February 17, 2010

The 15th Vilnius International Film festival “Kino Pavasaris” promises fifteen special days of good cinema

It‘s always worth waiting for the spring to come after a deep cold winter for one important reason - Vilnius has a great tradition of swapping homes and parks to the cinema halls where the real cinema feast begins! Therefore, for everyone who is in love with a good quality cinema, together with the 15th Vilnius International Film Festival “Kino Pavasaris”, the real spring will start on March 18th till 2nd of April.

“By counting it’s 15 years anniversary, “Kino Pavasaris” becomes a real synonym and a prophet of the spring each year. Since it’s beginning - the festival has been small, but also had a record number of the viewers, sometimes the way to make it good was complicated, but it always paid off with the sincere compliments received and honourable guests who attended the event. And the most important – 15 years has passed from the very first “Kino Pavasaris” and now we can be proud of the big contribution the festival has made in creating cinema as an intellectual form of entertainment for Lithuanian society”, - Vida Ramaskiene, the director of Vilnius International Film festival is smiling while explaining this.

For those who missed good cinema, the jubilee festival will offer the exceptional feast for gourmets: the main course of the festival will be the newest and most popular films which were appraised by viewers as well as cinema critics all over the world. The lovers of good film in Lithuania will have an unique opportunity to see the winners of “The golden Palm” in Cannes, “The Golden Beer” in Berlin, “The Golden Shell” in San Sebastian and “The Golden Leopard” in Locarno. The desert of this cinema feast is competition program “New Europe – New Names”. The international JURY contained from international film professionals, will make their judgment on the best debut films from the Eastern and Central European countries.

Another extremely important guest this year – is Frederic Jurgeau, the first attaché of the culture of French embassy in Lithuania and the idea initiator of Vilnius International Film Festival “Kino Pavasaris”. In 1995, Frederic shared his idea about the film festival with the former festival director V. Ramaskiene and the evolution of the festival has started. Since then Frederic Jurgeau with the big interest has followed the birth of a good cinema screening tradition in Vilnius. Therefore, it is very symbolic that the initiator of the festival will arrive to Vilnius to attend the jubilee festival and see how this festival has changed during its lifetime.

Film festival is a living organism which grows, expands and improves. The jubilee of the 15th years celebration is asking to remember the beginning of it all, when this event was small and modest, showing films of only young director’s brought from 4 countries. In this way, each year improving by little step we arrived to the last year’s festival where introducing the competition programme was new, but never the less very important segment upgrading the festival into the next level. Consequently, this year once again the festival is promising to emerge its own limits in all the positive meanings”, - explains festival director Vida Ramaskiene.

According to the director of Vilnius International Film Festival “Kino Pavasaris”, it is very good indeed to have these important jubilees, as the solidarity of the celebration obligates to invest more attention, to look for the new ideas and solutions. Educational projects in the dispersion of the cinema were always a very important part of the festival. Therefore, the important news this year for the film professionals is “The International Film Festivals’ Forum” held during the time of the festival. It’ll be the meeting of the industry professionals, during which the organisers of the Eastern and Central European festivals will gather up in Vilnius to discuss the issues and the potentiality of these festivals in the content of European cinema. The leaders of the international organisations, independent film festival organisers and leads of the cinema associations will talk about the programming, national film distribution as well as the collaboration between the two sectors - of business and film.

Thinking about their viewers the organizers of the festival is promising even more extensive and diverse festival and event programme this year. The festival will expand into 3 cinema theatres (7 screens). And as usual each year films will travel outside the boarders of the capital Vilnius – Kaunas, Klaipeda, Panevezys and Siauliai.

The interesting arrangements are made for a follow up events of the festival in music clubs “Tamsta” and “Woo”, which will unlock the beauty of the cinema art through music soundtracks and special theme parties.

The biggest cinema event of the year Vilnius International Film Festival “Kino Pavasaris” is attended by 50 thousand people each year, over 100 best films are screened from Europe and all over the world. All together 400 thousand people have come to see good quality cinema in the last 15 years of Vilnius International Film festival “Kino Pavasaris”.