25/03/2014 - This year’s theme is humour. Many international and national premieres, conferences, debates and video art

The Lichter Film Festival (25-30 March) first saw the light in 2008 as an initiative started by a group of young directors, who wanted to create a unique event during which they would show audiences the fruits of regional creativity and important international productions. The festival, which came to life in an exhibition space thanks to the enthusiasm of artists and filmmakers, has expanded and now counts on the prestigious exposition space of the Frankfurt cinema museum, a number of multiplex structures, various citizen centres and some spaces in the vicinities of Wiesbaden, Offenbach, Hanau and Dramstadt.

Documentary Praunheim Memories [+see also:
trailer
film profile], directed by Rosa Von Praunheim, inaugurated the international competition. In its world premiere, Praunheim Memories is a cinema monument dedicated to the origins of the director, author, painter and gay rights activist, who was born in Latvia and was brought up in East Berlin and then in Frankfurt. The documentary is also a homage to the city and the district of Praunheim from which the director, who was born Holger Mischwitzky, took his name (while Rosa is a reference to the pink triangle homosexuals were forced to wear in the Nazi concentration camps).

The international competition is completed by Of Horses and Men [+see also:
film review
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interview: Benedikt Erlingsson
film profile] by Benedikt Erlingsson, Wolfskinder [+see also:
film review
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interview: Rick Ostermann
film profile] by Rick Osterman, A Farewell to Fools [+see also:
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film profile] by Bogdan Dreyer, La Tendresse [+see also:
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interview: Marion Hänsel
film profile] by Marion Hänsel, documentaries Die Gelübde meines Bruders by Stephanie Weimat, Mein Name und Ich by Birgit Lehmann and Ole Weissenberger, Master of the Universe [+see also:
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film profile] by Marc Bauder, In the Darkroom [+see also:
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film profile] by Nadav Schirman, Lost Coast by M.A. Little and Erhobenen Hauptes by collective DocView.

The programme dedicated its theme to humour this year, and will host German premieres of French La fille du 14 juillet [+see also:
film review
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film profile] by Antonin Peretjatko and Les Coquilettes [+see also:
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film profile] by Sophie Letourneur, documentary Swandown [+see also:
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film profile] by British Andrew Kötting, American comedy Somebody Up There Likes Me by Robert Byington, Korean film All About My Wife by Min Kyu-Dong and All About the Feathers by Neto Villalobos (Costa Rica). The programme will also include Chinese Vulgaria by Pang Ho-Cheung, documentaries Erntehelfer by Moritz Siebert, People’s Park by Libbie D. Cohn and J. P. Sniadecki, Japanese humouristic thriller Key of Life by Kenji Uchida (selected by Nippon Connection – Japanese film festival in Frankfurt), Death of a Man in the Balkans [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Miroslav Momčilović (selected by GoEast in Wiesbaden) and closing film In A World… by Lake Bell.

Lichter will also screen a number of shorts, clips and classic comic renditions from 1972 to today and a selection of video art, which will compete for the Lichter Art Award.

(Translated from Italian)