MIEFF was established with a strong aspiration to create a new cultural institution that would provide a presentable and close look at a wide range of experimental practices with the moving image. This approach allows to pay exclusive and thorough attention to the talents that might have previously been overlooked by the vast number of conventional film festivals which only spare a small corner for experimental categories within their programmes.
Our priority here is to showcase the best and most interesting works, hopefully giving gifted artists and filmmakers from around the world an opportunity to show their talent from all sides and allowing the audience to have a breath of fresh air over the running days of our festival. Our mission is also to create fruitful links within contemporary art and cinematic spheres and to highlight cultural areas of immediate interest.
We choose films that allow us to focus on unconventional ways of working with the audience, breaking its patterns of filmic perception and providing extraordinary filmic experience. So whether you are an emerging author or an established experienced professional – we would like to encourage you to submit if you do practise pushing the boundaries within the field of moving image.
The 1st Moscow International Experimental Film Festival stands on a ground stone laid in by our first run in July 2016. It has been moulded by the strong support of our multifaceted jury board, collaboration with an array of outsourced talent, gratifying (in both quality and scale) response of the press in Russia and abroad, but, most importantly, by the engagement of a wider creative young audience looking at film culture from a new angle. Afterwards our shortlist and winners programme toured the world from Los Angeles (FFM programme at UCLA) over Europe to Saint Petersburg and many cities in Russia.
The 2nd Moscow International Experimental Film Festival was held on July 20 – 23 at The Stanislavsky Electrotheatre which was founded more than a century ago in 1915 as one of Moscow’s first cinema palaces. The symbolic legacy of this location turned out to be consistent with the major step that turned our festival into a remarkable cultural event. We received 4500 submissions, showed 68 films from 23 countries and got the audience of 6000 people in 4 days. We held the first retrospective of Apichatpong Weerasethakul in Russia, 35-mm retrospective of classical soviet experimental film director Vladimir Kobrin, organized performances, lectures and much more.
The 3rd Moscow International Experimental Film Festival will take place in 2018 in Moscow and feature an international competition programme, retrospectives of world-famous filmmakers, special screenings, Q&A’s, lectures and audio-visual performances. It will be an international showcase platform welcoming up-and-coming as well as experienced filmmakers from around the world and facilitating interdisciplinary dialogue within the world of the moving image.
Our jury comprises of people whose opinion is valid in a nowadays era of such varied backgrounds as contemporary art, experimental film, contemporary theatre and dance, both invited foreign guests and Russian connoisseurs. Their presence and attention will bring a wider range of audience and will offer professional and caring feedback during the course of our festival in the context of each of their representative specialised backgrounds.