Maiden Kutaisi International Short Film Festival set for run in May
A still from '12 K. Marx Street' by Irine Jordania, one of the works selected for the main programme. Photo via Georgian National Film Centre.
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The first edition of the Kutaisi International Short Film Festival in Georgia's west will run in May with a programme involving 15 works in the main competition plus other selections.
Initially planned for 2020, the inaugural festival had to be postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the organisers have decided to make the plans firm by setting the May 8-12 as the confirmed dates of the event.
Its international competition will include works from across the world, from Yuichiro Nakada's Goodbye My Son to Personae by French director Rémy Rondeau and 12 K. Marx Street by Georgia's Irine Jordania.
In 'Epilogue', director Arkadiusz Bartosiak's lens follows a dog in a deserted city. Photo via IMDB.
In the other section, designed for "super shorts", 26 films will be screened to enthusiasts of short-form cinema, with the selection including Epilogue by Poland's Arkadiusz Bartosiak, Argentinian filmmaker Sofia Castro's Maids and In a Shell directed by Georgian director Levan Gelashvili.
The former section involves works with the runtime between 10-30 minutes, while the latter features films only spanning between 1-5 minutes. Two prizes will be handed out by the jury of the festival for the respective programmes.
The festival has been designed with an aim of diversifying the Georgian cinema scene by moving away from the model of film events being usually centred around capital Tbilisi. The western Georgian hub of Kutaisi has been chosen as the host city for the project.
After a year-long pause cinemas have reopened in Georgia, with a number of Covid-19 regulations. This includes the mandatory wearing of face masks and social distancing for visitors, who must be seated every other chair and in checker fashion.
The maiden edition of Kutaisi International Short Film Festival, the latest cinema event launched in Georgia to bring celebration of the media and art form to audiences beyond capital Tbilisi, has been delayed to next year with the resurgence of the coronavirus pandemic in mind.
Filmmakers from across the world are invited to submit their works for the first edition of the Kutaisi International Short Film Festival, a celebration of short-form cinema in Georgia's west that aims to claim a place on the international calendar.
Director Irine Jordania's 12 Karl Marx Street has been selected as a candidate for the 2020 Short Film Award of the European Film Academy by juries of the ongoing short film section of the Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn, Estonia.
French filmmaker Vincent Launay-Franceschini received the principal award of the Kutaisi International Short Film Festival for his O ma!, while Irine Jordania earned the best director prize for 12 K. Marx Street, as the first edition of the festival handed out its honours last week.