For six years now, Podgorica’s AVIFest has been Montenegro’s single venue for gathering domestic and foreign independent filmmakers with the aim of promoting the short film.

“Short films have been and will be the foundation for independent filmmaking. They have no need to colour reality, they represent it as it is. They are films made out of necessity, not made-to-order,” Zoran Bojović, the director and co-founder of the AVIFest, told Southeast Europe: People and Culture.

Initially dubbed the Short Film Review (Smotra Kratke Video Forme), the festival was renamed three years later after the Montenegrin acronym for Festival Alternativnog Video Izraza (Alternative Video Expression Festival). The name is also a pun on the format in which films should be submitted for screening.

The festival took place over three days in early June, and included seven different programmes. Aside from the traditional categories for best domestic and foreign works, which compete for the Golden Sparrow Award, Bojović mentioned that several essential festivals from the region and world were represented at AVIFest, so as to introduce audiences to new trends in alternative short filmmaking. Cult classics made in the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia were also screened.

“The success of the festival this year has shown us what direction to take in the future… Also, the time allotted to alternative Montenegrin music turned out to be an excellent idea. The festival’s closing night performance brought the audience to its feet.” Bojović said, drawing attention to the programme segment entitled “Alternative Montenegrin Music,” which featured the bands Autogeni Trening and Demodemolls.

Winners were chosen by both the audience and by the jury. According to viewers, the best Montenegrin film was Shooting Sarah Tate by Podgorica native Marko Eraković, who graduated in film and TV directing at Rome’s Roma Tre University in 2009. Les Convivaiux (The Users) by the young French film director Lewis Eizykman was voted the best international selection.

The jury found the best domestic film to be Dušan Kasalica’s Reconstruction and gave the title of best foreign film to Francois Vogel’s Terrains Glissants (Slippery Grounds). This year’s selection included 14 Montenegrin films and nine from abroad.

As guests of this year’s festival, Andrea Stuart and Armanda Chollat-Namy, representatives of Art Park, an independent French production house, spoke of their experiences to the audience at AVIFest’s opening. This continued earlier cooperation with festivals and organisations who share AVIFest’s vision. As festival director Bojović pointed out, “enthusiasm is the foundation of action, and enthusiasm brings people together.”

The AVIFest director stressed how important it is to promote short films, as the development of multimedia technology has shattered the illusion that a good film must also be an expensive one: “It is now possible for good films, regardless of their length, to be shot with relatively modest funds. Creative people should be empowered to screen their stories, their experiments, without limits or conditions, especially without material, technological, political or any other type of constraints.”