26° Festival Universitario De Cine Y Audiovisuales Equinoxio (26)

Festival start: 13 September 2024      Festival end: 20 September 2024

Equinoxio Film Festival will hold its 26th edition from September 20th to 27th. It provides a space for gathering and reflection concerning student filmmaking while allowing interaction with the aesthetic perspective of emerging talents, along with artistic, social and personal concerns of young filmmakers.

The theme of this year's exhibition revolves around imprints. The films we make and watch today are a testimony of life that unfolds in a timeless echo; through the lens we replicate past traces and ask ourselves about the marks we leave for upcoming cinema. We seek for emerging films that explore these historical, political and cultural grooves, question their impact on audiovisual creation, and prompt discussions about the power of art in the collective and social construction of our imprints.

Award to Best Short film/Project by Category: all the works within each of the competitive categories participate for this award. The prizes to be awarded will be the following:

- Best National Short Film: Documentary
- Best National Short Film: Experimental
- Best National Short Film: Fiction
- Best International Short Film: Documentary
- Best International Short Film: Experimental
- Best International Short Film: Fiction
- Best Short Film Project
- Best text on cinema

Special mentions: in case the jury deems it appropriate, they may give up to 2 special mentions per category to works other than the winners of the Best Short Film / Project Award.

The specific information on the prizes of each of the categories will be announced during the following months; participants should be aware of the official announcements made by the Festival organizers. A film may not receive more than two awards.

RULES AND REGULATIONS OF THE CALL FOR ENTRIES


- SECTIONS

Official Competition

This section is the main exhibition of Equinoxio's cinematographic works. Colombian and international student short films are exhibited throughout the Festival and compete for the national and international awards of Best Documentary Short Film, Best Experimental Short Film and Best Fiction Short Film.

The official National Competition section will be composed only of Colombian works made between 2023 and 2024, made by students who demonstrate their link with an educational entity, with a maximum duration of 50 minutes. The official International Competition section will be composed only of international works made between 2023 and 2024, made by students who demonstrate their connection with an educational entity, with a maximum duration of 50 minutes. Those works that direct their narrative, conceptual and aesthetic decisions to the search for their own cinematographic expression will be privileged. The subject matter is free.

Panorama

The Panorama section is a key part of Equinoxio's programming as it articulates and problematizes perspectives usually overlooked, related to our annual theme. Through 2 curatorial lines in the current edition of the Festival, this section ratifies its constant growth and the importance of programming spaces for films made outside the major production centers.

This program seeks to explore this reality-image relationship by questioning the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction genres and understanding cinema as a hybrid territory, full of formal explorations and contemporary social concerns.

The Panorama section will be composed only of works from any country of origin and any date of production, made by students who can prove their connection with an educational institution, with a maximum duration of 45 minutes.

Retrospective

The Retrospective section allows us to establish a space for reflection on the scope of auteur filmmaking and the power of non-fiction. In light of the work of an international filmmaker and an academic institution, Equinoxio seeks to ask questions about the relationship between cinema-reality and the practice of filmmaking itself.

The selection of works for this section is not made through public call for entries. The categories for this section are Invited International Filmmaker and Invited Academic Institution.

Program of partner festivals

Every year, Equinoxio expands its network of allied events around the globe in order to join forces to promote the circulation of films internationally.

From this was born our Allied Festivals Program, a novel and daring curatorial project carried out jointly by programmers from different festivals, whose objective is to articulate the annual theme of Equinoxio through short films from the official selection of different events: a strategy that makes heterogeneous films cohabit within our main curatorial lines, formulating questions and communicating vessels not previously foreseen.

The selection of works for this section is not made through a public call for entries.

- ELIGIBILITY

The call is open to both Colombian and international films in the respective categories. Short films with a production date prior to January 1, 2023 may not be submitted to the official competition.

Only short films made by university students (both undergraduate and graduate) whose director/producer can prove their current relationship with a higher education institution may participate. In the case of Thesis or Degree Works, they must demonstrate the link of the work with the educational entity.

The same contestant may submit works to several categories (including a short film project in development), but not several works to the same category. If a contestant is pre-selected in different categories, he/she must choose only one category and withdraw his/her entries from the other categories.

5 - INSCRIPTION

The registration of films to the Festival is free of charge for Latin American films. For films foreign to Latin America there is a symbolic charge of 1 USD. Registration is done through the Festhome platform. The call for entries opens on June 1, 2023. All calls close on June 10 of the same year.

The registration must be made by the director/producer of the film and must contain: a visualization file of the film, short synopsis, technical specifications, artistic specifications, photo and bio-filmography of the director, poster, stills in high quality, a document certifying the quality of university student of the director/producer and social networking information of the work and the filmmakers. If the film is not spoken in Spanish, the subtitles in Spanish must also be attached; if not, a list of dialogues in english with timecodes and a high quality digital file will be required to add the subtitles.

- SELECTION AND PARTICIPATION

After the date of notification of the selection, no film may be withdrawn from the Festival. Participants whose films have been selected in any of the categories agree to provide any extra material requested by the Festival. If deemed appropriate, the Festival may reassign the selected films to a different category, as well as modify parts of the rules and regulations and the call for entries.

The Festival does not undertake to cover the travel, per diem or accommodation expenses of the contestants. The contestant must arrange his or her expenses with his or her respective university, or pay for his or her own expenses in order to participate in the activities programmed by the Festival. The Film and Television School of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and the Equinoxio Festival may provide a letter of invitation if requested.

The participant authorizes the Equinoxio University Film and Audiovisual Festival to use a maximum of 3 minutes of visual material for promotional purposes. Likewise, the participant grants exhibition rights to the Festival for the projection of his/her work during the Festival and in non-competitive screenings in National and International Festivals allied to Equinoxio.

The participant declares upon registration that he/she is the owner of all the rights of the registered work, its sound, musical and/or visual files, and exonerates the Festival Organization, the Escuela de Cine y Televisión and the Universidad Nacional de Colombia from any claim that third parties may make regarding the public exhibition, intellectual property or patrimonial property of the same. The participant releases the Festival Organization, the Escuela de Cine y Televisión and the Universidad Nacional de Colombia from any type of claim or lawsuit.

The submission of the work to the Equinoxio University Film and Audiovisual Festival implies the acceptance of the terms and conditions of the call for entries and these regulations in their entirety. By registering, the participant declares this.