Main Programme

Accross the Border is a documentary omnibus, dealing with
experiencing of borders at the beginning of the 21st century. In a film
voyage from the North to the South, five directors from Palond, Czech
Republic, Slovak Republic, Hungary and Slovenia show their views
and visions of nation, identity and Europe. On the border between the
so-called old and new Europe, the prosperous differences between
cultures, mentalities, velocities and ways of life are getting more and
more visible.
The film was made in a special historical moment of the political
reorganising of Europe and is usually understood as a cultural project
of crossing the borders. In their personal cinematic scripture, the
directors describe the facetious image of the regions in all their stylistical
variety. Across The Border developed into a journey through the
landscapes and mentalities, to a contact with people, who participated
in the upheaval, take profits from, accept or ignore it or just feel sorry
because of the changes.
Altogether, the five episodes form a multilingual image of East and
Central European border experience: between life and death, searching
for identity, poverty, coincidence, the lust for travel... as well as the
no man’s land.

Short biography of the director:
Pawel Lozinski’s Between The Doors spotlights the world of the past, still
residual and present, although not publicly expressed in the European
euphoria about the common future. Living abroad in spite of their own
past: old Polish refugees living in a rural comunity doing everyday
chores on German territory.

Jan Gogol Gogola in Borderless česke Velenice practices the Czech tradition
of ironical language and world analysis. Inhabitants of a small town
Česke Velenice present and enact their own version of identity and
nationality on a border stone. Humorous, semidocumenatary manipulation
of the truth, showing us that the truth is manipulated.

Peter Kerekes’s Helpers constructs a bridge of propaganda and collaboration
with the Soviet system to the present day. Civil helpers of the
customs police have commonly been better trackers and upkeepers of
the system than the army itself. Cynical humour allows Kerekes to approach
the unpolished although ever present history fact. Even though
the political systems may change, explosive character of international
traffic sparks new prejudice.

Robert’s Lakatosa Good Luck crosses the borders between the West and
the East, only to return back to the East. Gipsy Lali and his mate Lori
travel from Hungarian Transilvania to Vienna on business. The journey
contradicts the stereotypical image of a robbery Gipsy gangs, making
use of the charms of the two protagonists, lost in the imperial Vienna.

Biljana Čakić Veselić’s Choreography episode ends where borders seem
unpossible and futile: on the open seas. A fishing boat manuevers on
the tiny Slovenian seas, bordering on the catastrophical Balkan war,
on a thin red line between trespassing and loss of identity, defined
with the unfortune of the migrations of the flocks of fishes and the
fortune of a heavy crop in the fishing nets.