The Film & Video Institute
Croatian Minute Movie Festival
2008
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The Film & Video Institute |
Croatian Minute Movie Festival 2008 |
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A Week in the Golden ValleyPozega is at the heart of a vast land bowl blessed with good soil and pleasant climate. It lies in the northern part of Croatia known as Slavonia, the Romans named it the Golden Valley. The tour programme begins on Sunday 25th May when you arrive and runs up to the festival. The trips are organised by the festival team and a local travel agent. In May 2007 Jan and I were joined by Ron Challen for the trial run. With a few minor changes the plans for 2008 look very similar. It proved to be a relaxing, interesting, photogenic few days. We were filled with more great food, wine and spirits than is good for us. The Slavonia area is beautiful rather than spectacular and that makes it easy to relax in and enjoy. We met up at Zagreb Airport and were given a lift into town by a Sinisa, the festival's volunteer driver who works in the capital but comes from Pozega. Poor man he is almost the only sober Croat that weekend because the rule in that country is zero alcohol when you are behind the wheel. Not only did Sinisa take us to the station, he made sure we bought the correct tickets. The ticket clerk had English but Sinisa's fluency and local knowledge was comforting. Ron offered to stay with the luggage at the station while Jan and I spent a couple of extremely hot hours wandering round the capital. The evening train was optimistically described as an express and started off swiftly enough, but when we joined the branch line to Pozega slowed down a bit. It was an easy, pleasant journey and we were met by the festival director, Zeljko Balog and his partner in crime Zvonimir Karakatic who insisted on driving us the short distance to the hotel. Villas Stanisic is a modest, comfortable hotel with a surprisingly large restaurant, a popular café and … beware … a cake shop on the ground floor! The festival events are all within 5 minutes walk. Our rooms had en suite facilities, satellite tv and air conditioning. They did not have light-proof curtains but some ingenuity with black bin liners solved that. Perhaps it was because in that part of the world country hours are common: most people get up with the lark. Our excursions began the next morning. We were driven by Dalibar, the English-speaking tour company boss, in his new mini-bus and sometimes joined by specialist guides who took us round the attractions. First was a trip to local vineyards.
The Wine DayOn picturesque vine-covered slopes was the first establishment. Its vats were thoroughly modern shining steel but the tradition and the product were of an earlier age. A charming lady explained the processes and encouraged us to sample various wines. On a whim she offered to show us where most of the best grapes were grown and we took a side-trip higher in the hills. I recognised it as the place where one of the 2006 festival lunches had been enjoyed - complete with roast boar and gypsy music - see my report on the 2006 event. We went on to a newer vineyard, just starting modest scale production. The vats were smaller, the bottling process even more of a hands-on job. Another charming young woman talked us through the process and let us taste the wine ... almost as good. But this place also boasted a wonderful restaurant where we had a lunch that was worth the cost of the whole day's trip. We sat overlooking a wonderful view and eating excellent food. Then on ... to a third wine production house. This was was huge, a true factory with enormous vats and a long history. Here a new recruit gave us the talk and allowed us to taste not just the usual products but an Icewine made from grapes which froze on the vine ... amazingly sweet, rich and phenomenally expensive. The Mountain Nature Park DayThe next day was spent mainly in Papuk Nature Park. A vast swathe of hills is designated a national park. Part is fully protected, part is open to "hunting for the pot". A remarkable drive up into the mountains brought us out at what seemed like a huge natural glade. In fact this area was landscaped around Jankovac Lake by the nobleman Jankovic, in the "rustic" fashion. Young schoolchildren were riding donkeys, a wooden restaurant was serving cool drinks and food, streams ran through the area. A special guide explained the geology and history of the area, pointed out the range of flora and fauna then offered to take us for a walk. Ron chose to sit this one out and bask in the sun. Jan and I went with the guide alongside a stream and up to where a natural cave had been converted into a sepulchre for the man who had created this natural haven. We moved downward to an area of sparkling waterfalls before climbing up wooden steps back to the glade just in time for lunch. You might glimpse deer, pine martens, otters, which live in the Brzaja stream, hedgehogs, butterflies, and other insects. Papuk is also rich in birdlife, primarily forest birds. It is hard to find a place where you can't hear them singing. We had been talking about local foodstuffs and on the way back to the hotel Dalibar proposed an extra stop ... not a vineyard but a farm which produced kulen, the local smoked-meat salami. This was a family run operation and they welcomed our unannounced visit. After the tour we tasted the product and bought some. Sadly it is not yet possible to bring it back to the U.K. but it makes a great snack.
The Wetlands Nature Park DayAnother day another minibus ride. This time the destination was Kopacki Rit near the Serbian border and we travelled beside some fields still marked with land-mine warnings 16 years after the war ended. But this is where the Drava and Danube rivers come together in one of Europe's outstanding wetland preserves. After coffee and buns in a truck-stop we made our way to the nature reserve. In the entrance building a short video introduced us to the park. Then we strolled along a wooden boardwalk to a lakeside beach. A flat boat arrived and we took our places. Soon a Croatian guide with a charming Australian twang to her English took us in charge and hustled us up a ladder marked "private" to some benches on the poop deck by the wheelroom. She explained that the main group of passengers would be local primary school children and it would be easier for her to pop up to us and switch into English than to keep changing languages on the lower deck. We had no complaints at all - a great view and private explanations from our guide! The hot weather meant the waters were lower than usual but we had a lovely cruise spotting fish, birds and turtles along the way. With luck you may see black stork, wild geese & ducks, white herons, white-tailed eagles, coots, seagulls, tern, kingfishers, woodpeckers ... When we returned to dry land we were taken a couple of kilometres on to a clearing where timber buildings with a large veranda offered an airy, shady place to enjoy some of the finest fish in the area - as lunch! We went on to spend a couple of hours in Osijek, a university town on the border. Parts of this were rebuilt and/or restored in splendour and parts bore traces of the war. The main church had pock-marks on the walls and inside one painting of Christ on the cross was defiled by an arc of bullet holes. We watched students play in the ultra-modern fountains as we licked ice-cream and wondered at how quickly passions can explode and then vanish equally suddenly and mysteriously. The Pozega Town DayThe final day of tours was really half a day. We were joined by two Lithuanian journalists and a team of Japanese - both researching in order to develop their own one-minute movie festivals - and our old friend Radek Stipl from the Czech Republic. A local guide led us on a walking tour of Pozega, an old market town. She spoke in Croatian. A senior school student translated to English for most of us and an older Japanese lady who had lived in the town for years translated into Japanese. In this turbulent area history meant that sometimes they were in control of the Turks under the Ottoman Empire, sometimes under the Austrians in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Recent restoration work in an ancient church revealed very early Christian murals which had been plastered over in the Turkish years and had only just been rediscovered. An additional excitement was that this was the last day of school for the senior students. In a couple of weeks the graduating classes would sit their "Matura" - a group of subjects which have to be passed together to earn the qualification. But today they were having fun. Flour bombs covered them - though they were very good about not involving members of the public. Every now and then each class - wearing distinctive t-shirts - would gather in a circle, arms about each other and sing. They sang well - our guide assured us the songs were contemporary ones but they could have been part of an ancient tradition so far as we were concerned. Throughout the main shopping street windows held display boards with photographs of graduating classes and their form teachers. The town and the region were proud of their young people. We ought to have joined the festival team for lunch but slipped off to shop and sleep! I knew what was to come ...
The FestivalAs in 2006 it began in the evening in a cellar under the town's hill. We learned that it was attached to the meeting place of one of the town's most prestigious organisations. For us it was enough that it was filled with super barbecue food, lots of wine and film friends from around the world. The next few days were similar to the 2006 events so eloquently described (here) except that the outing took us first to a local factory which specialised in making wine and chocolate bars! Wine samples were free but chocolate we had to buy. Then we were taken to a forest hunting lodge for another good meal before relaxing in the meadow outside. As for the films ... a strange and fascinating group were shown. We can review them again at home because as well as a goody-bag of leaflets we were all given a DVD of the 60 short-listed entries. Films known to British audiences were Plan B by Clive Atkins (see it online), Climate Change by Franc Kopic, Fate and Mr. McKinley by David Lilley and Stephen Gray (see it online), The Birthday Wish by David Lilley and Stephen Gray (see a slightly longer version online.) The winners were:
The Cost and Booking
GFR FILM-VIDEO are the club which hosts the event.
The Croatian style is very relaxed and like most volunteer-run organisations communications before the event can be slow. The best contact is the mobile number which is usually answered by Zeljko Balog who teaches English in Pozega. He and the team will organise your hotel, the festival Congress Card and the outings. You have to book your own flights.
Page updated on 01 January 2008 Authors' views are not necessarily those of The Institute of Amateur Cinematographers Free JavaScripts provided
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