Altcine Quiz: Can you name one festival that offers you the joy of tasting fabulous food while wathcing amazing films? And the answer is...
The Divan Film Festival, a gathering that makes you feel like home.
The Divan Film Festival took place from August 26th to September 1st at Culture Port Cetate, on the Romanian shore of the river Danube. It is the festival΄s 4th edition, which was previously called Balkan film and culinary art lovers’ ‘feast’-ival.
As the artistic director
Marian Tutui has pointed out, “We decided to have not a film competition with awards but a gathering for informal discussions about cinema and for making friends with our neighbors from the other side of the Danube”.
The Artistic Director of the Festival, Marian Tutui
What΄s unique about this festival is that every day, along with the films and the discussions, the participants discover and sample old and new recipes from all the different culinary traditions of the Balkans.
This year΄s festival theme was Balkan Comedy.During the Divan Film Festival, directors, producers, critics, festival organizers, and journalists had the chance to watch - in the open air, on a giant screen set by the bank of the river- a selection of recent and very funny documentaries, shorts and feature-length films produced in the Balkan countries (Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Turkey), as well as some valuable archive films from the area. The whole atmospherer gave a sense of the relaxation of a campus.
Along with the films screened, famous scholars and chroniclers gave speeches on the genre of Balkan Comedy. The festival will gather their essays together and print them as they did for last year΄s edition “Escape from the Balkans”.
The feature-length films that were screened in the frames of the festival were the film from Former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
Who`s That Singing Over There/ Ко то тамо пева (1980, 86min) by
Slobodan Sijan, the Bulgaria-UK-Hungary-Sweden- Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia co-production
Mission London (2010, 107min) by
Dimitar Mitovski, the Slovenian-Croatian co-production
Gravehopping/ Odgrobadogroba (2005, 103min) by
Jan Cvitkovic, the Greek
Living Dangerously/ Βίος και πολιτεία (1987, 105min) by
Nikos Perakis, the Croatian
Sonja and the Bull/ Sonja i bik (2012, 103min) by
Vlatka Vorkapic, the Albanian-Italian
Balkan Bazzar/ Ballkan Pazar (2011, 91min) by
Edmond Budina and finally the Romanian-French
Sundays on Leave/ È pericoloso sporgersi (1993, 104min) by
Nae Caranfil.
All the participants enjoyed every single moment of the festival and the organizers achieved their goal! The Divan Film Festival delighted everyone with fun films, great discussions and fabulous food!
Is your appetite whetted yet? Visit Divan Film Festival΄s
facebook page and see for yourself. Yummy!
