18.06.2024
The 28th Ji.hlava IDFF has introduced its poster! "The theme of islands, which is in the center of the Ji.hlava’s visual concept this year, has provoked the human imagination for centuries," says festival director Marek Hovorka about this year's visual, designed by the award-winning book graphic designer and artist Juraj Horváth.
"Islands are a symbol of exploration as well as of enclosure, independence and otherness. All of us have at some point longed to be alone on a desert island for a while, daydreamed about an island vacation, or wondered how we would survive if we were shipwrecked on such an island. Countless literary works, films or even TV competitions take place on islands, and this year at Ji.hlava we will open up to this island imagination," says Marek Hovorka about this year's poster.
The festival, which is being extended from six to ten days this year, will offer, among other, a large retrospective of films by Vít Klusák, Filip Remunda and their production company Hypermarket Film. The Inspiration Forum, Ji.hlava’s discussion platform, will offer an expanded programme: it will focus on the topics of war, immunity, forest and the relationship between new technologies and leisure. Early bird visitor as well as industry accreditations for the 28th Ji.hlava IDFF are now available.
More reruns, more comfort
The Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, which will last for ten days this year, will take place from October 25 to November 3 and will then continue online for 14 days. “The extension will make the festival more open to the visitors and we also want to use the multiple screenings of selected films to reach new audience groups – so in addition to the Ji.hlava for Kids and Ji.hlava Vibes programmes for children and teenagers, we plan to work with the elderly or people with various health disabilities," says Hovorka.
Czech Dream twenty years later – a retrospective of Vít Klusak and Filip Remunda
This year’s Ji.hlava will offer a major retrospective of directors Vit Klusák and Filip Remunda and their leading Czech production company Hypermarket Film. The festival will present almost two dozen films, including the award-winning Czech Dream (2004) about "the hypermarket that didn’t exist", which premiered twenty years ago this year.
“Czech Dream is rightly one of the most important Czech documentaries ever made. The filmmakers have built on its success with more films and have also championed works of other important Czech directors, such as Adéla Komrzý, Apolena Rychlíková or Erika Hníková," says Marek Hovorka when introducing the retrospective. "We are very much looking forward to the fact that a new generation of viewers will be able to meet these films and their creators this autumn in Ji.hlava", adds Hovorka.
"On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the first release of Czech Dream, we have prepared a digitally remastered version of our first feature film. This version will have its premiere in Jihlava and after the festival Czech Dream will be released in cinemas. In 2003, Vít and I founded Hypermarket Film exclusively for the production of one single film. In the end, however, we did not shut down the company, but together with Vít and our wonderful producer Tereza Horská we opened it to our films and the films of our filmmaker friends, whose work and creative thinking we respect. I am glad that this year in Jihlava we will show a selection of films from those 21 years," says Filip Remunda about the retrospective.
The Inspiration Forum presents the themes and personalities
Four thematic days and three collective gatherings will be offered at this year's Ji.hlava Inspiration Forum. It will traditionally focus on topics that represent the greatest challenges of civilization today: this year the discussions will deal with technology and leisure, forest, war and immunity. Dozens of guests from across the world will head to Ji.hlava.
Among the confirmed participants of the Inspiration Forum is British environmental philosopher Timothy Morton. "It's hell, but it's not the end of the world," says Morton on the subject of the climate crisis, the state of which he reflects on in his latest book, Hell, which he will be presenting at Ji.hlava. The topic of leisure will be opened by a renowned Canadian-British couple: economist and philosopher Nick Srnicek and feminist theorist Helen Hester, who this year published their long-awaited book After Work, which examines the impact of technology and gender division in domestic work.
Download the Visual of the 28th Ji.hlava IDFF.
Poster poem
Juraj Horváth
I.Land
From the Potholed Road
bees take flight
maps etched
into the walls
salted skin
a piece of tire
trampled into the sand
a small black snake
uncoiled
and vanished into the bushes
then a storm
swept through the island
and flushed us into the depths
along with a small café,
a white monument,
a supermarket,
and a bell tower
once you surface
sketch what you’ve seen
when you soar
(brilliantly, like a seagull)
notice the shape
of the neighboring island
pressure on the eardrums
in the southern express
whizzing through a tunnel
in my notebook
I sketch:
undulation
effervescence
fluttering
petrification
rumbling
howling
rattling
hissing
that’s what I’m doing,
you can join me.
The 28th Ji.hlava IDFF will take place on October 25 – November 3, 2024. Discounted Early Bird visitor and industry accreditations are now available.
04.04.2024 The Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival and Czech entrepreneur Jan Barta joined forces to support outstanding auteur filmmaking from Central and Eastern Europe by launching the Ji.hlava / JB Films support scheme.
“We want to support the effective distribution of films in both national and international context. We are aware that distributing documentary films has been much more difficult recently, and we want to make it easier for remarkable projects to reach their audiences. We are convinced that these exceptional films can help us understand better the changes and the mounting crises of the world we live in”, says Marek Hovorka, director of Ji.hlava IDFF.
The financial support will have a form of co-production contributions to film projects. Around 3–4 documentary and hybrid films in production or post-production will be supported. One project can receive up to 40,000 EUR.
By contributing to the selected projects, a share of the future profit will be assigned to Ji.hlava / JB Films and will be subsequently allocated in full to film projects selected in subsequent calls. The aim is to create a tool that will enable repeated support for new films in the region.
"The aim of this new initiative is to support distinctive auteur projects with distribution potential. The profit that the films will make will be used to support other documentaries in the making," explains the idea Marek Hovorka.
The Ji.hlava / JB Films is becoming yet another instrument in rich Ji.hlava IDFF Industry activities, which help to nurture the documentary film ecosystem – along with programmes such as Emerging Producers, Ji.hlava New Visions Forum & Market, First Lights Academy, and Docu Talents from the East.
The deadline for applications is April 30 and the first supported projects will be announced in summer 2024. The list of eligible countries and other details are available here.
The 28th Ji.hlava IDFF will for the first time be extended from six to ten days in 2024. The festival will take place on October 25 – November 3 in Jihlava, Czech Republic. The film submissions are open.
Email contact: pressservice@ji-hlava.cz.
04.03.2024 The Echoes of the 27th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival begin this week in Brussels. The programme will feature the award-winning films from last year's Ji.hlava IDFF which will be screened in the European Parliament, the Prague House in Brussels, the RITCS and KASK Ghent film schools. Documentaries from the Ji.hlava’s 27th edition will also be screened in Romania, Poland, the USA and Slovakia.
"It has always been important for us to think about Ji.hlava in an international context and to interconnect films and their filmmakers across the world. Most of the challenges we face today have no borders, and so does the Ji.hlava programme, whose Echoes will be taking place in six countries this year," said Marek Hovorka, director of the Ji.hlava IDFF.
The twelfth Echoes of Ji.hlava in Belgium (5–7 March) will open tomorrow in the European Parliament with the documentary film The World According to My Dad by Marta Kovářová, which chronicles her father's fight for climate justice in the form of a live diary. The screening will be followed by a debate with the director and the protagonist. The film took home the Award of the students jury and also won the Ji.hlava Online Audience Award.
The programme will traditionally present other Ji.hlava award-winning films including Štěpán Pech's You Will Never See It All, which was awarded the Best Debut Award at the 27th Ji.hlava IDFF. The conceptualist and cartoonist Ján Mančuška died just before his 40th birthday, but during his lifetime he managed to create a remarkable work that was presented in galleries across the world – including at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and MoMA in New York.
The programme also includes Ivan Ostrochovsky's film The Goat (2015) and a masterclass by the director. Another masterclass will be led by filmmaker Lucie Rosenfeldová and the programme will also include other short films by Czech filmmakers.
Where will Ji.hlava go next?
The second half of March will be followed by the Echoes of Ji.hlava in Romania, which will present four films from the Ji.hlava programme, and the audience can also look forward to directors’ workshops at the Bucharest’s UNATC film school.
In early April, the Echoes of Ji.hlava are scheduled in Poland in Warsaw and Lodz. In the second half of April, the Echoes will move to New York, where Ji.hlava will continue its traditional cooperation with Maysles Documentary Center, Union Docs, and screenings will also take place at the Bohemian National Hall.
On May 22–29, the most important documentary festival in the region, the Beldocs IDFF, will present a cross-section of films from past editions of Ji.hlava in a special section dedicated to Czech documentary filmmakers. The programme will include, among others, the documentaries Czech Dream by Vit Klusák and Filip Remunda and The Sound in Innocent by Johana Ožvold.
This year’s extended Echoes of Ji.hlava take place in cooperation with the Czech Centres network and with the financial support of the Czech Ministry of Culture, the Czech Recovery Plan and the European Union.
The Echoes of Ji.hlava IDFF in Belgium are held under the auspices of H.E. Jakub Skalník, Ambassador of the Czech Republic in Brussels, and with the support of the Statutory City of Jihlava, the Vysočina Region and the Czech Centre Brussels.
The complete programme of the Echoes of the 27th Ji.hlava can be found here.