photo © Jože Rehberger Ogrin

The guests on the Manzioli square on the closing night of the festival

Well, this is it. Isola Cinema 2005 is at an end. In the official programme we have shown 30 films in seven sections, 4 short feature films and seven animations. On the punta, which was extraordinary lively this year, Video on the beach projections were shown, all 70 of them. Next to an encouraging response from the slovenian public, the festival has hosted 83 guests and 68 journalists. 130 people of the festival staff made sure Isola Cinema 2005 was as user friendly as possible.
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The most vibrant clique of the festival, carrying a meaningful name of happy dv, is not at rest. Yesterday they’ve said a word or two with Josue Mendez, a Peruan director of Days of Santiago. The projection schedule of the last day of Isola Cinema 2005 festival is available here, to view the interview, click on the link bellow.

interview with Josue Mendez
[6.4 Mb]

Olaf Möller, for isolacinema.org

Most of the people who routinely tell you just how much they love Asian cinema (by which they tend to mean the cinemas of East Asia…) would probably freak out at Udine’s Far East Film Festival, an annual event devoted to the more commercial kinds of glory from such major film cultures like Japan, Hongkong, or the Philippines – excactly the kind of films to give our event a cool and crazy kind of additional edge. » read more

Today’s the day!
First guests are arriving to Izola, Lisandro Alonso and Pablo Trapero already arrived yesterday, while Roger Gnoan M’Bala , Hanny Tchelley-Etibou and Clark Walker joined us today.
The ‘Škamp’ is filling up with campers and Punta is getting dressed up with bookstalls, workshops and music gear. The Happy DV crew is doing overtime, and you can already see the first results of their creative folly.
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Olaf Möller, for Isola Cinema

Roger Gnoan M’Bala, famous for his social satires, once said – but does he still believe it, does it still work like that? Gnoan – born in 1943 in Grand Bassam; educated in the craft of directing in France and Sweden – belongs, together with the late and production-wise sadly marginal Etienne N’Dabian Vodio, to the second generation of filmmakers from the Ivory Coast. » read more

Helmut Groschup, for Isola Cinema

African filmmaking is too often equated with film production from Mali, Senegal and Burkina Faso. It is true, of course, that these countries have produced many excellent directors, such as Djibril Diop Mambéty from Dakar, Bamako’s Souleyman Cissé and Idrissa Ouédraogo from Ouagadougou. Yet the cinema of these countries is largely influenced by the traditions of their colonial past. Besides being critical, it also reflects a conformity which is the inevitable result of economic restrictions. Being involved in filmmaking means, first and foremost, complying with the dictates of the market and with production demands.
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