The new In Between competition programme is unique and unparalleled. The jury will be headed by the Academy-award winner Pierre Bismuth (France/Belgium), Mrs. Yael Eylat Van-Essen (Israel), researcher and lecturer in digital culture, and the Bulgarian production designer and artist Venelin Shurelov.
Sofia, April 22nd, 2009 – This year’s edition of the IN THE PALACE International Short Film Festival, Balchik, will include a new, unique competition programme called In between. It is the only one of its kind and will introduce an exclusive selection of works of digital arts. This special programme will gather the most interesting films from all over the world into this hybrid zone. The jury will include: Pierre Bismuth (France/Belgium), Yael Eylat Van-Essen (Israel) and Venelin Shurelov (Bulgaria).
In Between is a programme about the interactions of different arts, about bold and inspiring actions in the field of ‘the moving character’ and the venturesome ways to escape all established forms and formats. French conceptual artist Pierre Bismuth is going to arrive in Balchik to head the jury in this unparalleled programme. He is noted for his intelligent dismantling of cultural products and the wry and often humorous shifts and\'misuses\' to which he subjects his material. Bismuth\'s work constitutes a creative intervention into familiar codes, habits and objects, in order to expose the mechanisms of visibility and the creation of value and meaning.
Bismuth has recently exhibited at the British Film Institute in London, the Team Gallery in New York, Kunsthalle Bern, the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, and the Kadist Art Foundation in Paris. In 2005, he won an Oscar for co-authoring the screenplay of the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, alongside with Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman.
The other international guest-juror in the In Between Programme is Mrs Yael Eylat Van-Essen, researcher and lecturer in Digital Culture, Digital Art Theory and Museum Studies. In 2008-2009, she was the Head of the Art and New-Media Department and the Academic Director of the International Curatorial Studies Program (CSP) at the School of Arts and Technology in Tel-Aviv. For a long time, she was the head of the Digital Art Department in the Camera Obscura School of Art. During that time, she was involved with the organization of many exhibitions and publications. From 2006 until 2008, she was a member of the curatorial team and a media curator at the Museum of the City of Tel-Aviv and editor of a series of lectures on Art and Curatorship at the Center for Contemporary Art.
“My works are created to explore inner conditions of the human body focused on its own marginalization. The topics, such as movement and immobility, mankind and construction, human and inhuman, appear to be a sub-product of a social, political, economical and cultural situation.” says Venelin Shurelov – the Bulgarian juror of the In Between Programme. Theatre and performance arts are the main influences in his works, others include sculpture, drawing, installation, video and art territory. The composition, called “Inhuman curiosity” (wooden figures, gathered in a circle around a huge metal box), was exhibited at the St. Catherine Square in central Brussels as part of the Eropalia Festival, dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the European Union. Shurelov is the founding member and lecturer in the Master of Digital Arts Programme in the National Arts Academy.
April 15th was the deadline for foreign film submissions. ‘More than 4000 short films from all over the world have already been received (the number of films received last year was 1600 from 72 different countries) and this number breaks last year’s record’ the organizers from the Format SFF Foundation say. The IN THE PALACE International Short Film Festival has turned into the festival with the greatest amount of submissions. The deadline for Bulgarian films is May 15th, when the final statistics will be announced.
The 7th In The Palace International Short Film Festival, Balchik, is organised by the Format SFF Foundation with the kind support of the National Institute of Culture - Cultural Center The Palace – Balchik, Balchik Municipality, the National Film Center and the Ministry of Culture.
