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 dates13.4.2016 - 17.4.2016

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

Film programme

The stated motto of the festival is 'cults, classics and genre-benders' and especially the section of contemporary films follows the genre-bending approach rather firmly. Consequently, the chosen films are of a very diverse nature, and can go as far as to include Tollywood historic blockbusters. Some of the films chosen to be screened are 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)

The retrospectives are either thematically or author focused. There was the 'urban versus rural' selection (from Boorman's Deliverance to cannibal exploitation film), a presentation of the oeuvre of the cult Italian italo-horror director Mario Bava (his son, also a movie author, was that year's guest speaker), and – in 2016 – the trope of the final girl (a concept taken from the work of the theorist Carol J. Clover), which pays tribute to prominent female figures and roles. Examples of this theme are I Spit on Your Grave (Meir Zarchi, 1978) and Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977).

Also, in collaboration with Kraken Film Society, the 2016 edition choose as its focus the cyber-gothic surrealist H. R. Giger, who is 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, one way or another, connected to horror film. There was, 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 can also include poster exhibitions, film criticism and other workshops, and so on.

See also

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

External links

• Kurja polt Genre Film Festival website