PRE-FESTIVAL PROGRAMMES AND EVENTS

Sudabe Babgap at the opening of the NEW IRANIAN DOCUMENTARY FILM PRGRAMME (Monday, The Film Archive at 17:00 h): “ Dear ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to be again with you here in Belgrade . Thank you for being here, I love you and your Belgrade Film festival ” , said Mrs. Sudabe Babagap, interrupted by the applause after almost every word, in the fluent Serbian language, and continued (in even more fluent English):

“ As you know, Mr. Mohamed Reza Arab is also present here, a director, who helped me a lot to get these short Iranian films to Belgrade and I sincerely hope that you will enjoy watching them.

I had an opportunity to see some of your most important documentary films and I have found out that you really have a really rich tradition ad an excellent background for making this type of films. We would be very much pleased if we could show some of these films in Iran .

I hope that the films from this selection are going to present to you at least a part of the Iranian culture, but also that you are going to see how brave and sincere they are. ”

Two projections of Remon Depadron ' s films in the Art Cinema Museum on 4 and 7 April starting at 20 h. The films REPORTERS and CHRONICLES were shown. At 19 h on Monday, 18 April an exhibition was opened of 80 black and white photographs of this master of photography and well-known documentary filmmaker to him the Festival this year makes a retrospection called FROM CESAR TO CESAR where 7 of his documentaries are to be shown.

In the Museum of the Yugoslav Film Archive, on Monday 18 and 19 April, the NEW IRANIAN DOCUMNTARY PROGRAMME was shown.

Two days prior to the official opening of the Festival, as a “ warming up ”, for the first time this year, as a part of the pre-festival events at 17 h on Monday, 18, the NEW IRANIAN DOCUMENTARY FILM PROGRAMME started. Thirteen films divided into two programme section were shown.

The programme is dedicated to the last year ' s winner of the Grand Prix, Mrs. Sudabe Babagap, and it has been realised with the kind assistance of the Embassy of the Muslim Republic of Iran and the Iranian Cultural Centre.

“ Although our audience, thanks to the festivals, had the opportunity to see the most significant works by which the Iranian films has got the world fame, so far there has not been a more serious occasion to learn, in a more systematic and reviewing way, about the recent production of the Iranian short film.

This programme consists of the films made in the last five – six years and they have all been made in the production of the state Association of the Young Directors of Iran, a school for the young directors that produces films. “ First of all, I took in consideration the quality of the films, but that was not the only condition; all the films, with the exception of an animation one, from different parts of Iran, the scenography is different, as well as the mise-en-scene, and sometimes the ambience. We have got the films from the far north of Iran , and in them there are al the themes that have been occupying the Iranian film lately. Only one theme, disappearance of a man in the war, appears in two films – said at the opening the selector of this programme, Bogdan Zlatić.

Expressing the pleasure that the New Iranian Film Programme in the Museum of the Yugoslav Film Archive, judging from the number of the present visitors, attracted a big attention, the Art Director of the Festival, Mrs. Vera Vlajić, assumed that 52 nd Festival of Documentary and Short Film has a numerous audience.

On Tuesday (19 April, 19 h) this programme was followed by the Round Table discussion in the Film Archive at which the new Iranian production was talked about.

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