17 Jul 12

Film Festival Brings Europe's Best to Palic

Many of the movies selected for screening over the seven days of the regional festival will be shown for the first time since being shown at Cannes, Berlin and Rotterdam.

Nemanja Cabric

BIRN Belgrade

One of Serbia's top regional film festivals, which takes place near Lake Palic in northern Serbia, opened on July 14.

It brings a selection of 80 movies that represent the best of this year’s offer of European productions.

Among the 15 movies competing for the "Zlatni toranj" ("Golden tower") and "Palicki toranj" ("Palic tower") awards, given each year for the best film and the best director, are movies from Hungary, Germany, Sweden and Holland as well as from Serbia.

The selection, by film critic and Berlinale selector Nikolaj Nikitin, includes "Just the wind", by Bence Fliegauf, "Barbara", by Christian Petzold, "The Crown Jewels", by Ella Lemhagen, "Lena", by Christophe Van Rompaey, and "Parade", by Srdjan Dragojevic.

Alexander Lifka -A film pioneer of the region

Aleksandar Lifka (1880 –1952) was a central-European cinematographer. He was born in Brassó in todays Romania. He studied in Vienna in a technical high school. After completing his education, Lifka traveled to Paris, where he bought a Pathé camera. In 1900, he shot the visit of the emperor Franz Joseph and Queen Elisabeth to the town of Gödöllő, in Hungary.

After his father's death, Lifka and his older brother Karl started a traveling movie theatre that shown movies in . Trieste (Italy), Rijeka, Bjelovar, Osijek (Croatia), and Ljubljana (Slovenia), and in 1902 to Belgrade, Zemun, Újvidék (now Novi Sad, Serbia), and Szabadka (now Subotica, Serbia).

Lifka renovated the grand hall of Hungaria Hotel in Subotica into a permanent movie theatre.

During World War I, he was hired by Filmkriegspresse to create films about battles in Galizia, where he was wounded. At present, only twenty of his original films remain.

The festival opened on Saturday with the announcement of the winner of the "Aleksandar Lifka" prize , which this year went to Jean-Marc Barr, the French actor and director, for his outstanding contribution to European cinematography.

Barr is well known for his roles in Lars Von Trier’s movies “Europa”, “Breaking the Waves”, “Dancer in the Dark”, “Dogville”, “Manderlay” and “The Boss of it All”, as well as for the trilogy that he directed, “Lovers”, “Too Much Flesh” and “Being Light”.

The “Aleksandar Lifka” award was also given to Serbian composer Zoran Simjanovic who wrote the music for more than 60 feature films, 50 television films and shows, 50 cartoons and short movies, as well as some 30 theatre shows. Simjanovic is known mostly for his music in the movies “Grlom u jagode” (“Throat full of strawberries”), “Flojd”, “Nacionalna Klasa” ("National Class") and “Balkan Express”.

Like last year, the films in the Palic festival are sorted into eight programmes. Besides the official competition programme, those are “Parallels and encounters”, “The Young Spirit of Europe”, “Underground Spirit”, “New Swedish Film”, “New Hungarian Film”, “Eco Dox” and the “Childrens Programme”.

These include some of the best new movies from the UK, Finland, Turkey, Austria, Germany, France, Romania, Latvia, Russia and Israel.

Besides the Great Park in Palic, the festival takes place at several other locations: the National Theatre in Subotica, the “Eurocinema” cinema and the “Lifka” art cinema.

More information on the festival programme, venues, and other contents are available on the Palic Film Festival website.