Lviv Welcomes Fifth International Short Film Festival Wiz-Art 2012

Lviv, August 2, 2012. The last weekend of July was dedicated to the importance of independent and indie film production across the world. The Annual Lviv International Festival of Short Film Wiz-Art created a collaborative program inviting international film lovers and film producers to share their joy and love for film in a multi-day festival.

Celebrating its fifth year in the running, the program of the festival consisted of competition and non-competition screenings, as well as producer/author presentations and retrospectives. International jury, made up of three representatives from the cinema industry and culture, selected winners in the following categories of fiction, animation, and experimental film. The WIZ-ART Festival showed the newest tendencies in the art of cinema, as well as promoted the importance of independent film production in the race toward creative expression.

In preparation for the festival, the Wiz-Art NGO received a massive collection of 668 film submissions from 49 countries. Through the process of meticulous screening, 97 films from 39 countries have been selected. Also, guests from Canada, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Ukraine, and other countries attended the event to present their featured films and discuss the “how-to” behind the scenes. “It took us five years to organize this festival. For some reason people still like to sit in a room and watch a screen where a light projects pictures. Quality of film gives you emotion, impression and allows you to travel everywhere without moving anywhere. You just use your brain, and that was the object of Wiz-Art illustrating the importance of film in present day,” said Olia Reiter, director of the festival.

For countries like Ukraine, any form of digital media or digital expression is a more up-and-coming professional medium. Ukraine’s history, before its Independence, played a huge role in the lack of media coverage, the lack of film production, and most importantly the lack of creative expression. Today, Ukraine is moving towards a more film involved society, and gives other developing countries a run for their money in this particular area. “We already have partially formed a new generation of young directors who not only have grown in independent Ukraine but also in the context of movie production. The old cinema has died and there was nothing afterward, and now we have new filmmakers who are competitive because they have no borders. They travel a lot and communicate through Internet and Skype and they’re not as confined as the filmmakers were before,” explained Larysa Artiukhina, movie director.

Alas, most independent films are produced on a low budget which creates a sort of thematic role in the production of indie films, resulting in the unmistakable recognition of what makes it indie and/or independent. Nonetheless, as independent films will never cease to exist, and with movie production becoming the new major digital medium around the world, Ukrainians are anxiously anticipating for their time to shine in the limelight of major film production, said numerous movie industry representatives in attendance of the Festival . “I think that movie production in Ukraine will start to pick up along with the emergence of creative groups of people, because it’s necessary to find one’s own people in such an industry. Then step-by-step coalitions like directors and cameramen will emerge, they will be creating more movies, and Ukraine will have her own movie production,” concluded Andriy Zlanich, script writer.