Thusly, the hero of one of the films by the Serbian visionary, Emir Kusturica, phrases his question about the condition of his “little Homeland”: “How is Sarajevo? Is Sarajevo where it used to be?” Still, the positioning on a map (the geographic localization) is usually unambiguous. However, what is one to do, which strategy to employ while identifying mental, cultural space? The space which lives, evolves, migrates, expands or shrinks, obedient to the capricious rhythm of history beaten out by various nations, societies and – most importantly – individuals. The individuals are the citizens of the “mental continent”, which shapes modern Europe of today.


 

The immensity of phenomena and the expanse of the horizon, which open out when one hears terms such as “European culture” or “European identity”, require humbleness of both a scholar, and an artist. The only thing that remains is to describe your own path (like a traveller charting the route of his journey), to delineate your own route leading across a chosen fragment of the “world called Europe”.
 

When saying the “cinema of Europe” – we are thinking the “film art”. And the Old Masters, since it is the art marked with great names, the motion pictures painted by Fellini and Bergman, Dryer and Tarkowski. And Godard, too. Apart from those monoliths – the cinematography of European Authors and Nations – forming the other pole, there exists a mosaic, shimmering space of the element which shapes the European cinema today. The European “masala film”, where the ingredients, tastes, climates, languages and identities merge, just like in “Soul Kitchen”, an incredible picture by a German filmmaker, Fatih Akin, where the action is located somewhere in the suburbs of Hamburg, a multicultural and multiethnical space of culinary cooperative…
 

The cinema of Europe, the Europe of today – celebrating precious regionalisms, proud of enriching provincialisms /‘province’ – from Latin – means ‘ownership’/, speaking dialects as well as the language of cultural community. Because Europe denotes Memory, the local, almost tribal one, and the memory of Europe perceived in the global dimension, as long and wide as the world itself. The cinema, if it pleases it, can become the most faithful ally of such memory. Common memory, as well as common money – i.e. coproductions, co-operations, co-creating and co-signing cinema, which one might feel tempted to tag “made in Europe”… This is our festival path across the cinematographic space of Europe. We are willing to trace the cultural brand of Europe - BRAND EUROPA