Great news! SEE Fest
followers and readers can now buy SEE Fest tickets on-line at ItsMySeat and for the first time, it is arranged to sell tickets for each screening
individually. However, the ticketing site does not have much room to describe
the films, so it’s best to review the lineup on the SEE Fest program page and
then go to ItsMySeat to purchase tickets and avoid lines at the Festival. The ticket
processing charge is only $1 instead of the regular $2, so take advantage
and come to one (or all) of our spectacular screenings. With choices ranging
from Romanian romantic comedy and festival opener HELLO! HOW ARE YOU?,
Slovakian and Roma CIGARETTES AND SONGS, to Greek documentary STREET SPECTACLES
as well as Turkish short film-compilation DO NOT FORGET ME ISTANBUL, among so
many others, SEE Fest will have a film for everyone’s liking!
The music which plays in the
trailer for SEE Film Fest is Zeljko Marasovich's"Mi Idemo Ljeljo" from Slavonske
Kraljice, sung by the ZHENA FOLK CHORUS. Grand and moving, it sums up the
unique beauty of the SEE Fest films. Zhena is based here in Los Angeles and
their concert this past weekend for Earth Day was a feast for the heart, eyes
and ears. Lovely voices, exotic harmonies, and beautiful women in a small venue
in downtown San Pedro on a Sunday afternoon. A rare treat!
Eve Pericich, Artistic
Director of Zhena, made a point of detailing the richness of each costume worn
by the singers. She also gave wonderful background and history about each song.
For those of us who did not understand the lyrics, it was still delightful,
though, truly, you did not need to understand the lyrics to have this music
touch your heart.
Remarkable is the fact that
one of the singers is half Mexican and half Japanese. Her voice had rung out
like a gorgeous bell, richly evocative of the South East European singers. If
that truly is not crossing cultures, then I don't know what is!
Winner of 2011 Silverdocs
BEST DOCUMENTARY, U.S./Swiss/Romanian OUR SCHOOL (Scoala Noastra) with
director Mona Nicoara in person. This award-winning documentary takes a wry but wistful look at the
experience of three Roma children in rural Romania, caught up in
political gamesmanship over whether and how to integrate public schools. Free Admission!
UCLA Film & TV
Archive in collaboration with the UCLA Center for European and Eurasian Studies
and UCLA International Institute's Human Rights Film Series, SEEFest and the
Consulate General of Switzerland in Los Angeles.
Gabriel and Gabriela have been happily married for 20 years but the
physical attraction is no longer there. Is this all life has to offer?
After independently of one another they discover the same internet chat
room and begin a secret romance online, they both fall in love … not
knowing they have actually found each other. As things get more
passionate and exciting, these two basically decent people struggle with
a major guilt trip. Even more confused is their adolescent and sexually
very active son Vladimir, when he finds out that his parents also have
desires. One day an encounter of the virtual lovers becomes
inevitable…Alissa Simon of Variety notes that the film is the
“antithesis of the grim naturalism of the best-known new Romanian
cinema” and “feels like a breath of fresh air, proving that even more
commercial films can deliver emotional epiphanies”.
George Dorobantu's ELEVATOR
will have a national audience when it screens on American public television
stations this week.
Part of Vanguard
International Cinema's film showcase on the MHz Networks channel found with
many PBS affiliates, the SEE Fest 2009 Audience Award and Best First Film Award
winner will appear on Los Angeles' "KCET Worldview" channel.
George Dorobantu at SEEFEST- May 4, 2009
Airings are on Thursday April
19 at 10 p.m. and again on Friday April 20 at 1 a.m.
Check your TV listings for
KCET Worldview or keyword search "Elevator" on your DVR to record and
playback "Elevator" again and again!
The Austin Film Society marked the opening of the 7- week long
retrospective of films from the South East European Film Festival
(SEEFest) of Los Angeles with last night's screening of dark comedy FUSE.The program is part of ESSENTIAL CINEMA
series, the brainchild of Austin Film Society’s legendary director of
programming and one of Society’s founding members, Chale Nafus.
SEEFest’s artistic director and curator of the retrospective, Vera
Mijojlic, will attend the May 15th and May 22nd screenings, at the famed
Alamo Drafthouse Theatre on South Lamar.
Vesna
Check out some of the articles on the program for more info on movies, dates, and tickets:
Los Angeles SEE Festival is honored to be sponsored and situated at the
prestigious Goethe Institut in Los Angeles. 2012 brings the Institute a new
director with a unique world background. We recently caught up with
Mr. Fareed Majari to hear more about his vision.
SEE FF: As the new director of the Goethe Institute,
what are your aspirations for the
coming year?
FM: Due to its wonderful staff the Goethe Institute in Los Angeles has
been very successful and I would be ill-advised not to stay the course. I would
like to connect our program here in Southern California with our institute’s
activities elsewhere in the world. We are currently experiencing both
encouraging and daunting changes in the Arab world. In our series “Narrating
the Arab Spring” we will present literature and films from this part of the
world.
SEE FF: With your unique world background – Moscow, Ramallah, Beirut among others – what can
you share about the challenges, distinctions and similarities between
these zones and our present-day situation.
FM:Coming from Beirut I find striking similarities. The Mediterranean
landscape, the sea, the easy-going life-style as well as the sophisticated
audience at our events. But of course, there are significant differences: In
the Middle East our program has developmental traits, i.e., we try to help
build up a cultural infrastructure. We train curators or cultural managers and
the like. Here, this part of our work is obsolete. We have to pique the
interest of a sophisticated audience and defend our position in a city teeming
with top quality cultural events. That’s clearly a challenge.
SEE FF: As the sponsor of SEE festival what are you
most excited about and interested in?
FM:South-Eastern Europe is a region I am very interested in. In my
work I have dealt with the question of how much culture can contribute to
conflict resolution. I still have no answer to that but I am interested in your
festival from that angle.
We look forward to the developments and connections Mr. Majari will be
making as connecting is truly a theme and constant in our event as well. Please
join us Thursday May 3 through Monday May 7, 2012. There’s a whole lot to SEE!
