05 Jun The 20th Kino Otok – Isola Cinema Festival in Isola begins a celebration of cinema tonight
Films from diverse cultures, exploring the human experience all over the world, are at the heart of the festival’s programme, which focuses its gaze on all cinematic environments that often remain hidden. That is why the Kino Otok – Isola Cinema International Film Festival opens its festive 20th edition tonight at Manzioli Square in Isola with an Indian musical in a poetic-documentary style, followed by days of creative endeavours from near and far. Through screenings, workshops, concerts and gatherings, the film community will once again flourish, putting Izola on the map as the most filmic coastal city.
A festive opening will dress Manzioli Square in the colours of dance, song and magic
The festival will open tonight at 9pm at the Manzioli Open-Air cinema with a colourful tale of a travelling singer and a magician, filled with song, dance and children’s laughter. The unusual musical Kummatty (Govindan Aravindan, 1979), which presents in a poetic documentary style the slice-of-life of people and nature in Kerala, India, transitions effortlessly into the fairytale in moments of entrancing imagination. The screening is dedicated to Helmut Groschup, co-founder of Kino Otok and long-time director of the Innsbruck International Film Festival, who passed away last year, and who was dedicated to spreading a sparkling spirit of networking and love for cinema in Izola every year. His legacy lives on in The Co-operative, a 20-year programming collaboration between Kino Otok and the Innsbruck Festival, and the film will be presented by Anna Ladinig, director of the Innsbruck Festival for many years.
An exciting start of the day at Art Cinema Odeon
The first screening at the Art Cinema Odeon at 11am is this year’s Berlinale winner Dahomey (2024) by Mati Diop, about the return to the land of origin of 26 stolen royal treasures of the Kingdom of Dahomey, plundered by French colonial troops. Juste un movement (Just One Movement, Vincent Meessen, 2023), an innovative account of the life of Senegalese Maoist activist Omar Blondin Diop, and an adaptation of Godard’s Chinoise, screens at 14:00. The Dupes (Al Makhdu’un, Tewfik Saleh, 1972), a painfully topical film about three generations of Palestinians trying to escape to Kuwait, becomes an allegory of the multifaceted hardships of Palestinian existence. It will be screened at 16:00.
Video on the beach sees beyond the traditional ways of seeing
In the evening, at 20.45, the short film programme Beyond the Search for Memories begins, the first part of the eclectic Video on the Beach section, which traditionally brings striking short films by independent filmmakers of younger generations to the Lighthouse Park in Isola every festival evening. It is followed by musical performances by Iva Bobanovič and Market Garden as a part of the Night of Lights music programme, which is brought to Kino Otok every night until the wee hours of the night in collaboration with KIŠD.
You can check the entire programme and the schedule in detail on our website!
Programme for professionals: discovering the relevance of dusty film archives
Professionals from different fields of filmmaking and anyone interested in the journey of film from idea to screen and beyond find inspiration for their work at PRO Otok. This year, for the first time, part of the programme will be held at the Art Cinema Odeon in combination with screenings of films dealing with found footage materials.
On Friday, between 13:00 and 15:00, the programme Found Image: the Premio Cesare Zavattini Short Film Programme and the presentation of the UnArchive Festival and the Audiovisual Archive of the Workers’ and Democratic Movement (Aamod) will feature a guest presentation by Gabriele Ragonesi on the work of the festival and the movement. From 16:00 to 18:30, Found Image: a programme of short films and a conversation with found footage filmmakers will feature Laura Samani, Bill Morrison, Neil Young and Ivan Ramljak, who will discuss the creative issues of using found images.
On Saturday, between 18.00 and 20.30, we conclude with the world-renowned master of the found image, who returns to Kino Otok with his latest acclaimed short films. Found Image: A Programme of Short Films and Masterclass by Bill Morrison will bring together the experiences of the American independent filmmaker whose experimental work often explores the aesthetic and narrative effects of the deterioration of analogue film material, and whose latest film Incident (2023) analyses the killing of a black civilian on the streets of Chicago through the cameras on the bodies of American police officers.
The entire programme of this year’s Kino Otok can be found here.