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The flourishing CineFest, International Festival of Young Filmmakers in September attracts thousands of film fans and visitors from the whole world. Housing in a brand-new cultural complex and the beautiful old Kossuth Cinema, the 5th CineFest provides an unique look into international young cinema’s landscape, screening features, documentaries, experimental works and animated shorts from all over the world.
Hungary’s freshest young film festival celebrates its 5th anniversary this year. This year CineFest received 280 films from 48 countries. Most of the films came from Central Europe, from the US and Germany, but we received films from Indonesia to South America. After a pre-selection, the top 67 films have the opportunity to compete in the official program.

At the end of Cinefest International Film Festival for young filmmmakers Péter Madaras, the programme director of the festival answered to our questions.

How would you define the festival, what does it represent on a map of European film festivals?
Obviously it represents something freshness, which comes from the manner of the festival “for young filmmakers”. So it is fresh, new, a bit different than any others, a bit extreme. Since many youngsters participating the festival it is really familiar, cool. Just as on your site, Daazo.com, short films are made by young directors mainly. As the festival is organized by young people, it is a great party for us too.

You receive many films each year. What kind of opportunities do you have for announcing the festival on international level?
The easiest way is to collect partner festivals, and cross-promote each other. We appear on their festival, have banners in their catalogue. And since we have to spend money sometime, we appear in Cannes, Berlin and some other bigger festival.

Cinefest celebrates its 5th birthday. What is the future of the festival? Would you change something in the future?
We used to say the festival is in adult age already! We don’t want to be an “A” category film festival, that needs world premieres, hell a lot of money and it cannot take place in a small city. We started as something different. We want to be a well know, big festival, which is accepted and liked by young filmmakers. It would be really great if filmmakers thought they need to send their films to this festival, because it was a serious milestone for them. Then we could have more and more exciting off-programmes.

Is there any kind of film what the Festival prefers? What is the image of the festival filmwise?
Of course we would like to shape a specific image of the festival. Step by step we try to set a permanent pre-selection jury. Naturally their taste defines the selection of the festival. Nevertheless we have more and more melancholic films. A good example for this is the awarded film “In Transit”, which is a melancholic, sweet short film without clichés. I think we have more and more film like that. But I think we are too young to have a real image, but in a couple of years we gonna have it.

See the winners of this year’s festival! Click!

At the end, filmmakers received the awards of BUdapest SHOrtfilm Festival 2008. The arward fro the best short film went to the film “Traumatology” by Daniel Sanchez Arévalo. We are proud to announce, that Balázs Simonyi received the silver BUSHO award for his film “Original Lager“, which can be seen on our site. The bronze award went to the film “Medium Rare” by Stephan Stuckert.

More about the awards can be found here

Enjoy Original Lager on Daazo.com:

In the framework of Pécs2010 program and with the support of NKA, Film.hu Kft. launches a flash animation competition. Prize money will be awarded to the top ten competitors.

Topic of the competition

According to competition terms 10 selected creators/workshops will have the opportunity to make 10×1 minute long flash animation films. At the end of the almost one and a half month long process all animation films will be linked by competition organizers into one 10 minute long film entitled Pécsi Flash.

First round, there can be only ten.
Competitors may nominate their animation films made in the past five years. The best 10 creators/workshops will be selected by viewers and the jury. Competition parameters are defined at the official website, see here.

Second round
There is only one criterion: the opening and closing scene must be based on a venue photo and a 1 minute long music selection must be included, too. The music selection and the photo gallery of venue photos will be available on the safe website of the competition before the start of the second round.

The result of a total prize money of one million HUF competition, a ten minute long film entitled Pécsi Flash will be presented at the Hungaroflash Festival taking place from 17th to 19th October 2008.

Jury
András Wahorn artist, musician, head of the jury, Balázs Gróf graphic artist, director of animation movies, Márton Hegedűs graphic artist, director of animation movies, Lazin Igor director of animation movies, producer, Géza M. Tóth director of animation movies, professor of the Moholy-Nagy University Of Art And Design Budapest.

Each year a certain selection of short films has the honor to be presented at one of the most prestigious festival of the world - Cannes Film Festival. As we are mostly dealing with short films, the selection of this year’s short film programme tells us a lot about current trends and tastes.

The main competition has :

411-Z (Dániel Erdélyi) Hungary
A barge on the Danube. A carefree summer day. Stew in the pot, and a little wine and soda to wash it off. Other than that, everything is strictly according to the shipping regulations, of course. But something might have gone wrong…

Good Trip (Javier Palleiro, Guillermo Rocamora) Uruguay
Sandra works as a collector of tolls. Her life and job are very monotonous. A phone call will break the routine, and she will be faced with a life changing decision. Sandra works as a collector of tolls. Her life and job are very monotonous. A phone call will break the routine, and she will be faced with a life changing decision.

De Moins En Moins (Mélanie Laurent) France
Lisa, a young woman, tries to remember moments in her life with the help of her doctor. Voices resonate, images intermingle… moments of happiness suddenly appear.
A few seconds later, she has already forgotten.
The disease progresses. Life fades away.

The Desire (Maria Benito) Mexico
Ana, a fifty years old woman falls into a depression when her husband leaves her. One day she decides to go out of this depression and starts changes from the outside to the inside. With the wakeness of desire she starts a process in wich she rediscovers her new sexuality.

Jerrycan (Julius Avery) Australia
Nathan, a kid who risks everything after he is bullied into making a life and death decision.

Love You More (Sam Taylor-Wood) United Kingdom
Summer, 1978. London.
Georgia sits in a Geography class covering her exercise book with graffiti. Her classmate Peter watches her with longing.
Georgia turns and catches him - but ignores his gaze.

Megatron (Marian Crisan) Romania
Maxim lives together only with his mother in a village near Bucharest. It’s Maxim birthday. He’s turning 8. For the birthday party, his mother will take him to Bucharest, to Mc Donalds. Maxim will do anything to meet his father who lives in the city

My Rabit Hoppy (Anthony Lucas) Australia
Henry’s ‘Show and Tell’ school project about a pet rabbit goes horribly horribly wrong.

2 Birds (Rúnar Rúnarsson) Iceland
2 Birds takes place during one bright summer night and follows a group of young teenagers on a journey from innocence to the stark reality of adulthood.

TCM Classic Shorts 2008 is open for entries!

Why Enter?

• First prize - £5,000; Second prize - £3,000; Third prize - £2,000
• Promotion of your work on movie channel TCM across Europe, the Middle East and Africa as part of a special on-air TCM Classic Shorts season in November
• Be part of one of the most prestigious and long standing short film competitions in Europe
• Judging panel made up by some of the most prominent names in the film and media industry
• International media coverage of the competition, now in its ninth year, held in conjunction with The Times BFI London Film Festival
• The 6 finalists will be screened as part of The Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival at the awards ceremony and on film channel TCM
• Past winners have gone on to win BAFTAs, make feature films and TV programmes, and screen their work at other festivals such as Cannes with the encouragement and assistance of TCM

More info and details: http://www.tcmclassicshorts.com/

It’s kind of duty for us watching the Oscar Ceremony, since we’ve had an Oscar-winner short on Daazo. It’s good to know, that among the flashy scenes at Kodak Theatre are not only high-budget features getting awarded; the next generation is already there with their short films.

This year in the category of Live Action Shorts the Oscar has gone to Philippe Pollet-Villard (France) for The Mozart of Pickpockets.

Everyone - who’s seen the film - is just loving it; Anne Thompson deputy editor of Variety wrote: “Charlie Chaplin would be proud of this charming little comedy, which observes two inept Parisian pickpockets who meet their match in a deaf-mute young street urchin. Though a fair amount of the laughter is dialogue-based, the funniest bits employ good, old-fashioned silent-movie tactics (as in the scene where one thief distracts the suspicious hotel clerk, while his partner attempts to smuggle the child through the lobby in an oversize shopping bag).”

“The Mozart of Pickpockets boasts its share of surprises, but it doesn’t depend on them, putting characters first. Unassuming in its pleasures, yet universal in its appeal, Mozart gets my vote” - she added.

Peter and the Wolf won the Oscar of Animated Shorts. British director Suzie Templeton and Hugh Welchman film’s is an animated version of Sergei Prokofiev’s musical tale for children, which was written and composed in 1936. Peter lives in a world where he has to confront evil and his struggle against the wolf leads to his transformation. A fragile little boy, Peter discovers his own strength and, with the help of a few friends, becomes a true hero.. Anne Thompson wrote: “If I had to predict a winner, this would be it… Templeton’s interpretation seems to favor the animals and even features a mushy new twist: after capturing the wolf, Peter lets the misunderstood beast go free, revealing the hunters as the true villains of the story.“

The good thing is that both winners (Mozart… and Peter and the Wolf) are very well made, brave atworks, but watchable, entertaining shorts at the same time; this is what we prefer on Daazo too.

And don’t forget: we already presented an Oscar-winning animated short: Ferenc Rofusz’ The Fly.

The members of the International Short Film Jury Marc Barbé (France), Ada Solomon (Romania) and Laura Tonke (Germany) award the following prizes:

The Golden Bear to
O zi bună de plajă by Bogdan Mustaţă (Romania)

The film raises questions about its issues rather than bring resolution to them. It does so in a very precise and unpredictable way.
We feel that it is one of the most precious things when a film stays with you and keeps unravelling long after the final credits have ended.

The Silver Bear to
Udedh bun by Siddharth Sinha (India)

The Silver Bear goes to Udedh bun for its modern narration. A sharp focus that relies on a harmony between images and sound rather than words.
We are also sensitive to the new erotica brought to the traditional figure of the desired woman in the history of cinema.

Paris based short film festival is open for filmmakers, who have short films under the length of 3 minutes. This festival has a very nice atmosphere. If your film is selected it will be screened in more than 40 cities all around as the festival runs a franchise system. So here we go:

The festival of Very Short is about fifty films in an international selection, screened in only one meeting of a little bit more than two hours. It is also a competition, with four prices awarded by the Jury, and of course the price of the public awarded by you. It is also screenings organized simultaneously in forty cities in France and all around the world as well…

A new edition is actually in preparation and the festival of Très Short is more than ever present in about 40 cities to propose to you the best and undoubtedly the shortest of the international audio-visual film production.

Trés Court Film Festival
Deadline for registration: 12th February, 2008

Find more info here: Trés Court Film Festival

Register your film here: Register form

We are happy to present, that our friends and partners, the organizers of Budapest Short Film Festival (BuSho) sent us the entry form and the deadline of BuSho 2008!

Enter your film, and have a few great days in Budapest at one of the coolest short film festival in Europe!

Please find the details below!

The 4th BuSho International Short Film Festival accepts entries
in the categories of fiction, animation and experimental film.
Entry deadline: 3. May 2008.
Online entry form here.
Details on: BuSho’s homepage!