation in general.”

Cinematographer MIladin Colakovic, laureate of the Ostrava cinematographers festival, OKO, was a first-time visitor to Manaki Brothers.
 
He too was impressed with the organization, noting that festivals in Balkans often lack that particular element.
 
“You need to plan, strategize, and know your target audience,” he said.
 
“I doubt this festival would be so good if it wasn’t for Labina Mitevska,” he added. “Things here look good because of the efforts of the team and not just because of the quality of the system.

“The indicator that a system is working is when things go smoothly even if the key managerial positions are taken by other people,” Colakovic added.