BEFORE FIFTEEN: ROAD(bu)SHOW 3.

Following the exceptionally rich fall tour, which included, just for mentioning, Porto, Prague, Istanbul, Baku, Amarante, Delhi, Syktykvar, Izmir, Yerevan, Bali, Cleveland and Gdansk was the route on which BuSho has roamed with different presentations, but there is no stopping, the next chapter is coming! For the february deadline we found out that out of our collaboration with old-new partners at Visegrad Project we are going to participate in five other collaborations. One of them is the returning Beast - Meet The East from Portugal, an other one is the Armenian Rolan Bykov Festival. We are joining again two Youth in Action exchange programs as well, of course if they will be approved for financing.

Balázs Simonyi’s film Ultra was screened on february the 7th in Minsk at the XXVI. International BookFair, in the 300 person venue at the Belorus Olympic Academy, where students and the Olympic Commitee’s guests, with interests in sports could see this great movie. We sincerely hope that following the negotions in progress soon Busho will be able to introduce itself in the Belorus capital. „Because of the 2nd annual European Games one of the main focuses of the event was sports. In relation to this our embassy has presented the film called Ultra at the Olympic Academy of Belorus. We would like to thank festival director Tamás Gábeli and filmmaker Balázs Simonyi for their collaboration. In relation to the screening of the film The Olympic Academy has shown interest in screening the film for sportpsychologists and sportpsychology experts, and inviting the filmmaker as well. They are in negotions about that with the directory of the Academy.”

After last year’s success there was an other BuSho presentation in Bulgaria. – 2019. february 14th in Sofia, Dimova Nelli’s summary: „The screening was held yesterday, with bigger audience than expected, but I could only make photos at the begining, while the lights were on. The pictures show the Head of the Institute, Györgyi Dimitrow and Docent Ivan Ivanov, professor at the National University of Film and Theater, with whom the bulgarian national Radio Station, has made an interview for their cultural programme Artefir. According to the opinions following the screening, they really liked Last Call, Chuchotage, and Cube Man, but there were some, who didn’t understand Wonderpussy and Best Game Ever. Docent Ivan Ivanov has said some beutiful words about this year’s selection, has also mentioned last years films, talked about hungarian film in general and of course, about BuSho too, he has introduced most of the films to the audience. Iam very enthusiastic about the screening, mostly because of the high number of audience turnout, (and the film were not even screened with bulgarian subtitles) secondly, because this event is starting to become a nice tradition. Once again, I would like to thank this screening oppurtinity in the name of the Institute also! We are looking forward for next year’s screening.”

At the end of february Jelena Gora has provided a location for the 22nd ZOOM festival, where out of the 2017 material, Balázs Dudás has won the main award, and this year Take me please by Olivér Hegyi has landed in the competition, the director participated at the festival and the award ceremony, he gave the following summary: „It was really cool! Jelenia Gora is a fantastic place, the crew was really nice, (I havent met all of them though, the hotel was superb, I swam in the pool every morning) There was a small roundtable with the animated film jury the last day. Evereyone present from the animated section has talked a little about their films, that was also really great. I took a lot of walks to the neighboring villages, through the waterfront, and the second day they took us with a bus to the mountains into a big tent party with all the participants of the festival. They screened 2 full lenght features every night, we usually sat into the screenings for those, I didn’t mind coming home empty handed at all! Jelenia Gora was a 10/10 experience for me, thank you for sending me and recommending me this oppurtunity!”

The last day of february almost at the same time there was another 2 premiere hundreds of miles away from each other. For the first hungarian short film screening at the Kiev Cinema in Ukraine, the full ukrainian subtitles were finished for the films, Tamás Viczián, education and culture diplomat had the following this to say about the event: „It went very well, the audience liked it,they showed that during the screening and on their way out of the screening room also. They thanked me for the screening and had been vocal about their enthusiasm. There were about 60-70 people in the 90 person screening room. We will probably make some cuts in the current material, as 130 minutes seemed a little too long for the viewers. We don’t have the exact dates, but If you’re in it, we wold like to do screenings at Uzhorod, Lvyv, Ivano-Frankivszk, Ternopil, Csernyihiv, and Harkiv as we have the subtitles for it.”

The same time Judit Eszes, a volunteer at the Körössy Csoma Programme has given her recollections of the screening held at the Hungarian Library of New York: „It went really well, the library was full, which is 30 people, the audience loved the films. I found contacts to the NYC Short Film festival and The Manhattan Short Film Festival, I also sent an invitation to Professor Bardosh, unfortunately they did not show up, for the april screening I will try to get more contacts, I also would be happy to meet someone to collaborate with in the future. Thank you again for the short films!”

Paul Sloop, Short Films Programming Manager of the 43. Cleveland International Film Festival informed us: „Our official lineup will be released on March 1st. I wanted to let you know that all of the films you sent us were very good. We really enjoyed them and I want to make sure we do this again next year, hopefully a bit sooner in our process. We will gladly offer waivers. I think only one film made our final cut but it was a close call for two or three of the others. Regardless, I wanted to say that our team had a discussion about how good those films were and we want to make sure to see them as early as possible in the future in the hopes we will find even more space to include them in our final lineup. ps: Chuchotage was the film that was selected.”

Giving a frame to the whole point, what makes the picture full is following the description of the past from the first paragraph, we draw a picture of the future as well, the next chapter is on the horizon, preparation has started for Quito, Helsinki and Minsk, we will make up for the delayed visit to Guwahati, there is a Kazany screening in progress and during the summer we will go to the Figari Film Festival Sardínia, then there is a premiere planned in Sao Paolo and in the fall we have Beast Porto and Rolan Bykov Yerevan scheduled, so there is no stopping, we are going with full fuel, I should say!