Zomerfilmcollege 2024

From July 7 to 13, Cinea is organising a new edition of the Zomerfilmcollege, a yearly summer film school taking place in Antwerp that offers seven days to immerse yourself in two film historical themes, through fifteen or so lectures and some twenty film screenings.

The first part, titled ‘In the Soviet Periphery after the Thaw (ca. 1965-1980)’, takes you to the periphery of post-Thaw Soviet cinema. From the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, the borderlands of the USSR were a rich breeding ground for emerging filmmakers who found a political and artistic way forward in a profound search for lost identity and a poetic return to tradition and folklore. This programme will feature work of auteurs such as Kira Muratova, Larisa Shepitko, Artavazd Peleshian, Sergei Parajanov, Otar Iosseliani, and a unique selection of rare films by Tolomush Okeev, Andrei Konchalovsky, and others.

For the second part of the Zomerfilmcollege, ‘In the Final Years of Francoist Spain (ca. 1960-1975)’, the focus lies on cinema at the end of the Franco era in Spain and the creative environment of idiosyncratic auteurs Victor Erice, Carlos Saura, Pere Portabella, and others. In the hostile environment of the waning dictatorship, they managed to bring back an atmosphere of humanity and magic. They stood side by side and offered resistance to the oppressive cultural climate of the times. With their often metaphorical films, they breathed new life into Spanish cinema, a period sometimes described as El Nuevo Cine Español.

More information on the website of Cinea.