Festival day one: Croatian film program and the opening ceremony
The jubilee edition of the 25 FPS International Experimental Film and Video Festival opens officially today with the screening of Croatian experimental films and the first competition program, dedicated to imagining a completely different reality.
The 25 FPS Festival takes place from 24 to 28 September at Kinoteka cinema in Zagreb, followed by special programs in Rijeka (3 and 4 October) and Split (30 and 31 October). Five festival days in Zagreb bring six program slots of 26 experimental films in the Competition section, and a strong side program, boasting films screenings and workshops.
The festival will open at 8.30 p.m. with the screening of the first competition program, Within Reach, featuring four titles connected by visual imagination and speculation, as well as expansion towards alternative reality. Moskitos by the anthropologist, filmmaker, and activist Susana Ojeda focuses on the relentless carriers of diseases and a ritual ceremony that reveals a reborn future; visually noisy, The Electric Kiss by the video artist Rainer Kohlberger imagines a world in which the whole of human consciousness is connected into a kind of neuro-network; in his dreamlike film Ruzname, Haydar Taştan extracts unclaimed memories, merging them into an unexpected journey; in his film Shrooms, the festival laureate Jorge Jácome, follows a Robin-Hood-like character, foraging magic mushrooms and distributing them among those in need of help.
The screenings will be followed by a Q&A with director Susan Ojeda, her cinematographer and animator Hubert Marz, and director Haydar Taştan.
Leading up to the opening, at 6 p.m., there will be a screening of Reflexes, a program dedicated exclusively to the Croatian experimental scene. This year, the program features six different approaches and topics, united in the desire to challenge the boundaries of cinematic language with the purpose of constructing a story. The sreening will be attended by director Sandra Sterle (Reviving Grandfather), visual artist and filmmaker Željka Blakšić (Gita Blak) (Stitch the Ruin), multimedia artist Ivana Ognjanovac (Womanhouse), as well as designer and director Nina Bačun (The Architecture of Healing: Sulphurous Scapes (43° 30.547′ N, 16° 26.22′ E)), who will all present their respective films. The program also features films by the artist and photographer Petra Mrša (I Can Save Her) and visual artist Marko Gutić Mižimakov (Dragon Hunt).
Admission to all festival events is free, with a requisite free ticket that can be collected at the Kinoteka cinema box office, opening one hour before the first screening.