Gábor Herendi, chairman of the Board of the Filmweek

With Golden Spool, without Genre Prize

Many new novelties will be introduced at the Filmweek in 2008.

The director, specialised mainly in genre films, promised several novelties, though one of last year’s novelties is cancelled as no genre prize will be given out at the coming Filmweek. Herendi informed the MTI: after a long discussion, the Board of the Filmweek concluded that no film will be presented at the ”always formal” opening ceremony. The members of the Board would have selected the opening film from the 32 nominees, if they had not changed their mind in the meantime. Instead they would like to have smaller programmes to make the beginning more eventful. Gábor Herendi announced that the Millenáris Center will host the opening and closing ceremony of the Filmweek again this time.

Similarly to the previous years, an international jury will determine the prizes and the films will be pre-selected, but there will be some changes at the same time. The Board considers the introduction of some ”formal novelties” important in order to raise the standard of the event. The Main Prize is officially named Golden Spool, and it will find shape in a tangible form. Of course all the other prizes will be ”touchable”, as for the form, they will be similar to the Main Prize, though a bit smaller, and the logo of the Filmweek will be made of silver and not of gold. 

The organisers would like all the winners to make a speech at the closing ceremony, and the names of the winners would only and exclusively be announced at the ceremony – similarly to the Academy Award (Oscar) ceremony night. Thus it is in everyone’s own interest to be present, hopefully raising the excitement and prestige of the event.

This year the budget is 110 million HUF (support of the Motion Picture Public Foundation of Hungary), which is 10 million less than last year.
There are many films, which makes a pre-selection necessary – it means only 16 features will be in competition – but in accordance with previous years’ tradition, feature films off-competition will also be screened. Besides Uránia National Film Theatre, the organisers would like to involve other venues, such as Puskin Cinema and Kossuth Palace. According to their plans the locations would present only one type of film, for example all those who are interested in docus can watch the selected documentary films during the Filmweek in Puskin.

The chairman welcomes all ideas related to the Filmweek, such as the Central European Pitch Forum, which took place at Moveast International Film Festival in Pécs. Besides the films screened, forums, professional programmes would also be important and useful for the Hungarian film industry and would raise the status of the Filmweek.