- INFO
CineLink 2007
Introductory texts for festival catalogues are always the first page of a new chapter, but also a tally. Five years of CineLink sound like a jubilee and makes us recall why we started this project. The Regional Programme of our Festival started to grow in 2002. At the time, the region included 9 countries, and very few film projects made it to other co-production markets. Having recognized the need to create a place where feature film projects from countries of the region will be worked on and presented, we decided to launch CineLink. Moreover, we knew from the very onset that there was a need to strengthen the regional film industry from within and towards the outside.
Five years later, the SFF Competition Programme includes 15 countries, and the true measure of success in the region today is quite different from what it was five years ago. At the time, we could only dream that in the last two years films from the region would win Bears and Palms, and that Hungarian, Romanian, Bosnian films would happen to Europe. And that is why the reasons for CineLink are not the same as the reasons for its existence today. CineLink is there to present what the region has to offer in-the-making, and the interest is already there – no need to build it, just channel and guide it. The 50 guests in our first year has grown to 250 in the fifth, two former CineLink projects are in the Competition Programme, another is in Focus – also premiered in Berlin this year, there is another one in TeenArena ...
And at the Meeting Room on the first floor of Dom Armije 15 new projects are simmering.
Mirsad Purivatra
Director of the Sarajevo Film Festival
Amra Bakšić Čamo
Head of CineLink project
