Founder’s Story
Lazar Ristovski
/founder/
This year will undoubtedly be remembered as an important year in my life.
My plan to begin construction of a new cultural center in my village, Ravno Selo, was finally realized. My thanks go to the President of the Provincial Government of Vojvodina, Mr. Igor Mirović for his help in this achievement. Our Ravno Selo film festival will now have a permanent home. It’ll serve as a home for all Ravno Selo’s outstanding and talented youth, as well as visitors from all across Serbia.
The Cultural Centre will be a venue for the highest-quality music, film, and theatrical performances. The top writers and painters will be invited. Our goal would be to match the programming of the most prestigious cultural institutions. That’s my wish, as well as the wish of my colleagues. Every investment in culture pays off many times over, since it is through a culture that a nation’s spiritual existence grows.
The fourth RSFF has been held this year, and it welcomed authors from Serbia and neighboring countries. It is, and will continue to be, an international event in every sense of the word. We’ll increase the number of films and events every year, as well as the number of friends we have. I sincerely hope that the young authors who had their artistic debuts at our festival will have their films presented at some of the world’s most prominent film festivals in the near future. We select the best and pave the way for them to succeed. We expect them to remember their first artistic steps in Ravno Selo and return to us as visitors whenever they want.
I especially welcome the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, which hosts a film school every year for international students and students from the region. The Academy of Arts from Skopje is our special guest this year.
I wish the audience to experience a diverse variety of feature, documentary, and student films, but most importantly I want the Ravno Selo Film Festival to continue for many, many years.
The Ravno Selo Film Festival aims to inspire everyone by introducing them to authors and their works. To accept their wish to change and turn their hopes into opportunities. We believe that as a result of these encounters, a love affair between cinema and the countryside, between agriculture and film culture, would be born.
The Ravno Selo film festival brings the city artists back to the countryside, allowing them to slow down the rhythm of life and enter rural film meditation. It helps them focus on themselves, something they don’t get to do very often during the year, and gather inspiration for new works of art.
We favor young ambitious people with the desire to encourage them to be persistent in their ideas and develop as genuine filmmakers. We nurture their curiosity by exchanging experiences obtained from viewing and making films. Our festival is a clash of the urban and rural worlds, in which the sensation of freedom and independence is liberated, strengthening the identity of the creative youth who will soon rebel against their reality.
Now that the construction of a new cultural centre has begun, the goal is to build a summer film academy within the festival, which will, in the next few years, gather young filmmakers from across the region and beyond.
Petar Ristovski
/executive director/
Petar Ristovski
/executive director/
The Ravno Selo Film Festival aims to inspire everyone by introducing them to authors and their works. To accept their wish to change and turn their hopes into opportunities. We believe that as a result of these encounters, a love affair between cinema and the countryside, between agriculture and film culture, would be born.
The Ravno Selo film festival brings the city artists back to the countryside, allowing them to slow down the rhythm of life and enter rural film meditation. It helps them focus on themselves, something they don’t get to do very often during the year, and gather inspiration for new works of art.
We favor young ambitious people with the desire to encourage them to be persistent in their ideas and develop as genuine filmmakers. We nurture their curiosity by exchanging experiences obtained from viewing and making films. Our festival is a clash of the urban and rural worlds, in which the sensation of freedom and independence is liberated, strengthening the identity of the creative youth who will soon rebel against their reality.
Now that the construction of a new cultural centre has begun, the goal is to build a summer film academy within the festival, which will, in the next few years, gather young filmmakers from across the region and beyond.
Marko Čkonjević
/artistic director/
There are many festivals in our country, but few have a mission.
Mission is what distinguishes life from living, and it is what gives significance to existence and work.
This year our festival is fulfilling its mission. The Cultural Centre is being built, but the responsibility to support youth and talent remains forever. This is evident in the idea of supporting debutants in the main program, introduction of a new selection of short documentaries, and continuous work with young people through various workshops and lectures. We teach them that film is a collective art in which uniqueness and individuality are nurtured. They learn from us, but we also learn from them.
This is a festival which recognizes that young people have reached adulthood and that they live in their own world, not ours. In a world where people live globally and where borders are mostly a bureaucratic obstacle. The Ravno Selo festival does not care about borders… it cares about young people who, together with us, take care of the world will we leave them as a legacy.
Welcome to Ravno Selo for our small but big festival!
„Simplicity is perfection that is difficult to achieve,“ said our Nobel laureate. We often look for explanations that are easier for us to hear, while avoiding accepting the simple, yet final and truthful ones, which, after all, are always waiting for us as an answer at the beginning and end of the question.
Big cities offer wonderful opportunities but also great misunderstandings, which might keep us from achieving a simple, life-honest, and elusive simplicity. Simplicity that summarizes in a few words everything that essays of unnecessariness try to explain. Nowhere else you will find a more honest confirmation of your qualities or condemnation of your mediocrity, as it will be in small communities.
Originally, culture gave birth to the best of the best where it had the most strict judges, and that is exactly why in such places it gave birth to those who do not know about mediocrity, who were either born for it or do not deal with it at all. Villages were and will remain an endless wellspring that produces the greatest among us, thus such festivals must not only be recognized but also carefully monitored and supported.
Because of all that has been said, I consider my contribution to this festival not only as a part but also as a privilege.
Tamara Dragičević
/actress/
Tamara Dragičević
/actress/
„Simplicity is perfection that is difficult to achieve,“ said our Nobel laureate. We often look for explanations that are easier for us to hear, while avoiding accepting the simple, yet final and truthful ones, which, after all, are always waiting for us as an answer at the beginning and end of the question.
Big cities offer wonderful opportunities but also great misunderstandings, which might keep us from achieving a simple, life-honest, and elusive simplicity. Simplicity that summarizes in a few words everything that essays of unnecessariness try to explain. Nowhere else you will find a more honest confirmation of your qualities or condemnation of your mediocrity, as it will be in small communities.
Originally, culture gave birth to the best of the best where it had the most strict judges, and that is exactly why in such places it gave birth to those who do not know about mediocrity, who were either born for it or do not deal with it at all. Villages were and will remain an endless wellspring that produces the greatest among us, thus such festivals must not only be recognized but also carefully monitored and supported.
Because of all that has been said, I consider my contribution to this festival not only as a part but also as a privilege.
Dragan Jeličić
/selector/
Ravno Selo, now in its fourth edition, runs for four days for the first time, features six films in competition for the first time, and is broadening the route for the cinematography of different nations that have had the considerable cultural effect in Vojvodina and throughout Serbia.
The best Hungarian film of the year, the world premiere of a Czech comedy starring our eminent actor, a Russian blockbuster starring our young actress, a Turkish thriller with a Hollywood atmosphere, and the successful Serbian films of the year are all guarantees that the audience and festival guests will enjoy the first days of July, hopefully under clear but not hot skies.
The selection of short documentaries, which takes place for the first time during the 4th RSFF, throws light on the basic film form, which has been pushed aside in today’s film industry production conditions. In this regard, the festival’s founders’ decision to include this category in the program is both binding and necessary. Because this is an international competition, it is critical to familiarize with the works of foreign directors, especially because the Polish School of Documentary Film, which is represented by two films, has long held a prominent position.
In the context of the former SFRY cinematography’s historical perspective, we should remember the reputation and importance of the short documentary form and the work of our authors at the world’s most major festivals, which is a very demanding system of values. This program is especially noteworthy since it presents directors of debut films, for whom a short documentary is not only a means and a required preparation for a feature film but also the objective and beginning point for dealing with films in general.
In addition to several male authors, the representation of female authors stands out, both in terms of themes and style, aesthetics and suggestiveness of their films. This year’s program thus opens one of the most successful documentaries created in this region in the post-Yugoslav period – Then Comes the Evening, directed by Maja Novaković, who exhausted all elements of her poetics from the earliest life experience and artistic area that she dealt with during her schooling, creating a unique world that the audience of Ravno Selo Film Festival should meet, just like all other short documentaries from this program, to the delight of the writers of these lines.
Igor Toholj
/selector/
Igor Toholj
/selector/
The selection of short documentaries, which takes place for the first time during the 4th RSFF, throws light on the basic film form, which has been pushed aside in today’s film industry production conditions. In this regard, the festival’s founders’ decision to include this category in the program is both binding and necessary. Because this is an international competition, it is critical to familiarize with the works of foreign directors, especially because the Polish School of Documentary Film, which is represented by two films, has long held a prominent position.
In the context of the former SFRY cinematography’s historical perspective, we should remember the reputation and importance of the short documentary form and the work of our authors at the world’s most major festivals, which is a very demanding system of values. This program is especially noteworthy since it presents directors of debut films, for whom a short documentary is not only a means and a required preparation for a feature film but also the objective and beginning point for dealing with films in general.
In addition to several male authors, the representation of female authors stands out, both in terms of themes and style, aesthetics and suggestiveness of their films. This year’s program thus opens one of the most successful documentaries created in this region in the post-Yugoslav period – Then Comes the Evening, directed by Maja Novaković, who exhausted all elements of her poetics from the earliest life experience and artistic area that she dealt with during her schooling, creating a unique world that the audience of Ravno Selo Film Festival should meet, just like all other short documentaries from this program, to the delight of the writers of these lines.