Fresh Film Festival - Basic Information

Basic Information

Fresh Film Fest is an international student film festival. Being the largest film competition of its kind in Central Europe, Fresh Film Fest represents the showcase for the Eastern and Central European student filmmaking and aims to promote young artists from this region in as many different ways as possible. To serve this purpose the festival offers ideal conditions – especially with regard to its favourable geographical location – and provides sufficient production services. The festival also plays an important role at the national level. Together with other notable Czech film festivals Fresh Film Fest brings attention to the tendencies of European, as well as world cinematography, that shape the essence of contemporary filmmaking. Such works often face difficulties finding their way to Czech distribution and thus, Fresh Film Fest significantly contributes to the high standard of Czech as well as Central and East European cinematography.

Concerning the number of films shown, as well as the area covered, Fresh Film Fest is the largest international student film competition not only in the Czech Republic but also in the whole of the so-called Visegrad region (Czech Rep., Slovakia, Hungary, Poland). During five days, at the turn of August to September, more than 300 works representing the most progressive trends in student cinematography from all over the world are to be seen in six cinema halls, followed by feature-length film screenings and music concerts. Despite its short existence, the festival is a follow-up to a more than 30-year old tradition of international student film festivals held in Karlovy Vary. It secures its leading position among Central European film festivals by extensive contacts with the most prominent film schools (VGIK, FEMIS, FAMU, NFTS, Columbia), by showing films from exotic regions (Ecuador, Hong Kong, Cuba) as well as from the most vivid cinematographic territories (Latin America, Taiwan), and primarily by putting the emphasis on a high-quality program concept, which rests entirely in the hands of the new generation of young film curators, critics, authors and theoreticians.

Fresh Film Fest offers a combination of unique conditions. It is held in Karlovy Vary, a town that annually hosts an A-category Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and therefore provides excellent festival facilities and up-to-date cinema halls. Fresh Film Fest is also a partner event of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and it originates from the expansion of the former Student Films section. The organizing teams of both festivals overlap. This is just to mention a few reasons, why Fresh Film Fest holds a prominent and unrivalled status among other student film festivals from all over Central and Eastern Europe. Fresh Film Fest is then capable to offer facilities and possibilities rivalling Berlinale Talent Campus or Cannes Cinéfondation, even though of the causes being the dismal situation in the field of cinematography promotion in the Czech Republic. Despite that, a cinema hall seating 1000 together with five other cinemas are available to festival participants as well as the festival club scene and several lounge rooms. To compare Fresh Film to other equally significant Central European student film festivals: Mediaschool held in Łódź or the famous Internationales Festival des Filmhochschulen München take both place within five days in a single festival cinema hall.

Selection and promotion of the best from Central and Eastern European filmmaking Fresh Film Fest annually offers a solid and varied array of Central and Eastern European student films focused on the Visegrad Group countries. This section has now been broadened to present today's most important work from all the former East European region. Owing to this strategy and the partnership with a wide range of prominent Western European film festivals, Fresh Film Fest has become a gateway to the Western market for Eastern European talents. Since 2006 the festival pays tribute to the world's most promising talents of film making by realizing a retrospective program of all films made by them so far. One of the already tributed, Corneliu Porumboiu, a participant in the first Fresh Film Fest competition and one of last year's media campaign protagonists, has been awarded the Camera d'Or (Golden Camera) at the Cannes Film Festival.

The festival organisers have received many distinguished awards for putting on the festival. The production has won two FAMU awards. The director of the 2nd Fresh Film Fest trailer Jakub Kohák was awarded the third prize for the best trailer at the most prestigious contest for the best and most creative Czech advertisement "Louskáček". The 2nd Fresh Film Fest visual concept created by art director Adéla Svobodová was honoured at the International Biennale of Graphic Design in Brno - according to many reliable sources the most renowned competition of its kind in the Czech Republic; the 3rd Fresh Film Fest visual concept, created by the same author altogether with graphic designer Pauline Kerleroux has been awarded an Ogilvy CID Prize for Best Corporate Design in 2006 delivered by a jury consisted of most respected Czech graphics professionals and critics.