HIGH COAST
INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

-Personal Artistic Expression through the medium of Film

The High Coast International Film Festival is a two day event - Saturday and Sunday - held in the High Coast in North of Sweden focusing on Avant Garde and Experimental Film.

The core foundation and principle for the Film Festival itself and for the Film Program we put together is : "Personal Artistic Expression through the Medium of Film".

There are no special sections for contemporary relevant films, attention to any special topics - Film as an Artform, as a means to express and artisically investigate is what puts the Film Program together.

What we look for is a clear voice, and we try to do the same ourselves. A voice not to please, not to shock, not to provoke or to appeal - just to speak, to express, to artistically investigate and portray - whatever it may be.

As a result we search for and present films of all kinds of topics and methods. Strict Fiction with a clear cut storyline, wild experimental Film Poetry, quiet almost Anthropological Documentaries,
Comedies, Dramas and everything there between. Some are entertaining, some are not - some are easy to digest, some are hard to digest.


We work to provide a comfortable and friendly weekend where Film makers, Film Organizations, enthusiasts and audience can meet and spend quality time during a event packed with lots films to watch and to gather around.

We offer accomodation to all selected film makers as well as to Film Organizations at the regional and wonderfull Hotel Björkudden.

FESTIVAL ORGANISATION

Jonatan Petre Brixel (left) and Andrija Jovanovic (right) outside Cinema Moviemento in Berlin, December 2016.
copyright: Jakob Olsson

Background

When first starting out with this Festival, August 2015, this is what I wrote,

"The High Coast Film Festival humbly aims to make this world a better place.

Press and media, politicians and "experts" gladly talk about the lifes of the "other" people, and maybe interview "them" a minute or two with leading questions and then giving a fifty minute analysis among themselves about the situation they have never seen nor never will see. May it be war, may it be about a grandmother in Australia boiling tea. The structure is the same.

Art in any form is to use the freedom of speech we are given as human beings by this earth (and not by the government). We can speak with so much more than only words and mind. And we speak for ourselves, not for others.

Furthermore, that what is given is so as a potential in every human being to develop and explore for themselves. The potential itself is nothing. The practice of the potential is to explore the human nature. Making movies is one way of doing so.

Are you really free to speak your mind if you never do it? Are you really speaking your own mind if you repeat that what others have said to you? The answer is no, you are not. Maybe there is a law preventing a person living in Iran to speak her mind about certain things, but within her as a human being she is free. Compare that to a person in Canada having no law preventing her from speaking, but inside her the journey towards emotional and spiritual freedom is far, very far. One is prevented by law, the other by herself.

The idea of founding a Film Festival in the High Coast is to broaden the spectra of Artistic Expression in the North of Sweden, and to offer a platform for International Independent Film makers to speak on their own terms and methods about subjects they care about. Some may be far on their road, having years of experience in life and cinema, years of contemplation within, some may have barely started just taking their first step, may it be a roar in anger or a sensitive whisper. All are welcome.

Speaking, however about whatever, your own mind and heart is what this Festival is about and it is our firm believe that this by nessessity builds bridges to one another thus making this world a better place."



Jonatan Petre Brixel, Film maker, Founder and Director of The High Coast Film Festival