Cinema Parallels
June 10- 12, 2021
Curated by Adriana Trujillo
https://cinemaparallels.com/en/program/
Edition 2021
The most important question for us in a post-pandemic period was: Do we really need a film festival?
Even when we haven’t return to a total recover, we still need vaccination the total of our population, people are now suffering so many losts, and the virus is still out there.
But the answer to all of this is questions is yes! we need to make reality, the festival again here in Banja Luka. If we believe in images as a language of encounter, in the role of the independent voices and the power of the community, then a film festival is not a distraction or a non-essential activity. It’s actually a necessary coming together.
We want to make sense of our moment, and to try to re-imagine how important is the art in our past time of isolation, in our daily life and in our dreams of a common future.
See you in the cinema soon, and please:
Don’t forget your mask!
About selection
The selection of this year proposes a fluid cartography that explore our current situation as humans. It is more than evident that the pandemic changed the whole society and these dramatic changes and new scenarios also affect films, cinemas and the way “we see”. The current situation with Covid-19, will also be reflected in this year’s festival program, not only in terms of safety measures and limited audience, but also in the form we propose the narrative of this edition that we name it: Re-imagine audio-visions: The present as our future.
For the image of this edition (the poster) we selected the portrait the now famous cover of the Italian magazine La Domenica del Corrier (16, December of 1962), by Walter Molino, where we can see a saturated street of New York, with people in their individual transportation, in a kind of an “individual-personal bubble”, that is actually a “singoletta” (personal bicycle), imagined by Molino as a solution for traffic, but with the pandemic and the social isolation in context, we cannot avoided to connected his retro-futuristic creative projection of our surreal present, here is why we re-call the edition; The present as our future. With this premise in mind, our selection departs precisely from the future. The first day of Cinema Parallels, we will open with: Space Dogs režija: Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter, followed by Lúa vermella režija: Lois Patiño, both films projecting contexts in resemble mirror format, we will see realities from an equidistant visualities.
With this premise in mind, our selection departs precisely from the future. The first day of Cinema Parallels, we will open with: Space Dogs režija: Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter, followed by Lúa vermella režija: Lois Patiño, both films projecting contexts in resemble mirror format, we will see realities from an equidistant visualities.
The second day of the festival we will have Srećan Božić, Yiwu (Merry Christmas, Yiwu) režija: Mladen Kovačević, followed by LYNNE SACHS TRIBUTE with the Washing Society, Tornado, The Small Ones and E•pis•to•lar•y: Letter to Jean Vigo. The second day we are focused on a retro-visor mirror, about our social and geo-political contexts, and the last day of festival is dedicated to the personal, to our bodies, to our house and intimate spaces, this day we take “our dressing mirror”, we will project Things We Dare Not Do, režija: Bruno Santamaría.
We will close with a regional documentary selection of shorts that we name PARALLELS JOY: Sunce, vrati se (Sunshine, Come Back) režija: Milica Jokić, Korijeni režija: Stefan Tomić, Osamdeset dinara (Eighty Serbian Dinars) režija: Inma de Reyes, University of Disaster and Dreaming of Prey to Grasp Shadow režija: Radenko Milak and Zašto mama vazda plače? (Why is Mom Always Crying?) režija: Karmen Obrdalj.
The pandemic has severely hit the entire audiovisual sector and the situation remains critical in many places, therefore, it is important to organize a film festival, but also, is important to support international and local filmmakers and films. We think in the cinema as a place of resistance; we believe that seeing a movie with other people in a theatre is a powerful and irreplaceable experience, and also is a key place for the encounter with other visions and expand our points of view, at the end, is all about to be exposed to different contexts, realities and images, and from there try to understand us more and more as society, as humans.
See you at the cinema!
Adriana Trujillo
Program
Thursday, June 10
18.00 Festival Opening
18.15 Space Dogs / Dir. Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter / 91 min. / 2019 /Austria – Germany
(Q&A: with Simon Peter, Sound Designer of the film)
20.30 Red Moon Tide Dir. Lois Patiño / 84 min. / 2020 / Spain
Friday, June 11
18.00 Merry Christmas, Yiwu / Dir.
Mladen Kovacevic / 94 min. / Serbia
(panel discussion with representatives of the Confucius Institute, University
of Banja Luka)
20.30 FOCUS ON LYNNE SACHS
The Washing Society / 44
min. / 2018 / United States
Tornado / 4
min. / 2002 / United States
The Small Ones / 3
min. / 2006 / United States
E•pis•to•lar•y: Letter to
Jean Vigo / 5 min. / 2021 / United States
Saturday, June 12
18.00 Things We Dare Not Do / Dir. Bruno Santamaría / 75 min. / 2020 / México
20.00 PARALLELS
JOY: DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM SELECTION
Sunshine, Come Back/ Dir. Milica
Jokic / 12:23 / 2017 / Serbia
The Roots / Dir. Stefan Tomic
/ 15:40 / 2020 / Bosnia and Herzegovina
Eighty Serbian Dinars / Dir.
Inma de Reyes / 10 min. / 2019 / Serbia
University
of Disaster / Dir. Radenko Milak / 13:21 / 2017 /
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Dreaming of Prey to Grasp Shadow / Dir. Radenko Milak / 6:45 / Bosnia and Herzegovina
Why is Mom Always Crying? /
Dir. Karmen Obrdalj / 15:38 / 2019 / Bosnia and Herzegovina
(Q&A: Panel with short film directors, producers, artist and filmmakers)
About Cinema Parallels
Cinema Parallels is devoted to supporting independent and innovative films, screening cinema of the real in all it’s forms and diversity, through a special curatorial selection of international and regional contemporary films in the heart of the Balkans.
Cinema Parallels will celebrate its second edition during spring in Banja.
Cinema Parallels is organized by Video Kabinet developed with the support of
the Ministry of Culture of the Srpska Republic and in partnership with Gradsko
Pozorište Jazavac.
Background
The art should ask questions, for which there are often no answers, that it is the basis for the exchange of ideas. Films encourages critical thinking, freedom of expression and creativity, and only then ceases to be goods and entertainment and become culture and art. A culture makes the identity of a city, state, or country. In this context, a festival of contemporary cinema is absolutely necessary for Banja Luka as a epicenter of the Republic of Srpska.
Cinema Parallels born in 2019, with the main idea to develop a place to share, an encounter of unique points of views that are been able to question our world. We are dedicated to program and support moving-image works with singular voices in productions from all around the world in different formats, capturing reality from a different perfective and a wide range of contemporary non-fiction, and bring this productions to the city.
Last year, our festival, like all other cultural projects was postpone.
We explored the possibility of a virtual encounter, buy finally we decide to continue in 2021. We wait until now to recover experiences, audience and images, with the firm and original purpose to keep confronting our world. Believing that films are a point of encounter and a universal language, keeping the idea that in our unprecedent time, conversations and encounters are now act of resistance.