Our Festival was dreamed up, conceived and launched during the second lockdown linked to the Covid-19 crisis of 2020 on the French Riviera.
The Founder and President, Karolina Bomba, had just submitted her film "Seven Wishes" to various Festivals around the world and found herself confronted with a series of challenges encountered by most of the film industry's professionals.
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She wasn't expecting it, her film was very well received and started to collect multiple awards, but because of Covid it was no longer possible to travel to the Awards Ceremonies or to meet all the professionals that we are used to usually see when presenting a film.
90% of the Festivals have been cancelled, or with a bit of luck, postponed, theaters around the world closed their doors, filming was stopped, and the entire film industry suddenly froze. It was the same for Music, Concerts, Theater, Dance, Opera, Museums, Exhibitions, in short it was the whole Cultural World that suddenly came to a standstill and was endangered.
Despite the global scale of the pandemic, Karolina very quickly realized that all the societal problems she has been defending for years did not disappear with the pandemic, but on the contrary were exacerbated by it.
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The hidden crisis of the pandemic persists through individual and collective liberties that are increasingly trampled on. The surveillance of the masses made even more overwhelming, freedom of expression gagged, humor hitherto spontaneous and usually natural gradually stifled. Every word and every smile in quarantine. The masks anyway now hiding our smiles and our grimace alike.
Certainly the pandemic is wreaking havoc, but despite its contagiousness it has not extinguished the endless damages inflicted upon by discrimination, racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, sexism, abortion rights, immigration, rape, incest, violence in all its forms. Moreover, suicide rates, domestic violence and child abuse have exploded.
The whole planet was at a standstill but all that has just been mentioned has not stopped but, on the contrary, has unfortunately worsened. And it seems that there is no cure or vaccine for any of this.
The virus inflicting the most damage today is not coronavirus but stupidity, hatred, narcissism, ignorance and lack of empathy and respect. So, confined or not, we must continue to pursue our combats and fight for our fundamental freedoms and convictions in accordance with universal laws.
The current crisis allows us no more moving around and seeing each other freely, no more planning or programming anything that was so simple before. We can no longer travel wherever we want, no more getting together as we wish, nor hugging each other.
In fact, as dizzying as it may seem, the coronavirus and those who dictate what we are or are not allowed to do have caused an unprecedented black hole in space-time. Yes, everything that was originally planned in our personal agendas has been disrupted, but not only that.
Above all, everything we don't know and what we could have experienced since the beginning of this pandemic has been literally erased from the matrix. Maybe you could have met "by chance" in a resturant the man or woman of your life instead of reading a book and biting your nails during June's lockdown? Maybe the trip you should have taken last summer would have allowed you to relocate, to change jobs, in short, to change your life? Maybe you would have had a child, whose conception you gave up because of the crisis?
Maybe if this crisis hadn't existed, you would be doing something totally different than what you are doing today? Maybe if you had met a woman in the street who would have accidentally dropped her lipstick, you would have picked it up and by now would be with her on a desert island, sipping exotic cocktails?
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On the other hand, we must admit that this gigantic upheaval might have prevented your sister from getting involved in a car accident on her way to Christmas shopping or maybe your house from being burglared because you were confined on the day it would have happened.
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Yes, when we become fully aware of this, it's vertiginous!
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And then, there are those who have been hit by Covid19 head-on, having lost one or more family members, close friends, not even being allowed to attend their funerals. Each one abandoned in their grief, without being able to comfort and be comforted. No one was prepared to go through this...
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All those synchronicities of the Universe have been altered because of the pandemic and some parts of our lives have been stopped or paused without us being even aware of it. And now, we have to ride with it and more than ever we need to become aware and trust the purpose of our lives and no longer be trapped by all the surrounding illusions.
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We must continue to believe that in spite of the Great Puzzle of our lives as well as our planet being turned upside down, things are getting fixed for the better and are being put back in place. It is incumbent on each of us to give an impulse that favors their rearrangement in the best possible conditions.
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~ We are all in this together ~
One morning, Karolina Bomba saw an article in the newspaper which listed on one side the 5 essential professions (Doctors, Nurses, Surface Technicians, Ambulant Merchants, Deliverymen), and on the other side the 5 non-essential professions, and in this painting to her great astonishment, in position number 1 were the artists with a rate of 71% votes.
This figure triggered within her, incomprehension, sadness and a great empathy towards all the people concerned. This was followed by a reflection that gave rise to a fierce determination to create a Festival giving an opportunity to continue to share works, some of which deal with sensitive subjects mentioned above and which are de facto stifled by the news that is 100% focused on the pandemic.
In addition, many people complain about the existing festivals that snub thousands of emerging artists and prefer to congratulate those who do not need it anymore instead of shedding light on new treasures that are scattered around the world and just waiting to be discovered.
The purpose of our Festival is to bring together the greatest number of artists worldwide through the 140+ categories proposed and to promote the emergence of a new wave of talent deserving of greater visibility and recognition.
In its inception, we have chosen a format giving artists the opportunity to express themselves every month. An annual event will crown the works that have most impressed the Festival and its Jury.
Of course, beyond having a humanistic vocation, our Festival also wishes to convey messages of hope, humor, lightness, poetry, and above all love, in order to help soften the effects of this pandemic of fear.
We also aim to be catalysts for a change of perspective, a shift in consciousness leading to a paradigm shift that is essential for a true rebirth in a better world, which we are all co-creating together, here and now.
As soon as we are free of this virus, we will meet again to celebrate Cinema and Life in an atmosphere worthy of the "Années Folles" of the past century (a.k.a the "Roaring Twenties"). We can't wait!
FilmFreeway
