The 4th Foça International Archaeological and Cultural Heritage Documentary Film Festival is proud to announce the final selection for 2021. After a long process of reviewing more than 400 films from 77 countries, 45 films from countries were selected. The chosen documentaries address different facets of the theme “But is it Local? Local Culture and World Heritage”.
Along with films that present subjects from different regions within Turkey, the Foça Film Days 2021 program will introduce viewers to a wide range of examples of archaeology and cultural heritage from around the world, from Finland and Portugal to Indonesia and Tajikistan. Along with the film screenings, this year, as in every year since it was initiated in 2018, Foça Film Days will also feature talks with directors, workshops, and tours of the urban archaeology in Foça.
While the coronavirus pandemic forced Foça Film Days to present an on-line only program last year, this year, once again, the event plans to meet with film lovers live in Foça between 20-26 October. Daytime screenings will be held at the Reha Midilli Cultural Centre, while in the evenings, audiences will be able to come together to watch the films outdoors at the historic Marseilles square. An on-line program will also be available again this year for those unable to make it to Foça.
Foça Film Days is presented thanks to the ongoing support of volunteers and institutions, including the Foça Municipality, Izmir Metropolitan Municipality, Izmir Film and Television Producers Association, the Union of Documentary Film Makers and the French and Italian Cultural Centres in Turkey.
This year, Foça Film Days will be expanding to include the “3-Festival Cultural Exchange in the Southeastern Mediterranean”, a joint project conducted together with the AegeanDocs (Lemnos) and Cyprus AEI (Nicosia) Film Festivals. As part of this project, starting in May, Foça Film Days, with support from the İFTYD, began conducting a Video Production Workshop in Foça.
Documentary filmmakers Tahsin İşbilen, Zuhal Özkan Çetin and Hande Zerkin began the workshop by introducing a group of Foça residents to the basics of documentary film production. Once the initial phase of the workshop was over, the workshop participants formed groups, and each group was provided with the basic equipment needed to shoot their own short documentary films about the local history and culture.
A selection of films produced in the Foça workshop will be screened together with local productions shot in similar workshops being conducted in Lemnos and Nicosia. Following their premieres at Foça Film Days and the AegeanDocs and Cyprus AEI Film Festivals in September and October, an awards ceremony will be held in November before an international on-line audience. Bringing together these three established festivals in the southeastern Mediterranean not only offers a great opportunity for sharing the different shades of local Mediterranean culture, it also provides the opportunity to promote Foça as a cultural destination on international platforms.
A detailed event calendar for Foça Film Days 2021 will be available as of September at the website http://www.focafilmdays.org and on social media https://www.facebook.com/focafilmdays/ and https://www.instagram.com/focafilmdays/
