Wiesbaden/Frankfurt, 23 March 2023
Cinema Archipelago – The East as an Island?
For the second time already, goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film is presenting the interdisciplinary sidebar programme Cinema Archipelago, made possible with the generous support of Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain. With this special festival programme, the festival once again has the possibility to shine a spotlight on new medial forms of expression in Central and Eastern Europe. In the wake of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, an acute desire for decolonization has arisen in the cultural scene and film sector in the post-Soviet space. The Symposium “Decolonizing the (Post-)Soviet Screen” brings research, scholarship, film heritage and cinematic practice together under the direction of Barbara Wurm and Heleen Gerritsen. The film selection features works from former Soviet states, but also films by filmmakers from indigenous or hitherto marginalised groups that are attempting to redefine their identities and relationship to dominant Russian culture.
RheinMain Short Film Award – Native Edition
Already celebrating its fourth edition, goEast is delighted to once again present the RheinMain Short Film Award this year, featuring 2,500 euros in prize money. A three-member regional jury will select the winning film. This year features a new thematic twist: the short films of the selection were all made by indigenous filmmakers or those representing marginalised groups. The Russian Federation is home to 185 ethnic minority groups. The Central Asian republics are also very ethnically diverse – and the official national borders artificial and arbitrary. The short films in this year’s competition come from the autonomous republics of Kalmykia (EXULTATION, 2022, Arslan Manasyan), Sakha (AITAL, 2021, Vladimir Munkuev) and Chechnya (NO NATION WITHOUT CULTURE, 2022, Vladlena Sandu), as well as from Uzbekistan (TALE, 2022, Kamila Rustambekova and ARALKUM, 2022, Daniel Asadi Faezi and Mila Zhluktenko) and Kirgizstan (NEITHER ON THE MOUNTAIN NOR IN THE FIELD, 2022, Gulzat Egemerdieva). Ukrainian director Sashko Protyakh also appears here with KHAYT (2021), a futuristic short film, in which he fantasises about a future shaped by Asov-Greek culture for the (in the meantime completely destroyed) port city of Mariupol. The filmmakers will be in attendance in Wiesbaden. Following the festival, the short films will head out on tour, visiting cinemas throughout the Rhein-Main region.
Tales from the Bathhouse
The traditional bathhouse culture found in Wiesbaden is also a cherished part of Eastern European cultures. Following the successful experiment last year, the festival is returning to the VRChat bathhouse with this year’s virtual reality programme. In 2023, goEast and guest curator Georgy Molodtsov are offering three groups of Central and Eastern European artists the possibility to breathe new life into their stand-alone VR works by transforming them into multiplayer online environments. Through this collaboration, goEast is able to provide greater visibility for these works and enable the artistic VR world to emerge from beneath the shadow of an industry dominated by pure entertainment products.
goEast’s bespoke bathhouse invites members of the public to slip into their finest avatar bathing outfits and immerse themselves in the artistically designed world, or to explore the designers’ creative works at the new festival location Altes Gericht in Wiesbaden. Admission to “Tales from the Bathhouse” is open to the general public at no charge.
TikTok 2023
What is on the mind of Generation Z in 2023? Questions of identity, racism, Russia’s war of aggression – young TikTokers speak their truth or slip into the skin of an alter ego for little sketches, like the “ungrateful Ukrainian refugee” or the “Balkan dad”. Once again, goEast has collected TikTok videos from our focus region as well as from young Eastern Europeans in exile, in order to present the festival audience a big-screen collage consisting of existential angst, absurd dance videos, uncomfortable opinions and bad puns.
“Space Age Animation” from Hungary and Estonia + Estonian Funk Embassy
Estonia and Hungary have more then their Finno-Ugric languages in common: they are both also home to unique animated film cultures. In Tallinn and Budapest of the 1970s and ’80s, the marginal position of animated film enabled artists to operate outside of mainstream film culture and to create subversive and experimental works that frequently managed to evade the censors.