30 years long tradition of promoting young cinema
A 30 year-old tradition links the cultural centre of Western Bohemia, the spa town of Carlsbad (Karlovy Vary), to the student and young cinema. The Hotel Thermal Festival Centre, nowadays regarded as an architectural classic, has been built especially to fit the demands of an international film festival.
Fresh Film Fest is an international film festival with a special attention to first features and student cinema. Being the largest film competition of its kind in Central Europe, Fresh Film Fest represents the showcase for the Eastern and Central European student filmmaking and aims to become a key action for progressive and fresh filmmaking and to support the formation of future stars of world auteur cinema. To serve this purpose the festival offers ideal conditions – especially with regard to its favourable geographical location –and provides sufficient production services. The festival also plays an important role at the national level. Fresh Film Fest brings attention to the tendencies of European, as well as world cinematography, that shape the essence of contemporary filmmaking.
The Largest Display of Student Films in Central Europe
Concerning the number of shown films as well as the area covered, Fresh Film Fest is the largest international student film competition not only in the Czech Republic but also in the whole of the Visegrad region (Czech Rep., Slovakia, Hungary, Poland). During five days, in 7 festival venues and with the services of Hotel Thermal Festival Centre, the biggest festival venue in the whole Central Europe, more than 300 works representing the most progressive trends in student and first film cinema from all over the world, followed by evergreen classics and masterpieces by the all-time maverics of cinema and a variety of music concerts. The festival is a follow-up to a more than 30-year old tradition of international student film festivals held in Karlovy Vary. It secures its leading position among Central European film festivals by extensive contacts with the most prominent film schools (VGIK, FEMIS, FAMU, NFTS, Columbia), by showing films from exotic regions (Ecuador, Hong Kong, Cuba) as well as from the most vivid cinematographic territories (Latin America, Taiwan), and primarily by putting the emphasis on a high-quality program concept, which rests entirely in the hands of the new generation of young film curators, critics, authors and theoreticians.
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Unique Services
Fresh Film Fest offers a combination of unique conditions. It is held in Karlovy Vary, a town that annually hosts an A-category international film festival and therefore provides excellent festival facilities and up-to-date cinema halls. Fresh Film Fest is also a partner event of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and it originates from the expansion of the former Student Films section. The organizing teams of both festivals widely overlap. This is just to mention a few reasons, why Fresh Film Fest holds a prominent and unrivalled status among other student film festivals from all over Central and Eastern Europe.
Fresh Film Fest is then capable to offer facilities and possibilities rivaling Berlinale Talent Campus or Cannes Cinéfondation, eventhough of the causes being the dismal situation in the field of cinematography promotion in the Czech Republic. Despite that, a cinema hall seating 1000 together with five other cinemas are available to festival participants as well as the festival club scene and several lounge rooms.
Talent Scouting - Discovering the Stars of Future Cinema
Fresh Film Fest annually offers a solid and varied array of Central and Eastern European student films focused on the Visegrad Group countries. This section has now been broadened to present the today’s most important work from all the former East European region. Owing to this strategy and the partnership with a wide range of prominent Western European film festivals, Fresh Film Fest has become a gateway to the Western market for Eastern European talents.
Since 2006 the festival pays tribute to the worlds most promising talents of film making by realizing a retrospective program of all films made by them so far. One of the already tributed, Corneliu Porumboiu, a participant in the first Fresh Film Fest competition and one of last year’s media campaign protagonists, has been awarded the Camera d'Or (Golden Camera) at the Cannes Film Festival.
Established Platform of Contemporary World Cinematography
The mission of Fresh Film Fest, as well as other Czech film festivals, is to serve as a platform for presenting works which the festival appreciates for their unique artistic qualities and which cannot, due to the restricted possibilities of minor cinematographies such as the Czech one, find their way to the Czech cinemas easily. In order to draw attention to those works and to secure open access to such works in the future, the festival presents its own “Fresh Selection”. Among others, the program presented the latest entries by Christophe Honoré (Les Chansons d'Amour), Tomas Vorel (Gympl) Michael Winterbottom (A Mighty Heart), Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Pedro Costa, Chantal Akerman (O Estado do Mundo) and Sidney Lumet (Find Me Guilty) as Czech, resp. world premieres.
Awards for Conception and Organisation
The festival organisers have received many distinguished awards for putting on the festival. The production has won two FAMU awards. The director of the 2nd Fresh Film Fest trailer Jakub Kohák was awarded the third prize for the best trailer at the most prestigious contest for the best and most creative Czech advertisement “Louskáček”. The 2nd Fresh Film Fest visual concept created by art director Adéla Svobodová was honoured at the International Biennale of Graphic Design in Brno - according to many reliable sources the most renowned competition of its kind in the Czech Republic; the 3rd Fresh Film Fest visual concept, created by the same author alltogether with graphic designer Pauline Kerleroux has been awarded an Ogilvy CID Prize for Best Corporate Design in 2006 delivered by a jury consisted of most respected czech graphics professionals and critics. The visual concept of the 4th Fresh Film Fest has been shortlisted for Czech Grand Design Award for Best Visual Design.
