Organized by the British Council, this year’s PlayUK program which serves to connect professionals from the world of film and other audio-visual arts from Great Britain and the region, but which also offers a rich artistic program, will be held at FEST.
Organized by the British Council Serbia, this year’s PlayUK program which serves to connect professionals from the world of film and other audio-visual arts from Great Britain and the region, but which also offers a rich artistic program, will be held at FEST.
This year’s PlayUK program examines the limits of creativity and the possibilities that new technologies offer to artists. Within the PlayUK VR section (virtual reality), a series of films made in this format will be presented. On this occasion, the audience will be able to watch the films that have been screened and awarded at the festivals in Edinburgh, Bristol, and Sheffield over the past year. Among the titles there are: “Unrest,” “First Impressions,” “Beethoven's Fifth,” “In My Shoes: Intimacy,” “Horizons,” “Rain or Shine,” “Chapita,” “Aftershock: Nepal’s Untold Water Story” and “Munduruku.” These films will be shown on March 2, 3 and 4 from 13.00 to 18.00 at Art Cafe Sava Center. The entry is free, but the number of seats is limited, so it is also necessary to sign up for projections via the British Council web site: https://www.britishcouncil.rs/programmes/arts/playuk-arcadia/vr-film.
PlayUK will also be adorned with an unusual show made up of alternative video games. The curators of this exhibition, Edinburgh-based duo WeThrowSwitches, are trying to answer the question whether video games can be art. The audience will be able to visit this exhibition also in the Art Cafe of the Sava Center from March 2 to 4 from 19.00 to 22.00.
In the film program, PlayUK presents seven feature films. The program opens with “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool” by Scottish director Paul McGuigan, nominated for the BAFTA Best Screenplay, with Jamie Bell and Annette Bening in the lead roles, also nominated for the British Film Academy Awards. This is a biographical movie about the Hollywood actress Gloria Graham, who starts a romance with a young man in Liverpool in the seventies, but soon she is diagnosed with cancer. A special treat for British music fans will be “England is Mine,” a biographical film showing the early years of the famous singer of Smiths - Morrissey.
The film “God's Own Country” was screened at Berlin International Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival, where it won the best Director Award, and it tells the story about a young farmer in Yorkshire whose life changes when he falls in love with a young migrant from Romania. “Apostasy” is a debut film by Daniel Kokotajlo, a former Jehovah's Witness, which provides a rare insight into the complex nature of faith, family, duty and love. “Arcadia” is a film essay that examines the complicated, changing and sometimes contradictory attitude of the British towards their land, through cuts from British films filmed over the past hundred years.
“Beast” is an atmospheric psychological thriller about a small island town that is shaken by a series of murders, about a man accused of crimes, and a woman who is in love with him and will do her best to protect him. The worst dinner in history is the theme of the black comedy “The Party” by director Sally Potter, premiered in the main competition program of Berlinale 2017. This brutal satire unfolds in real time and displays a group of friends whose gathering begins with a celebration of promotion, and ends with shouting, quarrels and drawing pistols.
