History

The Summer Film School (SFS) has been organized since mid sixties. Originally it was attended by up to 100 participants, but it quickly reached four times the capacity. The summer school took different places all over the Czech Republic, and since 1992 it is settled in Uherské Hradiště, having the optimal conditions there. After the loss of interest in early nineties, SFS in 1993 meant a big change, for the first well known personality visited it - it was a British director Peter Greenaway. And more and more people were attracted in the next years: Jan Troell, Godfrey Reggio, Lindsay Anderson, Gregorz Krolikiewicz, Zbigniew Preissner, Quay brothers, Michael Haneke, Julian Temple, Ken Loach, Amos Poe, Terry Gilliam, Filip Bajon, Abbas Kiarostami, Masahiro Shinoda, Conrad Rooks, .. The program offer was improved and widened since then, the organization improved, and the number of participants increased. (see the table below). In 1997 the organizers proved a high level of professionality, when the disastrous floods appeared in Uherské Hradiště just one week before the SFS. The organizing committee succeeded to move all the event to Jihlava, town that none of them knew, and in the incredibly short time they arranged a summer school that again showed up to be a step upwards in the quality of the programme and organization. Since 1993 the programme has been divided into more sections and the films are being shown on more screens simultaneously. The table below demonstrates the rapid growth of the number of participants:

SFS became a unique movie event, meeting point of members and organizers of art cinemas, filmmakers and distributors, directors, actors and critics, but also a favourite event of students of film academy and other schools and universities. It belongs to the most interesting European movie events. The summer school does not contain competition, all the projections are of a studying character and the event is accessible only to acredited participants and invited visitors. The working informal atmosphere characterizes all the event and the long discussions of up to 600 participants with filmmakers in movie theatre Hvězda are absolutely unique. The interest in the SFS grows every year and this summer we are prepared to welcome almost 2.000 guests and participants. Most of the participants are in their twenties, and the goal of SFS is to keep the continuity of film education, to educate the new youngest generation of those, who would continue with the tradition of oragnizing and visiting art cinemas. The success of some movies also initiated interest of Czech distribution companies, that bought about 20 good movies for the distribution in Czech Republic based on the experiences form SFS.

SFS 1998. will be again organized in a couple of parallel sections, that will cover 120 feature movies and 100 short movies. The movies will be shown in five theatres and we plan about 250 projections. The tradition of discussions with the directors, thematic discussions on the main topics of the festival sections will be continued, and of course the concerts, theatre performances and exhibitions will accompany the SFS. The movies will be shown during all the days, starting 8.30 a.m. and continuing till 2.00 a.m.