The crossing europe Film Festival Linz overcomes
online also closed borders.
„That would have been it!”: Christine Dollhofer, director of the CROSSING EUROPE Film Festival in Linz, has worked for months with her team on this year’s festival program. The festival catalog was already ready for printing when the state of emergency broke loose in Austria and Europe. The initial festival program is now available as PDF on the CROSSING EUROPE homepage.
Within a few days, the CROSSING EUROPE team split the original program into three parts to reassemble it for the new circumstances. The program will now be presented in three stages of “CROSSING EUROPE 2020 EXTRACTS”
“EXTRACTS: An Opening” will be presented on April 21st in cooperation with the Linz non-commercial community TV station dorf tv (www.dorftv.at): As part of a live program night, starting from 8:00 p.m., with live discussions with Christine Dollhofer and other festival guests, the opening film “Micha Shagrir – The Linzer Candy Boy” by Michael Pfeifenberger will be screened as an Austrian premiere. The film tells the migration story of Micha Shagrir, born in Linz in 1938, whose family had to flee to Palestine from the Nazi terror and who later became a leading figure in Israeli film in the 1960s as a director and film producer.
The opening night will then be continued by a selection of LOCAL ARTISTS MUSIC VIDEOS.
“EXTRACTS on VOD” from April 21st to May 20th will be presented on the Austrian streaming platforms FLIMMIT and KINO VOD CLUB: A selection of films of this years festival program. One of them is the Dutch-Bosnian feature film “Take me somewhere nice” by Ena Sendijarevic. The film tells the story of Alma, who is not yet quite clear where life is supposed to lead. In any case, it should be nice. The film accompanies Alma in unusual camera shots and contemporary photo aesthetics on her journey to her dy- ing father in Bosnia, whom she wants to visit one last time. If one wants to support the local Linz arthouse film-theaters while streaming the festival films, one can watch these films in the virtual cinema hall of these cinemas on the KINO VOD CLUB onlineportal. The respective cinemas receive 1/3 of the film rental fee.
“EXTRACTS. Analogue cinema experience” is the third part of the festival program and will follow in autumn: A VALIE EXPORT special program will then be shown, which will also be accompanied by an exhibitions of the Linz museums. A weekly CROSSING EUROPE Film evening scheduled every Thursday in the City Kino will also start in autumn and feature films from local filmmakers.
Christine Dollhofer is clear: “This year is exceptional. And not to be repeated. Because festivals live from the festival atmosphere and the real encounter of people. ” Real encounters that are also needed to lead the critical discourse in Europe after the crisis: A debate about the unlimited restoration of basic democratic and freedom rights which are now taken away from us and downplayed with harmlessly sounding propaganda words such as “new normality”.
