LICHTER sends Bembel candidates into the race for the tenth time
Directors from all over the region celebrate film premieres at LICHTER
The LICHTER Filmfest Frankfurt International celebrates its round birthday! In 2017, the now tenth edition will be launched. Over the years, what was once a small, regional festival has become a nationally important film festival to which not only film lovers but also filmmakers love to come to Frankfurt. The success of the LICHTER Film Festival is primarily due to the enormous amount of heart and soul that the organizers invest year after year in the financially and time-consuming realization of the festival. Driven by a love of cinema, film and also the region, they have been putting together an extremely diverse programme between aspiration and entertainment time and again for a decade now, often offering a platform to smaller, less commercial films.
Truth and Virtual Reality on the Tenth Anniversary
The anniversary edition from 28 March to 2 April is all about "truth". In addition to international and regional films, a new series on the future of German film, roundtable discussions and exhibitions on the annual theme, LICHTER 2017 is hosting a virtual reality competition. Patron is Doris Dörrie.
Over 100 films and events await visitors to the 10th LICHTER Filmfest at Künstlerhaus Mousonturm and other cinemas in Frankfurt and the region. On the opening evening, Doris Dörrie will speak about film's claim to truth. "Doris Dörrie's films are studies of reality and searches for truthfulness," says festival director Gregor Maria Schubert. "We are happy that one of the most distinguished German filmmakers enriches LICHTER and supports us in our search for truth in film and society." On March 29, LICHTER will honor the director with a Carte Blanche. Dörrie will present her current film Greetings from Fukushima.
18 international feature-length films, including four German premieres, and the accompanying programme take aim at very different dimensions of truth: "In competition for the LICHTER International Feature Award are ten feature films and documentaries," explains Deputy Festival Director Johanna Süß. "The films in the international series ask about the truth of memories (By the Time it Gets Dark), stage Kafkaesque justice trials (I Am Not Madame Bovary), tell of skilled con artists (Nuts!) and mythical legend makers (The Last Passenger) or show women in the USA in their fight against the truth guardians in state and church (Jackson)." In the opening film, The Distinguished Citizen, the inhabitants of a provincial Argentine town don't want to distinguish between fiction and truth. What follows is a chase to the death.
The discussion panels of the accompanying programme take place in cooperation with the Cluster of Excellence "The Formation of Normative Orders". Philosophers and cabaret artists, defence lawyers, academics and activists will search for truth in times of populism, media scolding and conspiracy theories. A humorous tone is set by the discussion round In Vino Veritas. We pour pure wine! An exhibition by the Whistleblower Network portrays courageous advocates of truth from Hesse.
LICHTER goes Virtual Reality
As the first film festival in Germany, LICHTER 2017 is hosting a storytelling competition for virtual reality films. From over fifty submissions, a jury of experts has selected five 360<x>ampersand</x>deg;-films. The finalists come from Russia, Germany, France, Ireland and Canada. "VR technology gives filmmakers new opportunities, but at the same time presents them with great narrative challenges. With this competition, we want to give the young genre a platform and invite our audience to a collaborative VR experience," says Gregor Maria Schubert about the new LICHTER segment. With VR glasses, viewers dive into underwater worlds, go on a foray through Dublin or play along in music videos. The winner of the LICHTER VR Award will be announced at the awards ceremony on 30 March at 5pm. In addition to the competition, international experts will share their experiences with storytelling in virtual worlds at a conference as part of the ZDF Digital I VR Lab. In addition, filmmakers can learn about tools for producing VR content at a two-day trade fair.
Future German Film
In its new series Future German Film, LICHTER presents selected highlights of the German film landscape. With Tiger Girl and Self-Criticism of a Bourgeois Dog, the programme includes two Berlinale highlights that prove how boldly and experimentally Germany's up-and-coming directors are currently working. "Especially among young filmmakers, there are many talents that unfortunately go completely under in domestic cinema. In Frankfurt, we want to offer them visibility and access to an enthusiastic audience," says Johanna Süß. Vanatoare and Marija deal with women living at subsistence level, whose dreams of a better future meet destructive reality.
The regional film programme
Founded ten years ago as a platform for regional filmmaking, LICHTER continues to bring the diversity of Hessen's filmmaking to the screen in its anniversary edition. Not only Wiesbaden cult pubs (Sylvi´s boomerang) and city slickers in love (World premiere: Hard & Ugly - a love story) compete in the regional competition for the White Bembel, while the feature-length and short films also take festival-goers to Italy, Armenia and Namibia. In the German premiere A Gravame - the Steelworks, Death, Maria and the Mothers of Tamburi, the inhabitants of a southern Italian town suffer at the hands of Europe's largest steelworks. The documentary Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht portraits the formative figures of the regional techno scene: Ricardo Villalobos, Roman Flügel, Ata and Move D. Ghostland - the view of the Ju/`Hoansi, which won the 2016 Hessian Film Award as best documentary, follows indigenous Namibians on a journey all the way to Frankfurt am Main.
LICHTER Art Award
For the 7th edition of the LICHTER Art Award, video artists and filmmakers submitted over eighty works. They range from documentaries to film essays to fictional narratives. All finalists this year come from Germany - according to curator Saul Judd, a testament to the current quality of works being produced by the German video art scene.
As last year, the festival center is Frankfurt's Künstlerhaus Mousonturm. The studioNAXOS will host the LICHTER Art Award, the ZDF Digital I VR Lab and the Virtual Reality Screenings. Other films can be seen at long-standing LICHTER partners: the Mal Seh´n Kino, the cinema of the Deutsches Filmmuseum, the Wiesbaden Filmbühne Caligari and the Lederpalast in Offenbach. For the first time, the venue is the MMK Museum für moderne Kunst.
For more info, visit: <link http: www.lichter-filmfest.de _blank>
Source: Introduction: Sebastian Betzold, Text: LICHTER Filmfestival