Euro in Film 2022: Save the Planet
The opening of the film festival ‘Euro in Film 2022’ will be held on 28 August in the Cultural Centre of Novi Sad from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., during The Danube Sea programme arch.
This representative film festival celebrates its 25th birthday this year, and the theme of this year’s edition is ‘save the planet’, focusing on current environmental issues.
Programme:
The Swallow
Serbia, 2008, 17’
Director: Milan Belegišanin
Screenplay: Željko Marković
Director of photography: Ljubomir Glušica
Editing: Saša Armbruster
Production: RTV Vojvodina, Novi Sad
The old man finds a swallow that fell out of the nest and decides to take care of it. Three times a day he feeds it with worms from overripe cherries. After a few months, the swallow became so attached to the old man that it stands on his shoulder while he walks through the countryside, or it lands on his cap while he hoes corn. Autumn comes and the old man is afraid that the swallow, out of love for him, will not want to fly south. He decided to collect money and take her to the sea… Emotional stories about the primal need of man to love and be loved, start an unstoppable flood of thoughts and feelings. Through the touching confession of Boško Dugački, a former village pig farmer, we meet an old man who, despite being a husband and father of five sons, unconditionally loved a swallow that fell out of the nest, which he nurtured and adopted. That’s how, out of all the millions of swallows that fly over the world every spring and autumn, that one fragile creature whose life Boško saved, became his swallow forever. Although he did not go to school, Boško has a pearl of deep wisdom flowing from his heart, the wisdom of living with people and with all beings on earth. A small and innocent bird taught Boško, and he teaches us too, that every living being loves to live, and that everyone wants to love unconditionally and to be loved.
The Island of Krčedin’s Horses
Serbia, 2013, 52’
Camera and direction: Oliver Fojkar
Editing: Saša Medovarski
Music: Eric Aaron
Post-production: Video Studio PRIZMA
Sound recorder: Goran Vujičin
The text is read by: Miodrag Petrović and Alan Fraser
Professional associates: Biljana Panjković, PhD, MSc Nikola Stojnić, Ranko Perić, Vida Stojšić
Motor kite pilots: Stevan Ločki, Vlada Čavić
Producer of the film: Academic Society for the Study and Protection of Nature in Novi Sad, and co-producer: Institute of Nature Conservation of Vojvodina Province
Co-financiers: Government of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, Provincial Secretariat for Urbanism, Construction and Environmental Protection and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Belgrade.
The Island of Krčedin is one of the largest river islands on the Danube in Serbia, and part of the Special Nature Reserve Koviljsko Petrovaradinski Rit. This is one of the best-preserved and most attractive marshes in Vojvodina, where hundreds of horses gallop freely. With its horses among the ancient willows, rare and protected plant and animal species, it represents a kind of Noah’s Ark of modern times. It is a real good fortune that, based on the study of the Provincial Institute for Nature Conservation, the area of the Island of Krčedin became part of the protected natural property of the Special Nature Reserve Koviljsko Petrovaradinski Rit in 2011 and was included in the List of Wetlands in 2012, on the Ramsar Convention’s website. After three years of filming, the author of nature documentary films, Oliver Fojkar from the Provincial Institute for Nature Protection in Novi Sad, finished the film ‘The Island of Krčedin’s Horses’, about a unique place on the entire course of the Danube where about 200 horses live permanently. Fojkar’s film shows the life of horses during all four seasons. This is the last place in Serbia where the extensive way of cattle breeding has been preserved. The herdsmen of Kovilj, Gardinovci, and Krčedin take care of the animals by occasionally bringing them food and salt on cold winter days and helping them with foaling, treating them when they get sick, with them still living in a completely natural way.
Disappearing Oasis, Last Oasis
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, 1983, 91’
Screenplay and direction: Petar Lalović
Narrator: Zoran Radmilović
Production: Centar Film
When flocks of birds return from the far south in the spring, they fly over man-made urban spaces, to find themselves unmistakably, without a compass or map, beyond the reach of civilization. In the oasis between the Drava and the Danube, there are over three hundred species. There are other game animals as well. For three whole years, the births, struggles, love and death of the inhabitants of the oasis were captured with a hidden camera, because man is not welcome here. That strange world of wilderness, in which natural laws unbelievably resemble human norms and behaviours, in addition to constant destruction, is renewed and alive.
Free admission.
Find out more about the festival on the website Cultural Centre of Novi Sad.
Photo: Promo