News

As we stated int he reference book regardless the crisis we had record amount of work this year where we made record amount of pieces. We started the year with a workshop in Oradea, a spot and poster competition of which workshop’s pieces could be seen at the festival along with other creative camp’s. For the first time we could delegate film makers to Estonia’s workshop that was organized by our brand new pre-jury member. The 7th GomBuSho started stammeringly but eventually gave us 15 works in total. One of the big hits of the year was Blind Diary international workshop in Slovenia. The 15-17 years of age mass communication team from St. Laszlo high school did pretty well there. This was followed by a rapid visit to Banská Štiavnica, then the 9th BuSho and we could again take part in „Youth in Action” programme in Balchik, Bulgaria. Now these can all be seen together as we uploaded them to our workshopska channel, go see and love them!

The award ceremony of the 9th Busho International Short Film Festival took place in Budapest at the Vörösmarty cinema on the 7th of September. This year, 78 short films were selected from 939 entries to be contenders in the competition, which the moviegoers could watch with the international and the student jury together. The winners were awarded with the beautiful statuettes made by Solide Art.

The members of the student jury took the floor and presented two special prizes and a main prize. Bence Kránicz gave the following reasoning about their decision: “There was no other film like this one among the contenders that could weave romance with science fiction in such a natural and easy manner. Upon catching the green light in Anthony Sabet’s film we also stepped out of our dull weekdays. Walk the light becomes a special prize.” László Sepsi followed: Among the selected awardees there was only one that ignited vehement discussions among the members of the student jury – indicating that this piece is a seemingly important work of its period. The exemplary dialogues, the sensitive portrayal of rural identity and the forward-looking utilisation of trash – aesthetics made us choose this film. The second special prize belongs to Nándor Bera for „Trees”. Finally, Balázs Szövényi-Lux evaluated the winner of the student jury’s main prize. “The main prize goes to a short film in which artistic form and content meet eachother in an endearing and imaginative way, which mixes humour and drama in a perfect proportion, and contemplates eternal questions in a playful yet serious manner.” The student jury is proud to present the prize to Péter Vácz for „Rabbit and Deer.”

It’s almost unbelievable and even more shocking when written: 9th BuSho International Short Film Festival again in Budapest and many more cities within and beyond the border, with plenty of entries, side events and international spin. For real, on the evening of 3-September this year’s short film harvest will kick off at the Vörösmarty Cinema and will go along all week only to reveal 2013 BuSho’s winner on Saturday night. The competition program will be screened in 15 one-hour sections during the 3 days and repeated once at the main venue. Traditionally BuSho Festival is willing to show those shorts to the public that could not make it to the competition by the so called information screenings and all registered Hungarian pieces will be shown as well. The inevitable side programs of BuSho Festival will of course be held again, such as screenings of partner festivals’ bests, workshops, introductions of film competitions, exhibitions and concerts in Trafik as well as Culture Disco at Africafé! There will be a special screening too, brought to you by this year’s main sponsor the Visegrád Fund, that will show you some of the early works of the best contemporary directors, like Péter Tímár, Jacek Bławut, Jan Svěrák and Dušan Hanák. Int he frame of a short film tender started in spring and next year’s Bohumil Hrabal centenary, we close each day with a Jiří Menzel film in appretiation to the worthily high ranked Czech humour.

The Visegrad Filmfest offering selections from the program of various international festivals, is to be staged by Polifilm Foundation. We will present awardwinning pieces of Polish, Czech, Slovak and Hungarian filmfestivals. Each invited studio is to bring a “Best of” selection, which would guarantee professional quality. After the screenings the professional jury panel holds a consultation and an evaluating discussion, actively involving the filmmakers and the audience. We welcome numerous visitors at our events, where we wish to provide an opportunity for our partners to meet directors from Central-Europe and introduce international possibilities to Hungarian filmmakers. The Visegrad Filmfest takes place in Aranytíz Cultural Centre (10 Arany János Street, Budapest 1051) and all programes can be visited free of charge. More information: www.polifilm.hu.

The 7th GomBuSho multicultural workshop camp has ended last week on which beside the many works the image elements of this year’s festival have also been made. You had to send the screening copies of the competition program by 15-July that more-less arrived. We finalized the detailed breakdown of the competition sections and as usual the screenings will be in 15 one-hour sections int he duration of 3 days. Those filmmakers whose short made it to the competition we again offer the chance to take part in the festival in person. In order to participate they have to fill out the accreditation form by 1-August the latest! The catalogue will be sent out soon, we’d like to ask everyone to check all the relevant details and synopsis to avoid any mistake. The first official press release will also be sent out in the beginning of August giving you more details about the 9th BuSho festival.

After an extensive selection process the pre-jury finished its work, the result is the competition programme constituted of 78 short films (out of 939 entries) in the categories of experimental (7), animation (15) and fiction films (56). Our old friend and presently resident of Estonia, Edina Csüllög joined the pre-jury (Tamás Patrovits, Annaida Orosz, István Mag, László Rimóczi) described the nominated films the following way: “There are too many good films, it was a difficult job to mark down any contender, and nevertheless, there were three films that blew me away, so much so, that I wanted to award them immediately.” In the case of one film I even commenced some “stalking”; I looked up the e-mail address of the director on the internet and congratulated on his or her work (I just hope that these films arouse the interest of the jury members as well). To my amazement there was a shortage in funny films ­– or it is me who is lacking a sense of humour. All in all the competition is very strong, so those who did not make it into the selection do not need to feel ashamed!” Similarly to the previous years we would like to present a few of the films that could not make it into the selection (because of the time limit – which was causing heartache to the jury members) outside of the competition in the informational panorama section. Just as we did previously we’d like to screen each Hungarian film (if possible), so we ask those who are not in competition to send us the screener copies! We congratulate to the creators and will get in connection with them ASAP; we are awaiting the screening copies until the 15th of July. Those who would like to attend the festival in person can apply for an accreditation until the 1st of August.

While our interpreter and member of the renewed BuSho Team, Anna Sólyom showers us with brain-wrecking slogans, the sky above us is blue, and we are becoming more and more independent from the “fiscal rationalization” that seems to be trending nowadays. Oh, joy! We have improved and restructured our team, and we will present the festival at the usual high niveau! Our partners from Hungary as well as cross-border venues have indicated that they want to strengthen their places in our network, the recruiting process of the international jury is going nicely, many partner festivals are presenting premieres of films, and we have started

Every year as the finish of the pre-jurying we collectively check out the entries sent by institutions like academies, studios or associations. We received 19 collections as such this year with nearly 200 shorts. On the process of selecting we noticed that some shorts were just sent with no filled entry form causing quite a headache for the pre-jury. Following this process the stats have obviously changed: in 2013 we received 939 entries (723 fictions, 102 animations and 114 experimental) and as so the ranking of the countries has changed as well that basically shows who forgot to fill out the entry forms :) The minor change is on the top spot means that Spain won the entry-competition, followed by Germany 2nd and Great Britain 3rd. We will inform you about the competition program's line up by 20-June, so everyone keep their fingers crossed! 

After the 2013 modifications in entry regulations the deadline is over now. The closedown went in 3 phases that caused a bit of confusion on international level but fortunately it had no effect on the willing of entering. The best way to summarize the statistic is a table below:

We received 858 entries in total (643 fiction, 95 animation and 110 experimental) of which we made a stat that still shows no surprise in number of entries by nations, the same countries represent the most shorts as in previous years. The most were sent from Germany, in the first three there are Spain and Great Britain too, then comes France, the US and our little country with the same number of entries! Pre-jurying is on the way, the program will be public around june 20th on our website!

"We talk about the world of Hrabal in the Czech Republic while the maestro has a whole galaxy in Hungary" – said the Academy award winner Czech director, Jirí Menzel in the Countrytrip (Országkirándulás) event in Budapest when introducing the tender. In regards the competition he envied the Hungarians for the idea to celebrate the maestro's birth 100th anniversary. The maker of the winning piece will be awarded with a €1000.- prize while the further runner-ups can spend a weekend and beer dinner in Prague or can call up the atmosphere of the city by the river Vltava with the company of a barrel of beer! Beside these some packages of Czech, English and Hungarian books will also be handed over. Jirí Menzel who is visiting Budapest for being the head of the jury at Titanic Festival jokingly said that the main prize is so huge and tempting that he also entered the competition. The winners will be announced by an international jury that contains writers, actors and other public figures related to Hrabal on 28-March-2014 the day of the 100th anniversary.

We are again announcing our spot and poster competition to which you can enter with 30 seconds or one minute short films and posters in the categories of CAROUSEL and FLOOD. No age, sex or religious restrictions. We are curious about your opinion from all over the world! The first 3 places, in all categories, will be awarded, and can take part of the 7th GomBuSho multicultural one-week workshop in summer 2013 for free! All pieces sent to us will be shown or exhibited on the 9th BuSho Festival.

Although we promise it to be done by the beginning of December each year, we always finalize it by the middle due to the plenty tasks, but finally we're pleased to announce that the registration for the BuSho 2013 will be open by just one week before the end of the world. There will be minor changes again in the entering system, mainly that the postal cost will be replaced by an entry fee! It means that individual entries will only be accepted via online registration which is required to be filled out and entry fee will be as much as of € 5.- This amount hopefully won't put anyone off of entering but will help the festival for difficult times. Criterias are the same: Shorts of fiction, animation and experimental categories are accepted that was made after 1-January-2011, no longer than 30 minutes length!