Fifth Tabor International Short Film Festival
10-14 July 2007

Ron Holloway, Berlin, 20 July 2007

Now in its fifth year, the Tabor International Short Film Festival (10-14 July 2007) under director Nenad Borovcek has been on the move since its founding. The first TIFF was held in nearby Komrovec, the birthplace of Marshall Tito. Converted into a museum village to depict life in Croatia during the 19th century, Komrovec is one of Croatia’s major tourist attraction. When the crowds were just too plentiful for Komrovec, the festival moved to Tabor Castle, a massive edifice built in the 12th century and said to be a place of magic. As the legend goes, it was here that Veronica, a beautiful peasant girl from the nearby village of Desinic, was killed by the cruel lord of the castle for eloping with his son. Ever since, Veronica’s ghost haunts the castle, her moans sometimes heard on cold winter nights when the wind howls through the rafters.

 The legend is reinforced by a fortunate excavation. Back in 1982, a woman’s skull was unearthed on the castle’s grounds. Thus Tabor festival winners are awarded replicas of “Veronica’s Skull” along with accompanying purses. The winner of the Grand Prix, usually for a fiction film, takes home a purse of Euro 2,000. Four more Skulls, worth Euro 1,000 each, are handed out to winners in the Experimental, Animation, Documentary categories, plus the winner of the Audience Prize. Another Euro 1,000 purse goes to the winner of the Croatian competition.

 The festival trailer adds to the fun. A spook – something passing for a human skull – sways across the screen. Let your imagination wander a bit, and you might even hear the hoot of an owl on the soundtrack. This year, due to renovations at Tabor Castle, the festival had to be moved “in exile” to the neighboring Orsic Castle. A baroque edifice dating from the middle of the 18th century, Orsic houses a museum dealing with the history of the surrounding Zagorje Province. It’s also one of 50 castles in the region.

 Clearly, the Croatian Tourist Bureau and the Zagorje Province Government have a hand in Tabor festivities. The guests are housed in Terme Tuhelj Hotel, a wellness health spa built atop a thermal bath. Excursions are the order of the day – before the screenings in the afternoon and evening. One afternoon, an excursion took us to the local vineyards. It was capped with a sumptuous feast at a family restaurant. On another afternoon outing, we found ourselves cruising along the border to Slovenia. “Over there,” the driver said, “the Slovenian Tolars have already been cashed-in for Euros.” As though Croatian Kunas were next in line. So near is the European Union. And yet so far.

 From 1500 short films sent by 80 countries to Tabor for consideration, the selection committee chose 49 entries from 24 lands for the international competition, plus another 11 shorts for the Croatian program. Two international juries decided on the winners of the respective Veronica Skulls. Rather than grouping entries into rigid filmmaking categories – fiction, documentary, animation, experiment – Tabor prefers thematic programming that mixes them all together. So half the fun each evening was gauging the relevance of a film entry to one of the half-dozen free-flowing themes: Futura, Matters of the Heart, World Trip, Frankly Female, Pride and Prejudices, and Silence. But then maybe anything can sneak-in under such generalities.

 For some veterans of the short film festival circuit, the Off Program proved to be as entertaining as the competition. The Sam Spiegel Film School in Jerusalem presented its award-winners. The British Film Council was present with a dozen shorts. Nominations for the UIP Prix 2006 were screened. The past four Tabor Grand Prix winners were reviewed. Women filmmakers were highlighted in the Especially Female program. On the Croatian side of the ledger, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) was on hand with four social documentaries on national issues. The Amateur Film Revue (RAF), an event held each March in Zagreb, sent a selection of audience favorites. “Activist videos” and music clips by Croatian media artists could also be seen.

 The “Grand Prix Veronica Skull” was awarded to Amy Neils Topljenje leda (Icicle Melt) (UK/Sweden). A poignant account of a wife’s reaction to her husband’s sudden death the morning after a joyful evening of dancing in falling snow, Icicle Melt was shot above the arctic circle “under the Northern Lights” and set during the Christmas season. It features a forceful performance by Greta Scacchi as the afflicted and loving wife, who runs the full gamut of emotions without a word of dialogue. A special mention went deservedly to Vano Burduli’s Graffiti (Georgia). By effectively using grainy photography to suggest an underground document on a forbidden resistance movement, Burduli underscores how graffiti squirted on walls might well be the only weapon left for an artist to confront the tanks patrolling the streets under a repressive regime. Another special mention went to Isold Uggadottir’s Godir Gestir (Family Reunion) (Iceland/USA). A young woman on her trip home to Iceland from New York City to attend her grandfather’s birthday is faced with a dilemma. How to tell her family that she is, in fact, a lesbian and lives with a woman in Manhattan. The situation is resolved unexpectedly – the grandfather announces at the birthday celebration that he, too, has shared part of his life with a close friend and now is prepared to announced the gay relationship.

 Alex Weil’s One Rat Short (USA), awarded Best Animation Film, scores as an amusing tale of unrequited love between rats in the New York subway. Invited to Sundance and awarded at several shorts festivals, it is currently a hit on YouTube. Also, Bill Plympton’s Guide Dog (USA) was an audience favorite. This hilarious tale of a pudgy little dog, who use his wit and begging powers to win a job as a guide dog, always ends in catastrophe when he finds himself on the end of a blind person’s leash. Raymond (France/UK), a comic gruesome tale directed by “BIF” (François Roisin, Fabrice Le Nezet, Jules Janaud), was awarded Best Experimental Film. And Guido Thys’s comedy-of-manners Tanghi Argentini (Tango) (Belgium), awarded the Audience Prize at Clermont-Ferrand and Aspen Shortsfest, scored again in the same category at Tabor. Just as impressive was Pieter-Jan De Pue’s O (Belgium). Billed as a fiction film, athough just as effective in its experimental narrative structure, O charts the search for water by human life faced with the calamity of last drop of water as it rapidly disappears into a parched desert plain.

 The Veronica Skull for Best Documentary was awarded to Nikola Strasek’s Ubil bum te! (I’ll Kill Ya!) (Croatia). The story of a homicide in the Zagreb drug scene, I’ll Kill Ya! draws its power from an interview with a stoned social dropout who takes some responsibility for the apparently accidental killing. At the same time, Strasek documents the failings in a slipshod justice system that takes a couple years to determine guilt and punishment. Simon Bogojevic Narath’s Levijatan (Leviathan) (Croatia), an animated salute to 17th-century British political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, was awarded Best Croatian Short. Come this November, the TIFF team will take a selection of Croatian shorts to other international film festivals. The first stop will be the Berlin Interfilm Festival.

 Indeed, the current revival of an independent and award-winning “New Croatian Cinema” owes its auteur status to a phalanx of interconnected film festivals scattered across the country. Three major international film events are found in the Croatian capital alone – Zagreb Features, Zagreb Dox, Zagreb Anima – while crowds from across Croatia flock in the summer to Istria on the Adriatic for independent cinema programmed atop a mountain in the medieval town of Motovun. Tourists visiting Pula can savor mainstream fare in the ancient Vespasian arena dating from the second century. For experimental cinema, you can hole up in that splendid Diocletian Palace at Split. For one-minute films, try Pozega in the heart of folkloric Slavonia. And, for short films, climb another mountain, this one in the Zagorje Province just north of Zagreb, to attend the Tabor International Short Film Festival, where productions of all genres and formats in picturesque Tabor Castle are shown.

Veronica Skull Awards

International Competition Jury
Best Short Film
Topljenje leda (Icicle Melt) (Sweden), dir Amy Neil – fiction film
Special Mentions
Graffiti (Georgia), dir Vano Burduli – fiction film
Godir Gestir (Family Reunion) (Iceland/USA), dir Isold Uggadottir – fiction film
Best Documentary Film
Ubil bum te! (I’ll Kill Ya!) (Croatia), dir Nikola Strasek
Best Animation Film
One Rat Short (USA), dir Alex Weil
Best Experimental Film
Raymond (France/UK), dir Bif (François Roisin, Fabrice Le Nezet, Jules Janaud)

Croatian Competition Jury
Best Short Film
Levijatan (Leviathan) (Croatia), dir Simon Bogojevic Narath – animation film

Audience Award
Tanghi Argentini (Tango) (Belgium), dir Guido Thys – fiction film