Kino Otok - Isola Cinema
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A lively Saturday: Kino Otok at its peak

If there’s one thing you can’t miss at the beginning of every June, it’s the Saturdays of the Kino Otok – Isola Cinema festival, when Izola is bustling with festival action from early morning until late at night. There will be film screenings at no less than six venues, masterclasses, workshops and a night of making friends to the thumping music. Guests Bill Morrison, Michele Bernardi, Jan Cvitkovič, Shoghakat Vardanyan, Matjaž Ivanišin, Nika Jurman and Tobias Wiemann will share their experiences with the youngest and slightly older audience. And for a good night, we will light the candles for our 20th birthday!

Submarine with Michele Bernardi, Tobias Wiemann and young selectors

Renowned Italian illustrator and animator Michele Bernardi, who co-created the legendary La linea and Pimpa series, will be with us today! At 10am, he will present a selection of animated films and original animation material from the filmstrip era to an audience of young and adult audiences at the Manzioli Palace. At 15:00, he will have an animation workshop with children. Meanwhile, the JSKD Izola also hosts a programme of short films for the youngest at 10am, called Magical Friendships, followed by an optical toys workshop. All these events are free of charge. At 18:00, primary school pupils from Prade Primary School come to the Cultural Centre to discuss the film Der Pfad (The Path, 2022), which was selected by the young selectors for the festival’s programme, and will have a chance to talk to the film’s director, Tobias Wiemann, after the screening. The Young Selectors are part of the European network of film festivals Young Selectors for Young Audiences!, which lives in seven countries with the support of the Creative Europe MEDIA programme.

Jan Cvitkovič with young selectors, Shoghakat Vardanyan and Bill Morrison at Art Cinema Odeon

The day starts at 10am at the Art Cinema Odeon with a screening of El eco (Tatiana Huezo, 2023), a film in which the lives of children in a remote Mexican village are linked to nature, animals and people, as well as to love, illness and death. And then there are the high school young selectors who, in cooperation with the Slovenian Cinematheque, have chosen the Venice award-winning Bread and Milk (2001) for the Kino Otok audience: at 12:00, they will present it and have a post-screening discussion with the director, Jan Cvitkovič. The IDFA award-winning documentary 1489 (2023), selected by the young student selectors at this year’s Trieste Film Festival, will be screened at 14:00, followed by a discussion with the film’s Armenian director Shoghakat Vardanyan. At 16.15, Fidai Film (Kamal Aljafari, 2024) brings together visual interventions in official Israeli archives and parts of the Palestinian archive seized by the Israeli army in Beirut. To round off the day, the final chapter of the Found Image programme begins at 6pm, a unique combination of film screenings and masterclass, featuring recent short films by Bill Morrison, one of the world’s best-known found image poets, who will talk in depth about his work.

PRO Otok with Slovenian examples of successful short films

Manzioli Palace hosts the Short Scene at Kino Otok at 3 pm, during which director Matjaž Ivanišin will present a case study of his short film This is How the Summer Ended (2022) and animator Nika Jurman will present her short animated film Borbike (2022), followed by a discussion with the participants of the screenwriting workshop and the rest of the audience.

Arrigoni Open-Air Cinema: last night with Abderrahmane Sissako’s latest film

At 21:00, we will be screening the last feature film under the stars of the year, the latest creation by Mauritanian Oscar nominee Abderrahmane Sissako, Black Tea (2024). This mysterious film about love and freedom bridges the divides between Africa and China, dreams and reality, and past and present.

Celebration at the Lighthouse

Video on the Beach will host its fourth themed programme of short films and talks with filmmakers, Beyond Evanescence, at 8.45 p.m., followed by the Nights of Lights – a lover of disco, nu-disco, re-edit and deep house with a dark wave past and an interest in psychedelia, DiscoorsettO, will be the musical guest of the evening. And to celebrate the night, we’ll blow out the candles for Kino Otok’s 20th birthday! Entrance to the entire evening programme of the Lighthouse is free.

 

For a detailed overview of the festival programme, please check the schedule of all screenings!