The Weekend starts off big at NexT

 

For its forth edition, on Friday, Next International Film Festival offers an extremely diverse program of screenings from the festival's competition, short films made by Nemescu and Andrei Toncu, two seminars featuring important guests, a special screening of the films made during the previous editions of the European Short Pitch scriptwriting workshops, a ShortsUp event, and many other surprises. The absolute premiere of this particular day is brought by the section called They Were NexT Generation Too.

 

The event- screening on Friday, April 16th will be held at Eforie Movie Theater starting 20:30: the Romanian premiere of the British-Irish co production Helen (dir. Christine Molloy and Joe Lawloe, 2008) marks the reinvention of They Were NexT Generation Too section. Having won the prestigious Angers Film Festival Award, the feature debut of the two directors selected for the 2007 NexT competition for their short film Daydream, a suspenseful and mystery packed story set off by the disappearance of young Joy. Chosen by the Police to help by playing a part in the cause reconstruction behind Joy's disappearance, Helen ends up making self-blaming assumptions on each chapter of Joy's life, setting off a psychological transformation with severe consequences. They Were NexT Generation Too section, reserved up until now to short films made by highly acclaimed Romanian film directors, becomes, starting with this year's edition, a launching ramp for feature film debuts of former participants at NexT's competition section. An edit specially made for the event-screening of They Were NexT GenerationToo section can be viewed at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmyW-B0oLyM . The video is made by Luiza Pârvu, and the NexT audience members will be able to watch the two directors' discussion on their film, specially for the Romanian Viewers.

 

The day starts off at 14:00 at Scala Movie Theatre with the first short filmmm program out of the section dedicated to Cristian Nemescu and Andrei Toncu. This is an opportunity for the audience to watch for the very first time of re watchh the extremelyappreciateded Marilena from P7 ( dir. Cristian Nemescu, sound designn Andrei Toncu, 2006), C Block Story (dir. Cristian Nemescu, Sound design Andrei Toncu, 2002), Mihai and Cristina ( dir. Cristian Nemescu, sound design Andrei Toncu, 2001), or The Tube with a Hat (dir. Cristian Nemescu, sound design Andrei Toncu, 2006).

 

The NexT competition continues on Friday at Scala Movie Theatre with another two programs which are not to be missed. On the 16:30 slot, the NexT viewers will have the chance to watch, among others, the shocking short film The last Breath (dir. David Jackson, United Kingdom, 2009), a story with a suprising end twist about a family gone on a scuba diving trip, the Polish film Hanoi-Warsaw ( dir. Katarzyna Klimkiewicz, 2009), a short film about the obstacle-course like trip of a Vietnamese illegal immigrant, heading for the date with she has set with her loved one in Warsawa, or the humor filled film about couple life adventures directed by Alex Montoya, How i met your father (Spain, 2008).

 

At 19:00, the NexT competition screens Music in the blood ( dir. Alexandru Mavrodineanu, 2010), the film which had its worldwide release at the most important short filmmm festival in the world, Clermont- Ferrand, the last of the four Romaniashort filmsms selected by Andrei Gorzo, the festival's artistic director.

 

Further more, the following NexT 2010 competition slot holds the black and white Spanish film El encargado (dir. Sergio Barrejon, 2008) underlining a situation familiar to the Next viewers from their primary school memories or from the medium length film 1000 miles from Taschkent ( dir. Katharina Wyss, Germany, 2009), the longest film out from this year's NexT competition (51 minutes), the story of the shock an Uzbek-Ukrainian couple goes through as they move to Berlin.

 

The schedulee for Friday's NexT Seminars contains three highly attractive meetings at the Carturesti Loft. At 10:30 the film criticism seminar, (Mez) the adventures of a film book author, moderated by the reputed Britishournalist Ronald Bergan, and at 13:30, the Media Desk Romania presentation- Media Program- Training and Networks in Europe, moderated by Valentina Miu, Media Desk representative in Romania, who will give extended details about the way the movie industry training system works on a European level.

 

Right after the Eforie Movie Theater rerun program of the competition films shown on Thursday at Scala Movie Theater,at 18:00 the NexT will be acquainted with a new short film slot out of the Festival Cities section, this time around a Best of selection of the films presented at the prestigious short film festival, Vila do Conde.

 

From 21:00 the Bucharest National Dance Center hosts, a screening of the films made in the previous years following the development program of the European Short Pitch project, organized by the network of associations of European film, NISI MASA. The screening is part of the current edition of European Short Pitch, which brings scriptwriters and directors from all over Europe together with producers from the continent, in the attempt to ease the interaction between filmmakers and those who can help produce their films. One of the European Short Pitch sessions is held this year in Bucharest, during the forth edition of Next International Short and Medium Length Film Festival, with the support of The Cultural Association Control N and the NexT Cultural Society.

 

ShortsUp will be arriving at NexT on Friday, April 16th from 21:30 with the Dream Machine, a two hour program containing short filmss dedicated to dreams of all sorts, some of them being the first Alice in Wonderland adaptation, a 9 minutes film produced in 1903 which will surely bring a smile on the Scala MovieTheatere audiences' face, or the winner of the Oscar Award for the Best Short Film in 1994, „A wonderful life”, Kafka's version ( dir. Peter Capaldi, United Kingdom, 1993). The ShortsUp screening will be followed by an all dream party, starting 23:00, in Control Club.

 

Ten handmade artists have displayed their one of a kind accessoriesssss inspired by the NexT design on sale at the festival's gift shops, set up in both entrances of the Scala and Eforie Movie Theatres, where fans of the festival can also find all of the promotional material of the current edition of Romania's largest short an medlengthnght festival.