“This year’s journey is by far the most adventurous in the history of the festival. We still believe that Ji.hlava will take place on site, safely, and that it will again bring extraordinary cinematic experiences,” the director of Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, Marek Hovorka, says as he reiterates the festival's stance from May (read the news). Hit by a second wave of coronavirus, the Czech Republic is tightening measures to slow down the spread. The 24^th edition of the Ji.hlava IDFF, however, has a backup plan of online screenings, in case cultural events should get banned entirely. “We still believe this will not be the case,” adds Hovorka.

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The upcoming edition, per the festival's usual programming, will present classical and experimental creative documentary films. The first and the last film of Icelandic filmmaker Jóhann Jóhannsson, sci-fi poem Last and First Men [+lee también:
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Films made over the past 120 years, including works by the pioneer of film abstraction Oscar Fischinger and US avant-gardist Stan Brakhage, will be showcased in the Fascinations section. The festival has been systematically mapping experimental and underground cinema in Eastern European countries, and this year's focus will be on Polish experimental cinema, including Jerzy Skolimowski’s 1960 film Erotique as well as works that have not yet been discovered internationally. Female creativity will be the centrefold of the music film section Siren Test, offering film portrait Lydia Lunch – The War Is Never Over by Beth B. and Lisa Rovner’s Sisters with Transistors [+lee también:
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An intimate cinematic portrait of Serbian conceptual and performance artist Marina Abramović by Boris Miljković, Homecoming - Marina Abramović and Her Children [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] directed by Giedre Žickyte. This year’s experimental retrospective will revolve around the topic of gardens. “The selection also showcases various approaches and methods of presentation: from Norman MacLaren’s stop motion-animation through the exquisite structures of Kurt Kren, Takahiko Iimuru or Steina Vasulka, to works where garden artefacts are glued directly to the film reel, such as Biostructure by Alice Růžičková,” reveals the section’s programmer Andrea Slováková.

The 24^th edition of the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival will run from 27 October-1 November.

The spot of the 24^th Ji.hlava IDFF by Mike Hoolboom: