NEWS & MOVIES ARCHIVE

6th International Festival of Underwater Film & Photography "Walking Beneath the Sea"

This year’s 6^th international festival of underwater film and photography “Walking beneath the Sea” has almost turned into “Walking on the ice”. Although the conditions on Slovenian streets were icy, lovers of underwater life gathered from all parts of Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Italy and Austria. Considering the weather conditions was escape below the sea definitely the best possibility.

Each year the festival starts with the Art Contest Walking beneath the Sea, which was this year founded by the mayor of community of Slovenske Konjice. At the end 1024 art works from pupils were received, and the committee had a tough job to choose the best 32 art works, that were exhibited in the small gallery in Arts Centre Slovenske Konjice. The best young artists of the 6th Walking beneath the Sea are:
- Vladislav Malyh (Russia) from Srednje obrazovateljnaje sole 4, Anapa (mentor E.S. Golubenko)
- Karlo Skokic (Croatia) from OS Petra Kanavelica, Korcula (mentor Abel Brcic)
- Eneja Soster (Slovenia) from OS Pohorskega odreda, Slovenska Bistrica (mentor Vesna Repnik)                                                                

The prizes for young Russian artists were received by the representative of the Russian Embassy, Mr Andrey Myasnikov.

On 30^th and 31^st of January 2014 projections were presented in Arts Centre Slovenske Konjice for primary schools OS Pod Goro, OS Ob Dravinji and High School Slovenske Konjice and some projections were also held for the pupils at their schools across Slovenia.

The round table, which took place on Friday, 31^st of January, was organised in the memory of Italian submarine Nereide, which sunk 100 years ago and was lifted from the bottom 40 years ago. The round table brought out incredible stories from people that have not seen each other for 40 years: Milovan Kljajic (Serbia), Đorđe Đurović (Serbia), both part of a filming team, and prof. Stacimir Gosovic (Croatia), who connected to Slovenske Konjice via Skype.

This year we commemorate 100 years since the beginning of the First World War, during which many battles took place underwater, writing a special part of the history that also included Slovene people. Unfortunately, since there is nowadays no real navy in the eastern part of Adriatic Sea, only the memories on these remarkable men remain. Among the remaining stories is the one about sunken Italian submarine Nereide. Nereide sunk almost 100 years ago near Palagruza and was lifted on surface approximately 40 years ago. The round table on this topic was led by Neven Lukas (Croatia), a member of the committee of the biggest and oldest diving organisation C.M.A.S. We would specially like to thank Bojana Andric from TV Beograd who forwarded us film about this unbelievable achievement. 

The round table was followed by the opening of the photographic exhibition of four remarkable underwater photographers: Italian Michele Davino, who became world champion in underwater photography on 14^th C.M.A.S. world championship in 2013, American Scott Johnson, whose photographs were published in books and magazines such as Unterwasser, Alert Diver, Sport Diver, X-Ray Magazine …, Russian Viktor Lyagushkin, who is the photographer of the Russian edition of National Geographic, Nikon photographer and received the biggest Russian award for divers – Underwater world, and finally Slovene Arkadij Popovič – Dadi, who is, together with Marjan Richter, the father of Slovene underwater photography and its development. The exhibition was opened by Renata Klančnik, director of the Center for cultural events Slovenske Konjice and Stanislav Mlakar, deputy mayor of Slovenska Bistrica.

Friday evening continued with incredible concert of trio Jure Tori. The international trio consists of Jure Toni, who is one of the three biggest accordionists right now, bass legend Ewald Oberleitner from Austria and Cuban guitarist Ariel Cubria. Trio performed many different styles with the energy of a punk band. At the end, they were joined by Marjan Bone, singer of the group Kvinton. An hour long concert finished with big applause and desire for more.

Friday evening ended with film presentations. First one to open the film presentations was film Beaches of Chelona (Alessandro DE ROSSI, Federica BOTTA) about the difficulties turtles have to overcome in their life. Film was followed by A Gathering of Giants: The Whale Shark of Qatar (Nicholas WOOLLARD, Myriad Global Media), where we found out how whale sharks are being observed and researched in Qatar. The evening finished with last presentation of short underwater western For A Few Shrimps More (Olivier VAN DEN BROECK, Beyond Scuba) in which a seahorse was put behind the bars because of constant feeding with shrimps.

Saturdays Grand Prix Evening was led by Luka Bregar. At the beginning of the evening he presented two authors of the underwater photography, namely Michele Davino and Arkadij Popović Dadi. After short interview we entered underwater world and discovered journey around oceans with film The Trip (Daniele IOP, Manfred BORTOLI, Massimo BOYER). Next, we discovered coral reef in film Raja Ampat, the Enchanting world of corals (Cristiana & Alain Bontemps), and observed sea fluorescence in corals and other sea creatures in Visions in blue (Elisabeth LAUWERYS, Lisa STROHMAYER). Our film journey then entered sweet waters as we saw underwater world of rivers Drina and Vrela through the eyes of a Danube salmon in The Story of the Danube Salmon (Jovana Milanko , Co-authors Dusan Brkovic, Šandor Sipoš; Liquid Art). We concluded the first part of the screening with Mysteries of the Sand (Olivier VAN DEN BROECK, Beyond Scuba), a film that unveiled the life at the bottom of the sea, hidden to unknown eyes. 
 
At the beginning of the second part of the evening we were greeted by Miran Gorinšek, mayor of Slovenske Konjice. Afterwards screening of the film about Nereide from TV Beograd took place. Part of this incredible story was presented live by Milovan Kljajić (Serbia), Đorđe Đurović (Serbia) and prof. Stracimir Gošović (Croatia).

We continued film festival by staying on board of the submarine. This time we watched several times awarded film about lost submarine wreck, found in the Genova Bay, U455: The Mystery of the Lost Submarine – (Stéphane BÉGOIN). Film festival was concluded by the short documentary film Hydrocosmos (IAHD Adriatic) about the only entrance of people with spinal cord injury into space so far. The film showed how members of Plavalni klub Slovenske Konjice and IAHD Adriatic dived in hydro laboratory in Yuri Gagarin Research & Test Cosmonaut Training Center, where cosmonauts are usually trained how to walk and operate in zero-gravity space.
The final act of the film festival was the pre
sentation of the Grand Prix Award of the 6^th Walking beneath the Sea, which was presented to the French film U455: The Mystery of the Lost Submarine (Stéphane BÉGOIN).

At the end we would like to thank anyone who participated in organisation of the film festival and all visitors who joined us in walking beneath the sea.

Photo: Miha Matavz

 

1. 02. 2014