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Cinenews

KinoLev Goes International

August 10, 2008

 

On August 21-24, 2008 the city of Lviv will be hosting the KinoLev (CineLion) Film Festival. Started in 2006 as a local subsidiary of the Open Night Film Festival held in Kyiv in late June and featuring the works of young and new Ukrainian filmmakers, KinoLev quickly came into its own and developed a considerable international dimension. It bills itself as a forum of a new and independent feature, documentary, and animation film with a focus on issues of human identity. KinoLev’s director Oles Dzyndra is an internationally recognized artist. His creations of glass are sold in art shops all around Europe. He founded the Museum of Ideas based in a renovated and atmospheric basement of the former St. Bernard’s Convent on Valova Street (Wall St.), Lviv, site of innovative art exhibits, theater performances and other avant-garde undertakings which showcase Galician, Ukrainian, and international participants. The KinoLev IFF will occupy practically the entire downtown of this beautiful city with its elegant café culture. Among its principal venues are: the Bernardengarten, the Square of Arts (Ploshcha Mystetstv), the Les Kurbas Theater, the National Maria Zankovetska Theater, the Lalka Jazz Club, the patio of the City Council building, the Smaller Congregation Hall of the City Council, the House of Scientists (Budynok Vchenykh) and the parking lot of the Arsen Supermarket (for a drive-in screening).

from left Oles Dzyndra, KinoLev’s founding director showing Bernardengarten, one of the venues of the festival to Yuri Shevchuk.


KinoLev will be ushered in by the film installation “Cinema and Lviv. A Retrospective into the Future” August 21-27. The festival will open with a gala KinoAcademia at the National Ukrainian Drama Theater whose building was one of the very first  Lviv cinema houses. Among other points on its program are: the Film Campus “Watercolors of Lviv”, Aug. 21-24, a roundtable discussion “Business, State, and Filmmaking. Prospects for the Ukrainian Film Industry” (Aug. 23), Film Market (Aug. 22-24), the official competition program (Aug. 21-24), the Drive-In Movie (Aug. 21-24). KinoLev will also travel to the old town of Zhovkva for a two-day session of the best young film and presentation of the films winners of the Zwierzyniec IFF (Poland) to be held in the Zholkevsky Castle (built in the 17th century) and the Shevchenko Cinema House.
The Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University is actively assisting the KinoLev to develop the international aspect of its program. In particular we were instrumental in organizing the Ukrainian premier of the Spanish feature documentary film “The Unnamed Zone”, director Carlos Rodriguez during the KinoLev.


Some 140 films will be screened within the KinoLev official competition and some 80 films already shown at other festivals – outside the competition. The KinoLev selection committee favors the films which deal with issues of individual freedom, problems of the post-Soviet postcolonial condition, search for national identity, European integration, development of civil society in East European countries.


For more information write to: jarka.kup@gmail.com or kinolev@idem.org.ua or call 011-380-67-31-36-331; 011-380-97-777-30-20


Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University© 2015. For more information please contact Yuri Shevchuk