Short Film Festival kicks-off in grand style

By Anuradha Kodagoda

“Agenda 14 is the publisher of ‘14 – Space for expression’, a cinema journal which is published quarterly. Through the magazine we have created a platform for short film makers in Sri Lanka to talk about short films and express their opinion on their productions and international short film productions.

As we wanted to go ahead with that, we decided to organise an annual short film festival and this is the second year that we are planning to hold the event in collaboration with the European film academy.

The 14-film festival kicked off yesterday and will end on December 12. The festival will feature International and Sri Lankan short films,” said Editor of 14 – Space for Expression film magazine and the 14-Short films festival director, Anoma Rajakaruna.

“We launched the event few months back with an open invitation for those interested to take part by presenting short films.

The only restriction is the duration for films which should not exceed 30 minutes to protect the quality of the short film.

The competitive section features short films from Sri Lanka. Short films produced during the past two years were eligible for the competition. Compared to last year, this time we had a good response from participants. We have received 99 short films for the festival from across the country including Jaffna, Batticoloa, Trincomalee and from the plantation sector.

We hope to screen nearly 50 short films on December 10 and 11 commencing from 9.30am to 9.30pm. On 12 December we have organised a master class which will be conducted by international award- winning film director Vimukthi Jayasundara at Goethe Institut from 9.30am to 3.30pm.

The award ceremony will be held on the same day at 6.30pm at the National Film Corporation.

Awards will be presented to the Best Short Film, Jury Award, Human Rights Award, Most Gender Sensitive Short Films and Best Animated Short Film. Award for the Most Promising Filmmaker will be presented to a filmmaker below 24 years of age,” she further added.

The festival will feature 15 nominated short films from the 23rd edition of European Film Awards. Alliance Francaise de Kotte will screen award winning short films at Cannes Film Festival, Goethe Institut will screen award winning short films of German Film schools and TVE Asia-Pacific will screen award winning environmental films.The festival will be held in Matara, Kandy and Jaffna early next year.

Globally renowned filmmakers Prasnna Vithanage, Asoka Handagama, Vimukthi Jayasundara served as jurors along with Professor Sitralega Maunaguru from the Eastern University and Dr. Shermal Wijewardene from the Colombo University.

European Union, Goethe Institut, Bonsoir, CPA, IMADR are sponsors of the awards. Asian Film Location Services and Frames Film and TV productions will provide professional services and Post Production facilities to the winners of the Best Short Film and Jury Award to produce their next short films in 2012.

“With the availability of low-cost digital camera equipment and editing software we see lot of young people including university students and schoolchildren producing short films in Sri Lanka today.

Most of them have no proper education in cinema or training in cinematography or editing. So by organising a short film festival we plan to create a platform for evaluating their work and encourage them.

During the festival young filmmakers will have an opportunity to interact with each other, exchange ideas and they will have the opportunity to study Internationally acclaimed short films and participate in workshops,” she said.