goEast - Festival of Central and Eastern European Film
he goEast film festival, launched in 2001 after a two-and-a-half year preparatory phase, was founded by Claudia Dillmann, the Director of the German Film Institute – DIF. Likewise involved in developing the original festival concept was Swetlana Sikora, who has remained the festival’s Artist Director. “The time has come to open ourselves to the thoughts, images, myths and stories of our Eastern neighbours. To their culture. To their films,” wrote Claudia Dillmann in her foreword to the first festival catalogue.
goEast reactivated an earlier tradition of the DIF, which up to the 1980s had regularly compiled an “Eastern European Film Week” at the request of the German government. The programme went on tour in order to give West German audiences glimpses behind the Iron Curtain. The declared goals of the new festival were more ambitious: goEast aimed to initiate authentic cultural dialogue and exchange – with the festival promoting communication between filmmakers and filmgoers in general, with a Students’ Film Competition targeted specifically at communicative exchange between young directors from East and West, with a Symposium advancing the dialogue between historians and film scholars.
From the outset, the state capital Wiesbaden and the Hessen state government showed considerable interest in goEast, and underscored this engagement with substantial support. And it was in Wiesbaden, a city maintaining rich historical ties with Eastern Europe, that the festival found a home in the Caligari-FilmBühne, one Germany’s finest cinemas, together with the nearby Villa Clementine, which lends the festival centre its very special atmosphere. Hilmar Hoffmann accepted the patronage of the festival, which very quickly established its profile within the festival landscape.
The City of Wiesbaden and the State of Hessen have remained the principal festival sponsors, while a range of further competent partners such the Robert Bosch Stiftung, the Foundation EVZ, koda Auto Deutschland, the BHF-BANK-Foundation, the Sparkassen-Culture-Foundation, the NASPA, the broadcaster 3Sat and hr2 contribute to the festivals success.
In autumn 2008 Nadja Rademacher took over the post of Festival Director. After Claudia Dillmann and Christine Kopf she is the third front woman of goEast. The goEast success story goes on – the attending filmmakers and audience as well as the increasing media coverage attest it.
goEast now plays host to some 150 guests annually, among them such renowned directors and stars as Krzysztof Zanussi, Jiří Menzel, Istvan zabo, Hanna Schygulla, Béla Tarr, Jerzy Stuhr, Kira Muratova, Martin ulik and Julia Jentsch. Deep in the West of the German Republic, therefore, spring is now the time when animated exchange breaks out with Eastern and Central Europe. Welcome to Wiesbaden!
