Project description: The founders of KRAF (Kragujevac Festival of Anti-war, Engaged and Academic Film), the association “MillenniuM”, which was created with the mission of developing democracy and civil society in the Šumadija region, celebrated 18 years of existence with the first indigenous Šumadija film festival. The goal of the project is to promote peace, democracy and decentralization through art, by continuing the tradition in Kragujevac and launching new, franchise festivals in Kruševac and Kraljevo. The organizers engaged prominent and new filmmakers and intellectuals for debates, with a quality accompanying program to raise the program in Kragujevac to a higher level than in previous years, and in Kruševac and Kraljevo, for the first time, they presented an artistic concept as a response to the rise of nationalism, militarism and xenophobia. The festival program in these three cities consisted of 18 films. The first activity of the project “KRAF’s “anti-war franchise” in Kruševac was in the form of a three-day know-how workshop for representatives of the Čkalja Theater, Kulturoid, the Kruševac Cultural Center, Evrokontakt, independent drama artists and high school students. In Kruševac, this festival had the slogan “Under this sky, man, straighten up.” As a continuation of the project in Kraljevo, a second three-day know-how workshop was held for associates. Of particular importance were three workshops for audience development. The work on involving new audiences was carried out through know-how workshops and special art workshops for audience development, where they encouraged both young people interested in cultural production, as well as high school students and older people to get involved in local communities as a new audience. There were about 100 participants in total at the workshops, with about 50 authors, 30 associates and about 450 visitors at all three festivals. These cities thus promoted themselves as “anti-war and engaged”. Admission to all programs was free.
Grant amount: 1,550,000.00 RSD
