The Palace Arts has unveiled its highly anticipated underground film initiative, The Palace International Film festival (PIFF).
PIFF will present an eclectic selection of underground films to artists and festival goers attending The Palace Arts Residency and Festival in Southern Poland, 14th – 24th July 2017. Organised into six strands, including LGBTQ: Queer Eyes; Experimental: Lines and Circles; Shorts: Prince’s and Princess’; Features: Kings and Queens; and Documentary: Docu_me, the selected works will dissent radically in form, content and technique. International submission is now open for this year’s programme. Filmmakers are advised to submit their films before the April 14th deadline to avoid high fees.
PIFF was birthed out of The Palace Arts festival, whose ethos is captured in the tagline, Create, Collaborate, Play. The Palace aims to spotlight emerging talent, avoid elitism and nurture creativity, rather than attempt to measure it. In line with this, PIFF is a strictly no competition festival. It will pay particular attention to first and second time filmmakers. It will look to accept films with a diverse array of subject matter, and from diverse walks of life, and above all, spotlight films that can create conversations across genres, cultures, and with other art forms.
The film festival director Harry Silverlock, coming from a queer film distribution background has his eyes set on anarchy and chaos as an underlying theme this year in the Queer Eyes strand. The remaining strands remain open to inclusivity as PIFF and The Palace Arts is not just a London / Berlin project but an international creation designed to promote collaboration and to spotlight emerging talent.
“We’ve been planning this for a while and it’s finally happened. Last year’s Palace event was an astounding success and all the feedback we heard was: where’s the film arm? This year, PIFF will present an underground festival inspired by and a part of The Palace’s intimate, innovative and freeing approach to art, in a unique exhibition space. Film festival’s need to think of new ways to innovate and we need more film underground international film festivals like this that experiment with models.” Harry Silverlock, PIFF director.
The exhibition space, flamboyantly named The Blue Flamingo Cinema, is an immersive warehouse sized cinema in The Palace loft. It will have its own unique digital theme, overshadowed by an art installation made from thousands of CD’s as part of The Palace’s upcycling initiative. This art installation will hang over the cinema goers as a shimmering curtain folded around the silver screen. The Blue Flamingo cinema will be an immersive and interactive experience to both the filmmaker and cinema goer.
Filmmakers are advised to submit their films via the official PIFF website,
FilmFreeWay or
Withoutabox, before the 14/04/17 deadline.
PIFF Website:
www.palacefilmfest.org The Palace Website:
www.thepalacearts.org PIFF Facebook:
www.facebook.com/palacefilmfest