Festival Miden

On the 4^th, the 5 ^th and the 6^th of July, Kalamata hosted the short movie festival called Festival Miden. It was the 9^th edition of this video art event. During these 3 days, more than 250 movies from all over the world have been screened in different places of the town. You could find screens at each moment of the day: mornings in the Archeological Museum of Messinia, evenings in Kalitechniko Steki, and nights in Ampheia Square. Besides these different projections, you could try freely a videogame called Banopticon, created thanks to a two years work of Παντειο Πανεπιστημιο Κοινωνικων and Πολιτικων Επιστημων Κεντρο Σπουδων.

For the organization of this festival, a team of 7 curators have worked during several months in order to create different thematics (“Mother”, “All about work”, “Cheer up”, “Come as you are”, “Lasting”…). After the open call launched in spring 2013, they received loads of short movies from every continent. Then, they watched all of these movies and selected the ones that fitted the more with their thematic.

Besides of that, some art schools, video art institutes or artistic projects participated in the Festival by sending one of their selections, let’s quote “Video Art Network Lagos” from Nigeria, “Where Dreams Cross” from Sweden, “Red Nomad: WAW” from Spain and the FILMHOUSE of Kalamata as examples.

The festival started on Thursday, the 4^th of July at 10:30 a.m. with the press release in the Archeological Museum of Messinia, lasted during the 2 days following and finished on Saturday, the 6^th of July, with loads of smiles, thanks and good vibes.

Thanks to the Festival team, and to the help of the EVS volunteers from the Youth Center of Kalamata, everything went on in a perfect way. Our motivation and optimism was stronger enough to fight the small unexpected “surprises” due to technology problems!

I hope you could join at least for one night this amazing worldwide festival, otherwise, see you next year for the 10^th edition. Let me tell you that 2014 edition will be an amazing week-end in Kalamata!

-Manuela