- The 18th edition of Mezipatra Queer Film Festival will welcome international guests again.
- German director Chris Miera and Canadian documentary director Arshad Khan will bring their feature films.
- The accompanying program will include a performance by Ena Lind, a DJ and legend of Berlin queer underground.
Prague, October 26, 2017 – German director Chris Miera will introduce his feature debut, Paths (Ein Weg), at this year's Mezipatra. He first studied information technology, but eventually transferred to film and television direction at the Filmuniversität in Babelsberg. He has mostly focused on short films so far; as a technician, he also cooperated on Oh Boy, an audience hit which premiered in 2012.
Introduced by Mezipatra on November 3, Paths is a drama following a middle-aged gay couple as they strive to find mutual understanding after their son has left for university. Miera contributed to the film also as a co-writer, cameraman, and producer.
The documentary section will welcome Arshad Khan, a Canadian director of Pakistani origin. The son of Pakistani immigrants in Canada graduated from the prestigious The Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema and made his name as a director of short films. Since 2012, he has also been the director of South Asian Film Festival of Canada.
At Mezipatra, he will introduce his documentary Abu, about the efforts to figure out the relationship to his father and to come to terms with his own sexuality. Khan's feature debut uses family archives, animation, and also excerpts of Bollywood cinema.
Short film directors
Prague will be visited also by the Israeli director Uriya Hertz, whose The Rabbi (Ha´rav) is a part of the short films competition as a part of the In the Eyes of Others block. It follows rabbi Michael from Jerusalem when his favourite pupil confesses his innermost secret to him.
In the same block, visitors can also see After Dawn (Passée l'aube) by Belgian Nicolas Graux. The director focuses on Pawel, who is convinced that he is over his love for a young man. But when an unexpected guest arrives one rainy afternoon, it turns out that everything might have been slightly different.
The festival will also welcome the twenty-three-year-old Simone Bozzelli, an Italian director who will present his short film as a part of In the Name of Ideals block. Loris Is Fine (Loris sta bene) depicts a young man who longs for the love of his HIV-positive boyfriend with touching naivety. And he therefore considers getting infected by a stranger.
Accompanying program guests
This year's edition will introduce to Prague visitors the queer legend Ena Lind as the headliner of the main party, PG-18. The politically active producer and DJ combines classical and Detroit house, techno, and disco; and her experience as a percussionist is obvious in her sense of rhythm and subtle transitions. Her first EP, The Wisdom to Know the Difference, was published by the Chicago Twirl label last September, but she has been well known to the club scene well over a decade.
Together with her Czech female colleagues, Ena Lind will also take part in a discussion about the situation of female musicians and sexism and marginalization of female performers, issues which are still plaguing not only the electronic music scene. The discussion will take place in Patra café on Saturday, November 4th at 15:00.
Another guest of the accompanying program's discussions will be Alexander Kondakov, an Assistant Professor in the field of social research at the European University at St Petersburg. Kondakov specializes in human rights issues, especially minority sexual orientation and sexuality in the context of migration, with vast publishing history in this area.
For Mezipatra, he has prepared an interactive lecture Struggle for Words regarding the legal and media representation of queer identity in Russia, focusing on the differences between West and East Europe and the anti-modernity discourse. It will take place in Patra café on Tuesday, November 7th at 18:00.
Main and student jury
The best film in the competition section of Mezipatra are selected by two juries – the main and the student ones. This year's main jury consists of Berwyn Rowlands, the founder of Iris Prize – a prestigious film festival focusing on LGBTQ+ topics; Hana Kulhánková, film theorist and former director of One World festival who is currently working for Prague Impact Academy; and Zuzana Štefková, a historian, curator and art critic.
The members of the student jury are Elísabet Elma Guðrúnardóttir, whose first short film named Queer Fish was selected for Inakost Bratislava festival, the illustrator and Prague Film School student Bernd Seliger, and Adéla Šmerdová from Film Studies at the Faculty of Arts at the Charles University.
2017 Mezipatra QFF
Prague: November 2-9
Brno: November 10-17
echoes in regions
www.mezipatra.cz/en
Mezipatra 2017 visual photographed by Michaela Karásek Čejková, designed by Marius Corradini / Side 2
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