INTERACTION 2023 begins
The programmes for this year Interaction 2023 have been presented – Six programmes with over 80 participants will happen form the 6th of August until the 23th of August in Čačak, Užice, Požega, and Belgrade.
Interaction – the international platform for production and educational programmes, which has been dedicated to short documentary film for 18 years now, will gather this year, from 6 to 23 August, students of film academies from all over the world, renowned lecturers and documentary film authors from the region, as well as documentary film lovers, in three cities of Western Serbia. The whole event will be organised by the Independent Film Centre Filmart from Požega.
This year’s Interaction includes 6 different programmes: the 18th International Student Film Camp, the 11th Documentary Film Workshop, then the Short Docs Film Festival, launched in 2022, the 7th edition of the IVA.lab programme, and the newly launched regional Teen Doc workshop and the upcoming programme Meet2Talk, as was announced at a press conference in Čačak, where a large part of the Interaction programmes will take place, as part of the National Capital of Culture of Serbia 2023 project.
THE STUDENT FILM CAMP – 15 film students from 12 countries – shooting 3 short documentaries in Čačak, Užice and Požega
Interaction 2023 begins on 6 August with the 18th edition of the Student Film Camp, during which 15 students of directing, camera, editing, sound design and production from 12 countries (Argentina, Brazil, French Polynesia, The Netherlands, India, Israel, China, Colombia, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Serbia) will shoot three short documentaries in Čačak, Požega and Užice. Divided into three teams, participants will work under the mentorship of Efim Graboy, a documentary filmmaker from Israel and the author of the award-winning short documentary Valley of The Rulers, who was a previous participant in Interaction. After the completion of filming, all three crews will gather in Čačak, where they will edit their films.
The films will be shown on 22 August at the ceremonial closing of the 2nd edition of the Interaction Festival in the Cultural Center in Čačak, and, traditionally, in the Movie Theatre of the Cultural Centre of Belgrade on the following day.
THE DOC WORKSHOP – 28 film professionals from 15 countries – 7 days of education – 4 lecturers – 5 projects in development – 5 tutors
A unique educational segment of Interaction is also the Documentary Film Workshop, which, in its 11th edition, from 16 to 23 August, will gather 28 film professionals from Brazil, Finland, France, Croatia, The Netherlands, India, Iran, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Malta, Romania, Spain, Slovenia and Switzerland, who will enjoy the opportunity to improve their knowledge and skills in creative documentary filmmaking through the lecture programme, as well as to develop their projects through consultation with the workshop tutors.
The lecturers of the 11th Interaction Doc Workshop are Rada Šešić, programmer of numerous festivals, lecturer and the award-winning author of many documentaries; Inka Achté, director of documentary films, distributor, consultant and main selector of the DocPoint festival programme, Wouter Jansen, distributor and founder of the Square Eyes company, as well as the prominent documentarian Vladimir Perović, whose films have been shown and awarded at some most important festivals worldwide.
A special segment of the 11th Interaction Doc Workshop is Doc in Progress, which implies the involvement of five participants, whose projects have been selected for further development in individual and group consultations with tutors – Rada Šešić, Vladimir Perović, Inka Achté, Wouter Jansen and Nebojša Slijepčević.
THE SHORT DOCS FESTIVAL – 3 festival categories – In Focus: Puriša Đorđević – 15 superb short documentaries in the competition programme – 4 documentaries in the Interscreen programme – 3 awards
In order to facilitate meetings between the audience, authors and participants, Interaction also launched the Short Docs Festival in 2022, the 2nd edition of which will be held from 16 to 23 August in Čačak, Požega and Užice simultaneously.
The artistic director and selector of the Festival, Dejan Petrović, selected 22 short documentaries within the competition programme and two accompanying programmes (In Focus and Interscreen).
Dedicated to short creative documentaries, which with their originality and innovation contribute to pushing the boundaries of documentary film, this year’s Interaction Festival will show 15 unique, both stylistically and thematically diverse short documentaries in the competition programme, made by the world’s most important authors of short documentaries, from winners of the most prestigious awards at IDFA, Sundance, the Cannes Festival, to the Oscar nominated short docs and Doc Alliance Award nominees.
This year’s programme In Focus is dedicated to the work of the prominent Serbian and Yugoslav director and screenwriter Puriša Đorđević (1924-2022), who was born in Čačak. In addition to his great contribution to domestic and world cinema with his feature films, Puriša Đorđević also left a significant mark in the field of documentary films. He directed over fifty short documentaries, some of which were screened and awarded at festivals in Cannes and Venice.
As part of the non-competition programme Interscreen, short documentaries of the Camp and Workshop participants will be shown.
Films in the competition programme will be evaluated by a jury consisting of: Urška Đukić (Slovenia), Inka Achté (Finland) and Luka Papić (Serbia). The award is provided by Sirogojno Company, and in addition to the Award for the Best Film, the Audience Award and Youth Jury Award will also be awarded.
THE TEEN DOC – 16 teenagers from the Western Balkan region – 7 lecturers
The novelty of Interaction 2023 is the Teen Doc workshop, an educational programme intended for high school students from Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Croatia and Serbia, eager to acquire additional knowledge on creative documentary filmmaking, and develop their own creativity and collaborate with young people from the Western Balkan region.
The Teen Doc workshop, under the slogan ‘Towards a Better Region’, will gather 16 teenagers from the region, and the mentors and lecturers of this year’s Teen Doc will be directors, cinematographers, producers and film workers from the region: Nebojša Slijepčević (Croatia), Ivan Čojbašić (Montenegro), Elena Melloncelli (North Macedonia), Aleksandra Mitrić-Štifanić (Bosnia and Herzegovina), and Vesna Milosavljević, Petar Mitrić and Dejan Petrović (Serbia). Participants of the Teen Doc workshop will also form the youth jury of the Interaction Festival.
IVA.LAB – 2 artists – 2 tutors – 2 projects
For the seventh year in a row, Interaction also includes the IVA.lab programme (Inter_video_action laboratory), which is conceived as a platform open to various collaborations and experiments in the field of video art for visual artists from Serbia and the region. This year’s participants of IVA.lab are Filip Markovinović and Nenad Pinter, who will have the opportunity to develop their projects during the Interaction programme with art historians Miroslav Karić and Slađana Petrović Varagić as their tutors.
M2T – 2 panels – 5 Talks programmes – 20 film professionals from Austria, The Netherlands, Finland, Slovenia, Russia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia and Serbia
The accompanying programme, Meet2Talk (M2T), is intended for all participants of the Interaction programme, to connect them, enable them to establish new contacts and collaborative relationships, as well as to discover new views on documentary film through panel discussions and conversations.
The panels within the M2T programme, dedicated to youth and education, will be moderated by Petar Mitrić and Vladimir Perović. Within the first part of the panel entitled ‘Documentary Film – Young People and Education’, some festivals and organisations from the region will have an opportunity to present themselves: Underfill Podgorica, Prvi kadar Istočno Sarajevo, Winter Apricot Prilep, Kinoklub Karlovac, Atelier Varan and Cameo festival Čačak. In the second part of the panel, the following guests will participate in the discussion: Tea Lukač, director and member of board of directors of the DokSrbija Documentary Association, Ana Filipović, critic of the Filmoskopija portal, Nebojša Slijepčević, director and screenwriter, lecturer at ADU Zagreb, Sead Šabotić, director, selector of the Herceg Novi Film Festival and lecturer at FDU Cetinje and Dragan Nikolić, screenwriter, director, mentor and lecturer at the documentary film workshops of Atelier Varan.
Talks programmes include film screenings and discussions with film professionals from the country and abroad on various topics related to documentary film. Our moderators will talk with: Susanna Flock and Leonhard Müllner, representatives of the Total Refusal group from Austria, about hybrid forms in documentary film (18 August); Sandra Rančić and Igor Toholj, representatives of the Dok’n’Ritam Music and Documentary Film Festival about music documentaries (19 August); the director Georgy Molodtsov from Russia about VR in documentary film (20 August); the director and producer of the documentary Mother’s Milk (Isaac Knights Washbourn and Nađa Lapčević) (21 August); and the Slovenian film director Urška Đukić, the author of the film Granny’s Sexual Life (22 August).
The NFC Filmart realises the project Interaction 2023 as part of the project ‘Cultural Capital of Serbia 2023 – Čačanska rodna’ with the support of the Ministry of Culture of Serbia, the Film Centre of Serbia, the City of Čačak, the Western Balkan Fund, Cinnamon Films and other partners and sponsors.
