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Christine Dollhofer • Director, Crossing Europe

"We go to festivals for the human factor - it's all about the people"

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- At this year's edition of Crossing Europe, we sat down with its long-serving director, Christine Dollhofer, to discuss the event's place in the Austrian festival landscape, among other issues

Christine Dollhofer  • Director, Crossing Europe

Christine Dollhofer has headed up the Crossing Europe Film Festival in Linz, Austria, since its inception in 2004; prior to that, she served as artistic director of the Diagonale, the Austrian national film festival. Placing the emphasis very much on young auteurs, who attend the relaxed and meticulously organised event to present their first or second features, Crossing Europe is a fine annual showcase of the best cinematic output that the Continent has to offer. We spoke to Christine to find out about the biggest innovations at this year’s edition, whose overarching themes were the issues of identity politics and a society in upheaval, and what sets Crossing Europe apart from Austria’s other film gatherings.

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Cineuropa: What would you say has been the biggest innovation or highlight at this year’s edition?
Christine Dollhofer: 
For me, the biggest innovation was being able to gather together five well-known and acclaimed directors for the opening of the festival: Yesim UstaogluVitaly ManskyAnka and Wilhelm Sasnal, and Lucas Belvaux. They were all here in person to present our opening films. It represented a really nice cross-section of Europe, from Turkey, through Ukraine and Poland, to France. In their own way, each of these films deals with Europe today and all of the Continent’s tricky political issues. 

The second innovation is that this year we started the school programme, which has been very successful. We showed The Migrumpies, an Austrian film dealing with migration and prejudice in a very ironic and humoristic way, and the audience really liked it a lot. Through this we also want to create new audiences for future European films, get young people back in the cinemas, and let them experience what it’s like to discuss films together and so on. And then we also have an experimental section, with some innovative works and performances; it’s a full-body experience because the screen takes up the whole venue. 

How big and experienced is your team of selectors, and how do they go about picking a selection of films that all somehow fall into line with the overarching theme of each edition?
Actually, I am the main programmer of the festival. We are a mid-sized festival and our budget is not big enough for us to employ a lot of curators or programmers. So I am the primary source; I gather all the ideas and I watch a lot of films over the whole year. I attend a lot of festivals thanks to my other jobs – I work for San Sebastián as a programme delegate and I work for a distribution company in Austria as an acquisition consultant.

Then I try to share my selection work with a few curators who work at the festival, who are in charge of the Working World section, the Architecture and Society section, and the Night Sight section. Of course, these three curators have independent lives and also discover titles on their own, and so we discuss and exchange ideas. You can also submit films for Crossing Europe – the application submission period is from September to the beginning of January. So this whole mixture of proactive selection and submissions makes for this huge variety and gives me a really rich overview of Europe’s annual film production.

There has been a shadow cast over Crossing Europe’s funding in recent years. How are things looking now in terms of financing?
Things have stabilised now. Our budget is around €560,000. If I compare that to other festivals in Austria, of course the Viennale has a much, much higher budget, and even the national film festival, the Diagonale, has almost €1.5 million. But ever since the beginning, almost all of our main donors have been really intrigued by the idea of building a European film festival in Linz. It was European Capital of Culture in 2009, and that really helped us to establish the event. After 2009, of course, it was tricky to keep the budget stable. The festival and the expectations surrounding it are always growing, so we want to provide our guests and our audience with a very professional gathering with all the elements they are used to. As a regular festivalgoer all over Europe, I know how a festival atmosphere should be and how its processes should work, so I try to combine the best-practice models here in Linz. 

What sets Crossing Europe apart from the other two main Austrian festivals, the Viennale and the Diagonale?
We bridge the gap between worldwide cinema and Austrian cinema. The Viennale is a very prestigious, well-known festival in Vienna, which dedicates its programme to handpicked, outstanding world cinema, whereas the Diagonale really focuses on national film production and co-productions, and celebrates the Austrian film industry, encompassing a wide range of movies, from experimental to fiction feature films. I think a European film festival was what was missing here in Austria, and I still really like this idea of filling the gap. There are so many ideas behind Crossing Europe. I think it’s working nicely and it’s worth spending the money on this festival idea, and you can see that a lot of European film festivals are now popping up on the festival landscape.

Are there any imminent plans to expand the industry section of Crossing Europe with pitching forums and so on?
I think there are already so many well-organised, successful industry events in Europe, and it would be hard to compete. I don’t see the necessity of creating another pitching or work-in-progress event because I really appreciate the work being done on this by my festival colleagues. Also, I am in contact with a lot of directors and producers, and sometimes they don’t know where to go next because there is so much on offer in terms of post-production processes and places where they can find money and present their new project. 

Besides, I don’t want to divide the audience into industry professionals and festivalgoers. When I go to a festival, for instance, first of all I would like to see some films, but then I have to split my time and interests – it would also be nice to attend a work-in-progress session. But I think this size of gathering is very charming, and I still manage to meet all of the guests at least once during the six days. So I really like this idea of a growing festival family as well. As you can see in the cinemas here, 50% of the audience are members of the public, and the other 50% are accredited guests, industry, press or curators, and I like to provide discoveries for both groups. I like to create an atmosphere for networking; that’s what it’s all about. The reason we go to festivals is the human factor – it’s all about the people.

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