Popcorn are fattening! - Popcorn in rustling paper bags that disturb silence during movies are probably fattening, but the habit of watching and enjoying in documentary, animated, and short films is equally infectious as the popcorn nibbling in the dark of the movie theatres. If you haven't checked it yet, do it now at the 54 th Belgrade Documentary and Short Film Festival.

Unfortunately, we are greeting this year's Festival in reduced homeland of Serbia that has nearly been left without cinemas. In such Serbia, where television stations fight commercial wars for ratings with cheep contents, the short form that this Festival has been nourishing from its very foundation has been completely pushed aside or even discontinued. We are also greeting the Festival in the country in which just a couple of festivals give an illusion of organized cinematography, production, and distribution of moving pictures. Among those festivals is this one, ours, the oldest in Europe. I keep repeating this proudly since rarely does something in this country last to its fifty-fourth edition. Just during the past several years the Festival changed three countries without even moving out of Belgrade. In the meantime, before the mother-country has, it has managed to join European and world integrations and has already found its important place in the international film festivals' agenda. This year again it is proved by the number of authors from all over the world interested to participate in Belgrade competition, the number of those willing to come to the officially chosen European city of the future and show our festival respect with their presence. Again this year we have put great effort, together with tradition we are proud of, and retrospectives and authors' topic evenings (Zelimir Zilnik, Karpo Acimovic Godina) that are the part of this festival's important history, to make possible for our audience to see profile of most important films in all short film genres. Local and foreign authors will come again, shoulder to shoulder, to the competition line. Last year's Gand Prix given to Rastko Ciric proves that in this race Serbian films are not necessarily outsiders. Exclusive retrospectives, topic programmes, concerts, meetings with authors, Festival bonus day (sixth): all these make the good reason, no matter the official fattening warning, to arm with popcorn and fill out the halls where the short “moving pictures“ will roll. For those nostalgic there is one reason more. Return to the “crime scene“, Labour-union Centre (Dom sindikata), where everything has started. Have a nice time!

Janko Baljak
President of the Belgrade Documentary
and Short Film Festival Board