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Preparations for the 5th CineFest 2008 has begun
Five years have past now since we organised the first time in Miskolc “CineFest”, the International Festival of Young Filmmakers. To our greatest pleasure near thousand filmmakers and ten thousands of spectators visited this event the last four years, from every corner of the world. Our goal, to give an occasion to the young directors under 35 years to show and measure their works at that festival, has been achieved. From year to year, our festival has became more and more succesful and talked about, a fact proven by the number of the films encreasing every year and by the recognition of many guests, experts and filmmakers, who are coming back to us year after year. We are getting lots of feedback from filmmakers who have been awarded at the first time at our festival, and since their works are regularly invited to other Hungarian and international festivals.

We are proud that our festival invited and awarded—among others—”Maestro” by Géza M. Tóth, nominated afterwards for Oscar and “White Palms” by Szabolcs Hajdú, the official Hungarian candidate for the Academy Award last year. We’d like to welcome this year the spectators and guests from all over the world with equally good films and interesting programs at our festival, celebrating now its 5^th anniversary as well. We can promise, the organisers will provide the same good feeling, and there will be a number of surprises as well.

We are cordially waiting everyone between the 14^th and 21^th of September 2008, in Miskolc.

Visit: Cinefest Website

Submit your work including the most faboulous muuuvi or animation characters from the whole Universe. Send your Best work before 18th of July 2008 - said the great Muuuvi Festival organizers.

The regulations: muuuvies produced before 1st of January 2007, and longer then 13 minutes are not accepted. No documentaries.//No participation fee.//Obligatory English subtitle. Only muuuvies in DVD - PAL format.

Find more infos here

Despite the funny name Muuuvi is a lovely film festival in a fabulous village in Transylvania Lazarea. We represented ourselves as a jury member and, besides watching many great films (muuuvies) we have so much fun there. Not saying that the winner was one of the Daazo films: Elvis Turns in His Grave by Aiju Salminen.

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/

Cineuropa.org, “the best of European cinema” is organising a big game-contest.

By simply answering correctly to 10 questions about European cinema and the Cannes Film Festival, one European film enthusiast will be given the chance to cover the 61^st edition of the Cannes Film Festival, from May 14-25, 2008. The winner, the special reader correspondent for Cineuropa.org, will compose a blog in English throughout the festival.

In order to take part, you must be over 18 years of age, a citizen in one of the countries participating in the European Union’s MEDIA programme and be able to write fluently in English. Answers will be accepted until April 25.

All information can be found on the website www.cineuropa.org

For detailed infos check out: http://cineuropa.org/contest08.aspx?lang=en&treeID=1510

We celebrate Daazo’s first birthday!

Thanks for you, since last March we’ve estabilished our position in the world of on-line cinema, and we are happy to say, that Daazo has became well-known among the young filmmakers of Europe. We’ve presented more than 60 quality short films, not saying that we showed several special programmes as well: there is the selection of Kosovo Documentaries; the archives of Budapest Squares Project and Euro-Balkan Video Letters.

We are proud to host the Oscar-winner director, Rofusz Ferenc’s short films, including the Academy Award winning animation, The Fly. These exeptional artworks have been watched by around 80 000 people, which is a great pleasure for us. Just like the achievements of many other nice films: Not So Small Talk, the comedy of Mike Wollaeger; The Kiss by Toma Waszarow - which was awarded by many festivals, or the provocative animation by Éva Magyarósi: Hanne - just to mention a few of our premieres.

And thank you for the great uploaded films - we’ve had more than 500! You are convincing us more and more that Daazo is worth to work with!

We hope you, dear Daazo-users share our thought, that we are the luckiest generation of film makers and film film lovers - we can find and watch easily the works of the upcoming talenst, besides presenting our films to the world. Maybe it’s not just a coincidence, to get three excellent shorts on the site having the word “lucky” in their titles. These films express Daazo’s willing to present many-sided, colourful works -

Let us remind you!

Lucky Bastard prooves that it’s possible to create a grotesque comedy about the end of the world; story of the last man on Earth, waiting without hope for the ending, but it’s still funny.

Lucky Man is much more serious; the stories of Puszta (the name of Hungarian steppe) has a great tradition in Hungary, in films and literature either, Lucky Man is the first classical, professional short film dealing with this topic.

Lucky Strike is a French action-comedy. Like Lucky Bastard it puts the value ‘being lucky’ into an ironical frame.

Be lucky, be on Daazo!

We could sense the first breezes of spring! And we are pretty sure, that it would be the sexiest spring ever!

So we celebrate spring with our new premiere:

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.

“Five years have past now since we organised the first time in Miskolc “CineFest”, the International Festival of Young Filmmakers. To our greatest pleasure near thousand filmmakers and ten thousands of spectators visited this event the last four years, from every corner of the world. Our goal, to give an occasion to the young directors under 35 years to show and measure their works at that festival, has been achieved. From year to year, our festival has became more and more succesful and talked about, a fact proven by the number of the films encreasing every year and by the recognition of many guests, experts and filmmakers, who are coming back to us year after year. We are getting lots of feedback from filmmakers who have been awarded at the first time at our festival, and since their works are regularly invited to other Hungarian and international festivals.” - Tibor Biró, President of the Festival

Cinefest Film Festival is surely a unique festival for young filmmakers. The good atmosphere joins to full house screenings and extreme parties at night. Nevertheless Cinefest has a very strong programme each year, featuring the best films from all around. It would be a shame to skip this great Festival.

This year the Festival has a special category: Woman in Films.

Find more info and application form here: http://cinefest.hu/en/
Application deadline: 31. May 2008

The festival is open for short films less than 60 minutes and made before May 2008.