Bašta Fest, together with regional partners Drim Short Film Festival (Struga, North Macedonia) and Seanema Film Festival (Ulcinj, Montenegro), in 2022. has founded BALKAN SHORT FILM NETWORK, which aims to educate young filmmakers and promote the short film in the region.

Since this year, the project has expanded and acquired a new dimension, BALKAN X VISEGRAD SHORT FILM NETWORK with the support of the Visegrad+ grant, the network is expanding to countries from the Visegrad group, through partnerships with festivals from Poland – Short Waves Film Festival, Hungary – BuSho Film Festival and Slovakia – Azyl Shorts. In cooperation with partner festivals, mentors from these countries will participate in three workshops in Montenegro, Serbia and North Macedonia.

The partners are united around the same goals – decentralizing culture, raising awareness of the importance of short film as an art form, and empowering and providing a platform for young filmmakers. We will collaborate to achieve these goals through a series of activities, and the first and currently largest project is the expansion of our educational program.

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The Balkan x Visegrad Short Film Network project is supported by the MOVE Grants for Regional Projects by Western Balkans Fund, International Visegrad Fund’s Visegrad+ Grant, the Ministry of Culture and Information of Serbia and Film Center Serbia. Western Balkans Fund Regional Grant Scheme is co-funded by the European Union, IPA – Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance. The project is co-financed by the Governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia through Visegrad Grants from International Visegrad Fund. The mission of the fund is to advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe.

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Drim Short Film Festival was founded in 2017 in Struga, on the shore of the Ohrid Lake, and is one of the few festivals in North Macedonia that treats specifically the short film form. In addition, Drim Short aims to promote and affirm young filmmakers from North Macedonia and all over the world through their short achievements that deliver powerful messages. Apart from the film program, the festival team remains committed to the intention of bringing film art to the audience by expanding the program and holding masterclasses and workshops by renowned filmmakers from all around the globe. They are hosting electronic parties, which is also one of the festival’s most authentic landmarks. Drim Short organizes activities during the year apart from the festival days, including workshops and trainings for youth, producing short films, screenings and etc.

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The Seanema Film Fest is an open-air human rights film festival in Ulcinj (Montenegro) which, by combining cinema and civic activism, introduces the concept of arts for social change. The idea upon which the Seanema was initially designed was to offer to the multinational, multi-ethnic and multi-confessional audiences a space for an open dialogue about human rights issues in Montenegro. Our focus lies in promoting the social and economic empowerment of women of all age groups, the education and inclusion of minorities, as well as the overall progress of society based on principles of innovation. The Festival includes in its program a wide range of activities, such as movie screenings (competitive and non-competitive categories), open panels for discussion, workshops for young professionals and art exhibitions. Seanema is all about bringing people to enjoy movies that enrich the human spirit on a giant, outdoor screen overlooking the sea under a star-lit sky. The goal is to give people food for thought and to empower them to act for the betterment of society!

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Short Waves Festival is one of the most significant Polish festivals presenting exclusively short films. It’s a constellation of cinematic events scattered around Poznań’s urban landscape. Competition screenings are its core. Short Waves Festival additionally presented unconventional screening selections such as Comedy, Horror and Kinky Shorts, focus program (including geographic focus), industry segment, audiovisual events, and music events. It also reaches beyond the screening room: open airs, clubs, art galleries, theatres and Poznanians’ private gardens known as the Random Garden Cinema series. Thanks to the continuation of the new hybrid form introduced in 2020, those seven days of June are going to consist of events and screenings taking place both offline in Poznań as well as online.

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AZYL Shorts is a unique event in Slovakia as well as in Central Europe. They create a space for presenting the authors of short films and video clips. Their main goal is not only to carefully prepare the competition itself but the ambition to create a platform which will ensure the promotion of the artists to the professional and general public alike. They offer the viewers both online presentations of the movies and classic screenings. The tour of screenings is happening across Slovakia and abroad. AZYL Shorts will happen in Banská Bystrica from the 18th to the 21st of October. You can look forward to screenings of competitive sections, but also the best shorts from the Oscars, Cannes, Karlovy vary festival and from the V4 countries. They are also preparing great side events and night shows of musicians and DJs from V4 countries.

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In 2004 a few young people decided to create an international short film festival at any cost. They gave themselves 5 years, and their goal was to make the festival internationally respected. In 2009, the fifth year arrived, and it turned out that the BuSho short film fan base was much wider than they had imagined, so the continuation was out of the question. BuSho was originally conceived to fill a gap, to give the growing short film community in the capital a chance to showcase their work and to give young filmmakers the chance to prove themselves in an international field. Each year, they have invited the creators of the selected films and the leaders of film workshops and festivals to participate, with the aim of providing a meaningful gathering for the creative communities to get to know each other through their work. Their aim from the outset is to encourage joint activities between young filmmakers in the country and other European organizations involved in the audiovisual programme.

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