Alternative Film & Video Festival Belgrade

Alternative Film & Video posters

Alternative Film & Video Festival Belgrade. Alternative Film/Video is an international Festival established in 1982 in Belgrade, Serbia (Yugoslavia). As a meeting place for artists, theorists, critics and the audience, the Festival’s goal is to record and theoretically define movements, promote constructive values and support new creative possibilities in visual media. The Festival provides a glimpse of the current state of new film and video tendencies in the region and the world. The founder and the organizer of the festival is Academic Film Center Belgrade of Students’ City Cultural Center.

The festival was held for the first time in 1982, as Alternative Film Festival, with the proclaimed intention to explore works that do not fall into easy categorizations, and that operate counter to dominant commercial and aesthetic trends. Selection included all modes of alternative, experimental, art, personal and radical films… Since 1985 the festival changed its name to Alternative Film/Video becoming one of the first film festivals in Europe to show films and videos equally in its competition selection. In that way, the festival established and further explored the relation of alternative film and video production to commercial and classical cinema, but also the relation between film and video aesthetics and production. Discontinued in 1990, the festival was reestablished in 2003, first as a regional (ex-Yugoslav) festival, and since 2006 as an international festival.

Important side programs aimed to form a referent frame for contextualizing the contemporary alternative and experimental cinema worldwide. The festival side program usually consists of two multimedia exhibitions, an opening performance, a workshop and various public programs. The Alternative Film/Video Research Forum (since 2012) and the two open panel discussions - one about the theme of the festival and another one with jury members on the festival's selection and awarded works - are traditionally places where film artists, theorists, historians, archivists and curators discuss and debate important topics for alternative cinema. These discussions are transcribed and published annually since 2003.

The festival's specificity since the beginning is that it doesn't award films hierarchically - instead, the jury selects works for the List of the Significant Achievements of the festival.

Editions

Alternative Film/Video 2018: Collectivism
Alternative Film/Video 2017: Subversion
Alternative Film/Video 2016: Art Movements
Alternative Film/Video 2015: Alternative Cinema in the Age of the Internet
Alternative Film/Video 2014: Experimental Film and Video Art
Alternative Film/Video 2013: Structural Film
Alternative Film/Video 2012: Film After Film
Alternative Film/Video 2011: Archives, Digitalization, Distribution of Alternative Films
Alternative Film/Video 2010: The Cine-Club Era
Alternative Film/Video 2009: Found Footage
Alternative Film/Video 2008: Memory
Alternative Film/Video 2007: Associations
Alternative Film/Video 2006: Laboratory
Alternative Film/Video 2005: Networks
Alternative Film/Video 2004: State of Things
Alternative Film/Video 2003: Between Squares

Alternative Film/Video was in hiatus 1991-2003

Alternative Film/Video 1982-1990 editions did not have thematic framework

Catalogs

From 2003 until 2017 the festival printed its catalogs in the following year because in that way publications could include transcripts of the round-table discussions held during the festival. These catalogs document the program of the festival, but also the state of the art and thought within the experimental/alternative/avant-garde film community.

Selected catalogs are presented below.

Alternative Film/Video 2018: COLLECTIVism, Festival Catalog, ed. Ivan Velisavljević. Beograd: Dom kulture Studentski grad. In Serbian and English. Cover by Anna Kiš Živković. 2018. PDF (6 mb).

Alternative Film/Video 2017: Alternative Film as a Subversive Art, Festival Catalog, Beograd: Dom kulture Studentski grad. In Serbian and English. Cover by Anna Kiš Živković. 2017. PDF (24 mb).

Alternative Film/Video 2016: Alternative Film and Art Movements, Festival Catalog, Beograd: Dom kulture Studentski grad. In Serbian and English. Cover by Anna Kiš Živković. 2016. PDF (22 mb)

Alternative Film/Video 2015: Alternative Cinema in the Age of the Internet, Festival Catalog, ed. Miodrag Milošević. Beograd: Dom kulture Studentski grad. In Serbian and English. Cover by Anna Kiš Živković. 2016. PDF (93 mb)

Alternative Film/Video 2014: Experimental Film and Video Art, Festival Catalog, ed. Miodrag Milošević. Beograd: Dom kulture Studentski grad. In Serbian and English. 2015.

Alternative Film/Video 2013: Structural Film, ed. Miodrag Milošević. Festival Catalog, Beograd: Dom kulture Studentski grad. In Serbian and English. 2014.

Publications

Alternative Discussions 2016/17: Art Movements/Subversion, Miodrag Milošević (ed.), Beograd: Dom kulture Studentski grad. In Serbian and English. Cover by Antun Gverović. 2018. PDF (19 mb).

Alternative Film/Video 2017 Newspaper: Subversion, Ivan Velisavljević (ed.), Beograd: Dom kulture Studentski grad. In Serbian and English. Cover and design by Antun Gverović. 2017. PDF (8 mb).

Links

http://www.alternativefilmvideo.org/
http://www.festivalfocus.org/festival_view.php?uid=940
https://www.facebook.com/alternativefilmvideo/