04/11/2005

Celebrating 20 years, the Brest European short film Festival, which started today in Brittany decided to blend its traditional programme focusing on filmmakers of the future with a flash-back on past editions. A good occasion to underline the role of head-hunter played by the event which discovered directors who are now well established. The various sections and retrospectives on the menu till 13th November also include shorts by Danish Thomas Vinterberg, Islander Dagur Kari, Belgian Benoît Mariage, British Duane Hopkins, Spanish Chema de la Pena and Javier Rebollo, Finnish PV Lehtinen and French Jean-Pierre Améris and guest of honour at the festival, Laurent Cantet, who screens a preview of his latest film Vers le Sud [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Laurent Cantet
interview: Robin Campillo
interview: Simon Arnal-Szlovak
film profile] (Towards The South) and Jeux de plage (Beach game) which appeared in 1995 in the Brest competition.

This year offers a competition of 42 European shorts , fictions from 15 EU countries, in the section "Cocotte minute" 18 European works of less than six minutes and a special programme allowing a chance to see the latest productions from the East in "Eastern Shorts". A section called "hybrid images" will see the projectors racked up for the shorts realising a symbiosis between real and synthetic images in a programme of six European co-productions with an accent on internationalisation.

Note, too, between 10 and 11 November the competition from the Media Programme , and National Film Centre (CNC), from the Atelier de production Centre Val de Loire and the Coordination of European Film Festivals, a debate entitled "Culture (s) in Europe : audiovisual and short film issues" which will analyse the complementarity of political regions, national or European in terms of production aid for short films. And the professionals present in Brest can also make use of the film market with a catalogue of more than 800 works of fiction.

(Translated from French)