Kurja polt Genre Film Festival

Contact

Kurja polt, festival žanrskega filma

Trubarjeva 22, SI-1000 Ljubljana

http://kurjapolt.org

Phone386 (0) 41 284 327

Organised byDruštvo za širjenje filmske kulture Kurja polt

Frequencyannual

Festival dates19.4.2024

The Kurja polt Genre Film Festival is a niche, artistically quite ambitious, festival that unearths and puts forward particularly worthy pieces of genre cinema, with a focus on horror film. Treating this genre in a very unconfined way, the festival reflects and presents it through retrospectives, featured as the core programme, and through a smaller selection of contemporary films. Its name meaning "goosebumps", the festival was established in 2014 and takes place at Slovenian Cinematheque and Kinodvor Cinema.

8. KURJA POLT: Držimo pesti by KURJA POLT Genre Film Festival on YouTube

Film programme

The stated motto of the festival is "cults, classics and genre-benders". The section of contemporary films rather firmly adheres to the genre-bending approach. Consequently, the chosen films are very diverse and can even include historic Tollywood blockbusters. Some of the selected films include Child of God (James Franco, 2013), Alléluia (Fabrice du Welz, 2013), What We Do in the Shadows (Taika Waititi, Jemaine Clement, 2014), Bahubali: The Beginning (S. S. Rajamouli, 2015), Demon (Marcin Wrona, 2015,) and Bone Tomahawk (S. Craig Zahler, 2015).

Retrospectives are either thematically or author focused, for example: the "urban versus rural" selection (from Boorman's Deliverance to cannibal exploitation film); a presentation of the oeuvre of the cult italo-horror director Mario Bava (his son, also a movie author, was that year's guest speaker); or the trope of the final girl (a concept taken from the work of the theorist Carol J. Clover), paying tribute to prominent female figures and roles. Examples of such films are I Spit on Your Grave (Meir Zarchi, 1978) and Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977).

Also, in collaboration with Kraken Film Society, the 2016 edition chose as its focus the cyber-gothic surrealist H. R. Giger, who was presented through a documentary (Belinda Sallin, 2014) and by a selection of Giger's short films curated by Laura Walde and John Canciani of Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur.

Accompanying programme

The accompanying programme usually deals with segments of the cultural universe that are connected in some way to horror film, for example, a workshop on creating comic books and film posters (naturally with a somewhat darker accent) and a lecture on the history of Italian horror comics called "Fumetti dell’orrore" held by Pia Nikolič of the Stripolis Institute. Other features in the accompanying programme include poster exhibitions, film criticism and other workshops, and more.

See also

• Slovenian Cinematheque
• Kinodvor Cinema
• Kraken Film Society
• Grossmann Fantastic Film and Wine Festival

External links

• Kurja polt Genre Film Festival website