Parallel Vision

The first edition of the Parallel Vision – Film and Music film festival was held from 10th to 16th September in Belgrade, Serbia, with subsequent reprise in central-southern Serbian town of Krusevac. The festival comprised competitive section of 13 films, seven being feature films, and six feature-length documentaries. All of the films featured had their Serbian premiere at the Festival.

The Festival itself is a result of public/private/citizens association initiative. It was organized by Dom Omladine Beograda (Belgrade Youth Centre), film distributor Visionary Thinking d.o.o. (LLC) and citizen association Subkultura, which for five years organizes Parallel, a festival of subculture. Parallel Vision was a natural step-forward from film section of Parallel festival, which, in the past, presented music related documentaries from all around the world.

Core idea of the festival is to re-establish links with the world through sharing common values expressed in films inspired by popular music. Since the early 90’s war in Yugoslavia and sanctions imposed on Serbia, cultural scene of Serbia underwent serious changes. One of the consequences being isolation of culture from outside influences. While generations that grew up during 60’s, 70’s and 80’s were strongly influenced by western music and films, sharing the same values with peers from Europe, generations that followed, raised during given period of war and sanctions, developed palpable resentment toward these influences, blaming the Western world for all of the problems of their country. Thus, they abandoned rock’n’roll and pop, the music of their parents, and accepted modern folk music, with its simple-minded lyrics and superficial messages.

On the other side, due to devastation of old theatrical circuits, multiplex culture was adopted, with mainstream Hollywood presenting the only western cultural influence among local youth. Film festivals remain unique places where „something different” could be seen. The demographics of these festivals however display a distinctive lack of youth attendance.

Therefore our goal is to find a way to attract youth to Parallel Vision festival and to show them the best from music and film world, covering issues and phenomena recognizable and of interest to the local youth. For the first edition of the festival, we managed to secure the films from all around the world, Latin America, Far East, Africa, Scandinavia, Central and Western Europe, North America… That’s the program policy we are going to follow in next editions of the Festival as well.

The first edition of the festivals had a moderate budget, supported by Serbian Ministry of Culture grant of roughly €2.200. The total cost of the Festival was a little bit over €4.500 with volunteers contributing to acquisition, promotion and film materials preparation. With couple of sponsors and more than 600 sold tickets, we managed to end with a small profit which was shared between mentioned volunteers. Average attendance was 53, which when compared with other local start-up festivals was a great result (in comparison, the first edition of Film Comedy festival held earlier this year in Belgrade, with main-stream programing, and much bigger ad/pub, and a budget of €24.000, had an average of 13 attendance per screening).

In cooperation with FIPRESCI Serbian branch we were able to give an award to the winning film. We also organized very successful, well attended discussion forum on „idols” in today’s world.

For the second edition, scheduled for September 15-21, 2017, our ambition is to expand the competition section of the festival to 14 films (the idea is to have equal number of feature films and documentaries) and the special section of 4-6 films. We intend the special section to devote either to one issue/phenomena or to shape it as a tribute to musicians/bands. Our ambition is to also secure attendance of several guests. With the low budget we had for the first edition, we couldn’t afford any guests (we managed though to get exclusive video statement from the director of the winning film, which was shown to the public before the closing film of the Festival). Finally, we want to expand the Festival to other towns in Serbia, and other countries in the region (Bosnia, Montenegro, Croatia…). We already have list of towns that have expressed interest to participate in the Festival. For the second edition the plan is to have three different Serbian towns in addition to Belgrade as co-hosts of the Festival. And we would like to take our guests to each of these towns.

The main problem we faced this year was the lack of funds for the proper promotion of the Festival. Promotion was narrowed to social networking websites and to free publicity we managed to obtain in local electronic and printed media. Since we were encouraged with the results we achieved, we have a reason to believe that our Festival has huge potential, and that it is worth investing in additional promotion. Part of the plan is to raise awareness with events we will organize through the year, between two editions of the Festival, in form of special screenings of different films. That, alone, would distinguish our Festival from others. In addition, we want our website to become a local hub for all the news related to the theme of the Festival. We will also try to secure the rights for certain films which then could be aired on some of the local TV channels under the banner of the Festival increasing public awareness. This would also extend to different VOD platforms. For the Festival, additional ad/publicity campaign would be certainly necessary.

Dom omladine Beograda (Belgrade Youth Centre) – http://www.domomladine.org/naslovna/lat  – is a legendary local venue for rock’n’roll concerts and as such is perfect partner in this venture. With vast space in the downtown Belgrade, it could host not only the Festival, but different accompanying programs.

Visionary Thinking – http://visionary-thinking.net/home/ – main initiator of Parallel Vision festival is a boutique film distributor, specialized in acquisition and distribution of non-main-stream films and television programs.

Subkultura – http://www.paralel.rs/  – is the NGO „born out of the need for affirmation of alternative popular culture.“ For last five years they organize festival Paralel which „goal is to promote a model of intercultural cooperation and various socio-cultural forms that arise in conjunction of local and global, and of popular and alternative.“