News

In our 2nd part of presentations review we take a look back to the end of part 1 by mentioning two important events: Delhi Film Days with which we are preparing for continuing to cooperate at the end of January. Secondly mentioning Izmir Film Festival where Kockaember (Cubeman) was representing us, even so it did not win any award, we managed to get into the Turkish buzz.

After we ended the 14th BuSho Festival itself, we sent out the unreceived awards by post, started the making of our reference booklet, the final report as well as the accounting, which will probably last until the next Festival as usual. In the meanwhile though, we also started preparing for the presentations abroad as follows.
 

These few days passed so fast and we already saying farewell, year after year when the BuSho is over. In the beginning we planned for 5-years intervals, just like our comrades back in the day – and if we stick to this method, we looking to close the 3rd term as such. But if we calculate according to astrology and numerology, it was the second 7-year cycle. Though we keep our feet on the ground and proudly announce that we put a successful festival on the table in 2018, despite the numbers. But since it is supposed to be a summarizing report, we cannot leave the numbers out.

The main prize of the 14th BuSho International Short Film Festival was awarded to “Across the line” by the Israeli director Nadav Shlomo Giladi, the Silver BuSho went to Hajni Kis for her short “Last Call”, and the Bronze BuSho Award will make its owners proud in Belgium for the film “May Day” by Olivier Magis and Fedrik de Beul. The Award Ceremony of BuSho was held in Puskin Cinema on the 1st of September. Of the total about one thousand submissions 64 short films were screened in the competition program in Puskin Cinema, where the audience could watch the works together with the International Jury and the Student Jury, and subsequently at the repeated screenings in the evening in Art+ Cinema.

So once we begun the introduction of the Hungarian shorts by stating the home field isn’t an advantage in competition, now please take a bunch of the international line up as well. Nothing chronological, nothing in frame, just as they are.

Honestly, I’ve been thinking over these years after each award ceremony, that although Hungary is not at all a corrupt country, people may think we are voting for home when awarding so many Hungarian shorts. I won’t start proving how much we do not influence the jury’s decision, but by looking back to their picks from the previous years, how could one not notice the high numbers of Hungarian shorts being awarded? The Festival’s initiative at the very beginning was to make an event in which Hungarians can compete in international level, in order to close the gap of quality difference. Then a decade went by and now it seems we not only closed up, but almost pass them by. Let’s speak openly, no doubt the Hungarian shorts are indeed good, encouriging, imaginative, sensitive, expressive and so on. This is why I came up with the idea to give you a sample of this year’s Hungarian shorts prior to the festival.

The competition program of the 14th BuSho International Shortfilm Festival will open with a danish short subject feature and will close with an australian short film, due in the last week of August at multiple locations in Budapest and nationwide. As we announced earlier, the 5 member jury selected 64 short films into competition, including 43 fictional, 16 animated and 5 experimental films. The Festival presents its program with the participation of 24 countries in three days with 15 screening blocks, each lasting one hour, as usual. There will be a hungarian film in each block, as well as an animated and experimental one. The main location including the opening and awarding ceremonies, is Puskin Cinema, just a sin previous years, the evening second screening will be held at Art+Cinema, but as a new addition to the program this year there will be panorama screeinings every day at the Italian Institute as well. This year will also see the Hungarian Panorama day and the works partnerfestivals, workshops and the Visegrád collaboration. We would like to ask the filmmakers in competition to submit an accreditation on the website of the festival, if they want to participate the festival personally. In case of questions of the festival or the participation, please write to reception@busho.hu or entry@busho.hu!

After the deadline, when we again received almost thousand entries, our re-updated pre-jury board have finished their selection process – involving a brand new member from last year’s student jury – as a result 64 shorts are in competition for the 3 main prizes and 8 category prizes at the 14th BuSho Festival. The screening time is 15 hours all together - as usual, 16 animation, 5 experimental and 43 fiction films, with 1 Hungarian short in each screening block.

The Law of Large Numbers has once again proved itself to be true – the most contenders come from countries that have finished on top of the entry-statistics, bearing in mind that this may not mean anything. There are exceptions that prove the rule – in case of countries submitting a small number of shorts: this gems come from Australia, Iran, Iceland or Uruguay. Let us know listen to what the members experienced...

The 14th BuSho preparation and entry phase has ended, and in sporty language all went as expected. We again neared the thousands entries which is a perfect field to put on a quality competition of. At least the experts and the public say so, and that is what we want. Most of the 957 entries came via Filmfreeway, exactly 568. Half of it through BuSho's own portal the other one through Reelport. The category breakdown is also as usual, although many films were labelled short or feature, which isn't exactly explaining what gender the piece is. Again the fiction films make the most of the entries...

After closing of last year’s archiving, registration opens for next year’s 14th BuSho Festival. According to modern time challenges you can enter on our online submission platform which went again through some minor changes that can be red in our terms&conditions. Basically we expect shorts of fiction, animation and experimental that are made after 1-January-2016 and with length of maximum of 30 minutes. Beside the refreshed own platform we reduced alternatives of submissions, only reelport and filmfreeway will remain.

The BuSho world road show was carrying on last month with presentations in a few places, but more intensively than ever. On 26-February The Balassi Institute of Ljubljana held a Hungarian film night, where the first part of the BuSho selection was showcased. The shorts and the festival was introduced by Matevz Jerman critic, and after that an informal discussion was opened for the public. We again recieved invitation from Mecal of Barcelona...

COOL TOUR / JUGENDKULTURARBEIT: After the preparation meeting held in the fall of 2017 in Karlovac and spiced up by flood and fire alarm, the hardest winter-week of this year greeted us where we had to head for the Northern part of Germany instead of the Bahamas, our destination was Oldenburg, a city with 170 thousand inhabitants; we resided in the Cultural Youth Worker Centre.  At last, the implementation phase of the Finding Humanity human rights documentary projects has come...

The delegates of antecedent BuSho festivals, that is István Kovács, Dávid Géczy and Gábor Hörcher gave the proverbial baton to Kata Lovrity, who had the honour and privilege to take part at the prestigious Akbank Festival in Turkey with her animation “Volcano Island”, she told us upon her arrival back home: “It was an uplifting experience, thank you for the recommendation! Áron and Co are very cool and helpful people, we were for 5 days in Istanbul, my sister travelled with me. The Q&A was very interesting, the audience addressed unusual questions (and not the run-of-the-mill ones like: why this or that happens in the film, where did we get the idea etc), they had a professional attitude, which implies that they were professionals, the Q&A lasted for circa 1.5 hours. They also posed theoretical questions (why it is beneficial to create a short film, how many short films does it take to gather experience for a feature film, should the budget be tight what shall it be spent rather on, what is it like to work together with a script writer etc)...

I was just preparing for our Tallinn presentation on 23-January, when they were announcing the Academy Award finalists on television, so I surely kept one of my eyes on the event, knowing that our former jury member Ildikó Enyedi's movie has also a chance to be nominated. So when they said On Body and Soul, it was no doubt we should start the evening presentation with this breaking news story...

In connection to the Hungarian Cultural Day, we held 3 international presentations of the best Hungarian shorts of 13th Busho during January 2018. First Filmbase of Dublin hosted the programme, then it was Tallinn where we took part in person only to finish the winter conquer in Sofia. You can read a short feedback of all these in our report, obviously a bit more detailed one about the trip to Estonia...

START ME UP /// As we reported earlier, we folded the busiest year of all time in last December in Beijing and then at Porto Femme Presentation with the Hungarian Ladies' pack, which seems to be just a beginning of a beautiful friendship. What else can we do in the new year than to overcome of ourselves of last year, starting in January with some presentations with co-operation of Balassi Instiutute...

After closing of last year’s archiving, registration opens for next year’s 14th BuSho Festival. According to modern time challenges you can enter on our online submission platform which went again through some minor changes that can be red in our terms&conditions. Basically we expect shorts of fiction, animation and experimental that are made after 1-January-2016 and with length of maximum of 30 minutes. Beside the refreshed own platform we reduced alternatives of submissions, only reelport and filmfreeway will remain.