ARFC supports five projects directed by women at Fem ART FILM FEST
The Romanian Association of Women in Cinema (ARFC) is a professional, non-profit, non-governmental organisation that intends to promote the professional artistic creation of women in the Romanian cinematography, within the contemporary European artistic framework and, at the same time, the universal human values specific to the feminine nature, such as empathy, compassion, non-violence.
The pilot edition of the femART Film Fest festival took place in 2015 under the name of Woman Filmmaker’s Day and was dedicated to women-created films. The event represented a unique endeavour in the Romanian industry and meant to make the first step towards founding of the first festival in Eastern Europe to draw the attention on woman values and on artistic creations realised by women in cinematography. The second edition of the festival takes place between July–November 2019 under the name First or Second Feature for a Woman Film Director — mentoring and development scholarship and consisted of a contest for young talents. This edition is organised in collaboration with Aparte Film and with the support of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. This initiative was meant to encourage the participation of women graduates from film faculties who directed at least one long short film (and maximum one feature film) and also wrote a script/treatment for a feature project.
Find here the 5 selected projects: FemArt Film Fest - booklet web
With the important support from AFCN we managed to finalize the contest for the scholarship granted to a young female film director. We received the confirmation of what we already knew, as the efforts of young directors in starting a film project, whatever intense they might be, prove fragile due to the lack of means and know-how.
This year’s edition encouraged us and confirmed the necessity of such a project, as well as the growth potential of this program. We will develop national strategies in order to attract more partners for next editions. We also aim to associate ourselves internationally in order to offer visibility to the winning project of FemArt Film Fest in international specialized markets. We would like to congratulate our participants and also our winner, and we intend to invite the young women directors next year, to a new enhanced edition of this program.
Director Anca Damian, is the founder of ARFC and part of the selection committee alongside Anamaria Antoci and Ivana Mladenovici.
"In 2012 we started the initiative called the Romanian Association of Women in Cinema (in short, ARFC) in order to develop support programs for paving the path of my fellow cinema colleagues towards fulfilling their profession. Besides the discrimination coming from the society and from the industry, women generally face more obstacles than men, many of them of biological nature.
We announced in 2015 a festival that would celebrate the values, identity and self-search of women, and I managed to organise a small first edition using my own resources. An important goal was then to support young women directors in their transitioning process from realising short to long films, a step that is usually the most difficult in one’s career.
This year, with the support from AFCN, I managed to organise the second edition of the festival and hopefully it will raise the initially estimated interest and enjoy a beautiful follow-up. The project targets the young women artists in cinema who plan to make their first long film — to which we added the second long film, also an Everest to climb.
Our attention will be directed towards talents with particular voices and with special projects, strongly impregnated with their artistic personality. It is important for these young talents to find their own way to their public, and we will be happy to have a small contribution to their journey.
I would like to thank everyone involved in this project, in supporting its development, and also in seeing it through to completion: the Administration of the National Cultural Fund, the working teams, the jury and experts."