Ji.hlava online goes on! This year’s winners and award-winning films will be announced on Saturday night at 8PM CET (UTC+1). The Contribution to World Cinema will be handed to Ai Weiwei. The audience can watch the award ceremony streamed on the festival’s website and Facebook profile.
The award ceremony will take place online and unusually in the middle of the festival. “We have extended this year’s edition until November 8, so it doesn’t end with the award ceremony. This time, we are coming close to selling five thousand accreditations and the daily number of page views equals the figure for the entire festival week in the preceding year,” says festival director Marek Hovorka. And adds: “We are happy to see how popular Ji.hlava’s film programme is.”
What exactly will happen on Saturday night? Awards will be given to the best films together with the Contribution to World Cinema Award that will go to Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei. “When searching for the language to address people, Ai Weiwei discovered documentary cinema. He was able to step out of the shadow of his art projects, and using his experience with the world of visual arts he transformed his films into an instrument of social-political communication that still remains a part of the art medium. Films by Ai Weiwei provide a powerful testimony about his personal courage, of both an actor and an ‘observer’. They are surprisingly visceral and have a deeply humanistic appeal,” says festival director Marek Hovorka commenting on the work of the festival laureate.
Winners will be announced in the following sections: Opus Bonum, Between the Seas, Between the Seas – student competition, Czech Joy, First Lights, Fascinations, Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz, Short Joy and Testimonies.
The Award Ceremony will be broadcast from home, only with the difference that our home will move to Jihlava’s main festival venue, DKO, which is usually the “heart” of the Ji.hlava IDFF. “Apart from talent, we were looking for something special: our hosts had to agree to the moving of a part of their apartment to Ji.hlava’s DKO. We all have to stay at home and will probably stay there for a long time. The Ceremony’s hosts will also be at home during the announcement of the awards,” says Marika Pecháčková the director of the Ceremony together with Vít Klusák. The hosts of the evening will again be Czech journalist Lukáš Houdek and activist Johanna Nejedlová.
The Award Ceremony will take place on Saturday, October 31 at 8PM, and will be streamed on the website and Facebook profile of the Ji.hlava IDFF and on Czech Television Art.
24th Ji.hlava IDFF will continue until November 8. The audiences on the territory of the Czech Republic can watch films on the festival website, while the international audiences can watch a selection of the competition films at DAFilms.com VOD portal. 60 % of each amount paid for accreditations and streams will this year go directly to filmmakers. The obtained funds will be distributed fairly according to the viewing figures for each film.
