Over the weekend of 7th-9th October, ÉCU was honored to present “ÉCU in Georgia”

From the moment we arrived, we were very pleased to be there. Check
out here how excited we were to see out massive logo in the centre of
Tbilisi!

ÉCU The European Independent Film festival is now in it’s 7th year,
and over that time we have shown films from more then 50 countries,
including Georgia, to thousands of people, and helped directors discover
their voices as they talked to their audiences in a multitude of
languages. The festival attracts a crazed bunch of misfits, visionaries
and terribly creative human beings; very much like the one the world
lost this week – I am, of course, speaking about Steve Jobs.

Jobs said that the only way to do great work is to love what you do –
and the people whose films that we screen at the ÉCU festival REALLY
love what they do, and they aren’t scared to do whatever it takes to
bring their stories to the screen. Independent film-making is a tough,
tough job because we are driven with a need to tell our stories, but
more often than not we don’t have the money to do it – so we have to use
immense amounts of imagination to bring our films to life. Einstein
said that “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge
is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces
the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

Think about when you go to the cinema to see a film; the lights go
down, the room goes dark and all of a sudden you are in another world.
You enter a world of make-believe, of love and hate, life and death, and
the beauty and the ugliness of the world we live in disappears when we
are in that dark room. Film has the power to make you laugh, cry and
even change the way you think about your life. Ah, the beauty of a good
film – how it can touch your soul.

This magic was captured perfectly in Georgia on our opening night. It
was truly the coming together of filmmakers and film fans in Georgia
that made it such an unforgettable and electric night. Check out a
flavor of it in our video and pictures of opening night…

To see more photos, click on the image below!

It is especially important for us to be able to go to Georgia for a
number of reasons, which Kadi Lokk, our festival manager, talks about in
this short interview.

Scott Hillier, Festival President, also added his own thoughts on the importance of being in Georgia. Check out his interview here.

Sincere thanks go to our partners and sponsors, without whom this
event would not have been possible. We had a truly amazing time in
Georgia and would like to thank all the people who came and showed their
support, and to everyone who made the weekend such a success. Special
thanks go to Tamara at the Georgian National Film Insititute. See out
interview with her here…

 For even more photos of the event, click on the photo below to see all the photos!