Opening Ceremony at IFF SCHLINGEL
The International Film Festival for Children and Young Audience will once more attract small and big film enthusiasts into the city cinemas. Next to the main event locations CineStar, at Galerie Roter Turm, and the Kino Metropol, the Clubkino Siegmar this year will also be a festival location for, however, the first time.
// Opening Ceremony for all on 30 September at the Opera House Chemnitz
The SCHLINGEL will already commence on the 30 September with the attendance of the Ambassador of the Republic of Island, S.E. Martin Eyjólfsson, the Prime Minister of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer, as well as the Lord Mayor of the city of Chemnitz, Barbara Ludwig, with a grand gala at the Opera House. Together with interested citizens of Chemnitz, invited guests from politics, culture and film industry as well as visitors of the city Chemnitz, the opening of the 23. SCHLINGEL will be celebrated. The guests will have an exclusive insight into this year’s festival programme, exciting film clips and interesting film guests. The opening ceremony will be presented by Ben (KiKA). The clue: All guests who show their tickets of the opening ceremony at our cinema cash desk, will receive a free ticket to watch a movie of their preference during the festival.
// For the First Time, We Will Also Be Screening Short Films by Up-And-Coming Film Makers
In total, 235 films from 51 countries will be screened of which 124 will be competing in the competition categories Children’s Films, Junior Films, Youth Films, Animation Films, German Films as well as Short Films for trophies and prizes. Further productions will be screened non-competitively in the section Panorama. This also includes the short film programme “Neighbourhood”, which was established 3 years ago together with the partner festivals Zlín and Poznań. To complete this year's festival programme and give students a smooth transition into the autumn holidays, selected films from Island, which is this year's focus country at the festival, have also been put together in a programme.
For the first time, the festival has a programme dedicated to short films created by children and teenagers. Contestants were able to submit their film until the middle of July to the competition. After an online voting, the best films were chosen and on the 3 of October they will be screened on the big screen in the category “Made by You”. Shortly after this screening, a join-in programme will be offered to big and small guests in the second story of the Galerie Roter Turm.
More than 1100 productions from 89 countries- about half of them were short featured and animated films- were judged by the seven programme commissioners in the last weeks and the best of them were chosen to form the programme of the festival. Visitors can look forward to seeing guests from productions from India, Canada, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, South Africa as well as South America. But also excellent German films will be screened during the festival. Out of all films shown this year, one film will celebrate its international premiere, three will celebrate their European debut and 30 will celebrate their debut on the German screen. In the short film programme, five films will have their world premiere, three of them their international premiere, four of them their European premiers and 26 of them their German premiers.
Many international guests, actors and film producers have announced their attendance. After the screening, the film teams will be made available for conversations. Due to all films being screened in their original language, a rise in curiosity to learn more about different cultures and languages may occur. Translations into German will be live in the cinema's auditoriums.
// Great Variety of Workshops Encourages Our Guests Participation
In addition to the screenings, the SCHLINGEL offers a variety of workshops for kindergartens, schools and day care centres. Together with its partners, the festival will, for example, tackle the following questions: How does a camera work? How to make a film with an iPad? How to make puppets come alive? This wide variety of workshops is complimented with a coolness training for children and teenagers, information on how to write a film critic as well as the creative walkway. At the separate and adventure filled stations, the guests can do arts, crafts and try to solve mysteries. The participant will learn how pictures come to life, what tricks are used during films or how optical illusions work.
The guests will be greeted by the SCHLINGEL-Mascot Frederik at the cinema. The 11-year-old is in the sixth grade and goes to the Montessori School. His duties as a mascot are to attend the opening ceremony of the festival, to present the children’s movies as well as to attend the official award ceremony. Around 24.000 guests are to be expected, which include 400 industry guest from near and far. The main patron of this festival is the Prime Minister of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer. Co-organiser is the Saxon State Office for Private Broadcasting and New Media SLM.
// Events for Industry Guests and Online Launch of the Project YoUCi
With the 2. SCHLINGEL Industry Forum at the Oberdeck at the Tuffner Möbelgalarie Chemnitz, the festival expands their event range for their industry guests by once again hosting an industry get-together for the children’s and youth film scene. Amidst panel debates, discussion rounds for and with film experts as well as with the production shop Coming Soon, the forum enables excellent opportunities to exchange experiences and for networking. By the qualitative and quantitative expansion of the offers for industry and accredited guests, the festival gains wide-ranging national and international importance and thereby secures a consistently high number of visitors from all around the world.
Within the programme for the industry visitors on the 2 of October at 12.00 pm, there will be a presentation held concerning the new SCHLINGEL-project “Young Urban Cinema” (YoUCi) by the festival director Michael Harbauer and Kristian Voigt, head of creative clicks GmbH.
This project is a platform that reaches across European nations and enables future cinema hits of the children and teenager film scene to be introduced, discussed and evaluated in front of a camera by children and teenagers. In addition to the evaluations, the platform also offers many film trailers, making-of videos and background information.
Educators will also be able to extend their knowledge on current topics. The festival once again offers conferences for teachers in which the topic of “Forming Opinions During the Times of Fake News and Echo Chambers. It’s A Challenge That Goes Beyond Technology!” is dedicated to. The real world in which individuals live in is ever more expanding into the world of virtual reality. As a consequence, complex challenges are created a have to be dealt with by individuals and society itself. How can we achieve orientation and support in a world over flooding with offers? This question, to a certain extent, affects the process of how knowledge is conveyed. To be able to form a functioning and prosperous democratic society, a weighing of opportunities and risks has to be made to ensure such a state for the future. This event aims to convey background knowledge concerning how social media functions and its effect on our current society. Questions concerning fake news and echo chambers will be focused on mainly. What abilities have to be utilized to counteract or even prevent this phenomenon and how can we develop them? Varied film programmes can be used to give insightful impulses on how to counteract this phenomenon. All of this will be discusses at the two-day conference which will take place from the 4 October to the 5 October.
// Prizes & Jurys
In addition to the audience, a total of 10 industry, children and youth juries will be awarding films according to their competition category. 18 prices amounting to 64.000 Euro will be given during the award ceremony, which will take place on the 6 October 2018 at 05.30 pm in the small hall of the Stadthalle Chemnitz. International films that win their category, will be screened once more on Sunday, 7 October 2018 at the CineStar. To support the short films within the festival, last year a new structure was put into place for the award ceremony. By doing so, the festival differentiates between animated and real-life short films, whereby the best national and international film will be awarded a prize. The award ceremony for the short films will take place on the 3 October 2018 during the short film programme “Long Night of Short Films” at the Kino Metropol Chemnitz.