Amateur movies will be shown in Kherson

The 7th International Amateur Film Festival “Kinokimeria” will be held at the Black Sea coast resort village Zalizny Port, Kherson oblast on September 19-23. As usual, the event will be sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the National Union of Cinematographers of Ukraine, as well as the local authorities. As much as 130 amateur filmmakers from Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and other countries will participate this year.

The festival’s Grand Prix winner will get the gold medal. There will also be the Best Director, Best Idea, Best Execution, Best One-Minute Film, Best Children Studio or School-Created Film and People’s Choice Awards. This year, the rules will for the first time limit to 15 minutes the duration of films submitted for the competition. The jury will be headed by Honored Artist of Ukraine Yurii Rudchenko who will determine the best works in cooperation with Honored Artist of Ukraine Oleksii Kolesnyk, Honored Artist of Ukraine and Dovzhenko National Film Studio cameraman Yurii Harmash, and some other film experts.

As usual, Cinema photo contest will take place at the festival, aiming to promote amateur film using the language of art photography.

“Film industry begins with amateur films,” Kinokimeria’s secretary Andrii Rostov told The Day. “Therefore, our festival’s aim is to find and reveal new talents. We kind of say: ‘People, if you really do love film art and dream of succeeding in it, you should pick up cameras and start shooting short films! Then send us your films, since an impartial assessment of their work is vital for any film art beginner.’ Jury members and guests of the forum are famous film directors, camerapersons, actors, screenwriters who are always ready to give an unbiased assessment of your first steps in the art. As for me, such events are just what we need to revive the Ukrainian film industry.”

Interestingly, the Kinokimeria winners have had the exclusive right since 2009 to represent Ukraine at UNICA, one of the most prominent European amateur film competitions. By the way, the Kherson festival winners have been successful representatives of Ukraine. For example, Kherson filmmaker Andrii Bohun’s one-minute film The Stone won the first place in this year’s Best One-Minute Film category at UNICA as the best of 37 European countries’ submissions.