goEast Katalog 2020

From the private archive: festival director
Heleen Gerritsen 20 years ago, on May 6th
2000 in Moscow.
HELEEN
GERRITSEN
FESTIVAL DIRECTOR
As the year began, I was really
looking forward to goEast’s
milestone anniversary. Alas,
when events surrounding Covid-
19 began to snowball rapidly
from late February, it occurred
to me that the tenth anniversary
of goEast had also been rather
ill-fated: back then the eruption
of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull
volcano prevented many of our
film guests from travelling to
Wiesbaden. However, thanks to
the improvisational gifts of our
guest management staff at the
time, solutions were found and
the 10th edition of goEast Film
Festival took place in Wiesbaden
in spite of everything. In 2020,
we are less fortunate: while I
sit here writing these words of
welcome, the borders are closed,
there are curfews in effect in
many countries around the
world and the entire goEast team
is working from home. Public
events will not take place in May
2020.
goEast stands for high-calibre
cinematic art, but also for
chance encounters with
individuals from a vast variety
of backgrounds, age groups and
political views. In the cinema
and at the Festival Center bar, we
laugh, celebrate and argue with
one another. The fact that this
aspect of the week-long event has
now fallen victim to Covid-19 in
the festival’s 20th anniversary
year, is hard to bear. On top of
that, there is dramatic news
reaching us from colleagues and
friends in Central and Eastern
Europe: the cultural budget in
Ukraine (including film funding)
has been reduced to zero,
Turkmenistan’s head of state
is claiming that coronavirus
doesn’t exist at all in his country
and Viktor Orban has had the
Hungarian constitution amended
to allow him to rule indefinitely
by decree.
Our goEast anniversary
programme is entitled “Europa
Europa”, since we had also
already intended to strengthen
and celebrate our shared “house
of Europe” before the pandemic
erupted. In our opinion, this
notion is now timelier than ever,
even if one would often love to
see greater élan on the part of
all involved. The films of the
programme that deal critically
with diverse aspects of European
existence will all be available
during the festival week as
video-on-demand and will also
be accompanied by an online
panel discussion with the title
“What Would We Do Without
Europe?”.
However, from the start it was
clear to us that goEast would
not become a purely online
festival. Cinematic art belongs
on the big screen! Thus, we were
absolutely delighted when our
friends at Wiesbaden’s exground
filmfest extended a helping hand
and spontaneously offered to
partner with us this year: the
16 films of the Competition and
our planned opening film will be
screened in November with film
guests in attendance at Caligari
Filmbühne. Furthermore, in
order to do justice to our aim of
supporting the Eastern European
film industry, our programme
coordinator Dominik Streib
came up with the proposal that
the prize money in the two
main competitions simply be
divided up equally among the
filmmakers. No sooner said than
done! We would like to thank our
funders, who generously gave
their blessings to this decision
as well.
What else is on the programme?
Provided there aren’t any
more catastrophes in store for
the rest of the year, around
80 of the originally planned
111 films will be shown to our
audience. The Symposium and
the Portrait of Radu Jude have
been rescheduled for late July.
The Pan-European Picnic will
take place in August. The Open
Frame Award will take place
100% virtually for the first time
and will be broadcast online.
The East-West Talent Lab for our
emerging filmmakers will take
place entirely online, including
the Project Pitching Session.
Central and Eastern Europe have
weathered their share of crises:
the transitional period of the
1990s, which also stands at the
centre of this year’s Symposium,
is an impressive testament to
this ability. Just one example:
the film festival in Sarajevo
was founded during the civil
war and people went to rock
concerts while the besieged
city was being bombarded. The
post-socialist space is inhabited
by survival artists. Still, that
doesn’t mean that we can just
leave our colleagues there to
fend for themselves. In addition
to our regular program of
first-class cinematic art, in this
bizarre anniversary year goEast
will provide a platform for the
concerns and current developments
in our region of focus. And
hopefully we will meet again
soon in person, in Wiesbaden.
5 INTRODUCTION