1st Margarita International Film Festival
Venezuela
October 29 to November 7, 2004

THE WORLD CINEMA MEETING IN THE CARIBBEAN

Finally the Caribbean area will have a really universal film encounter when, from October 29 to November 7, the first edition of Margarita International Film Festival, will takes place in Venezuela. Approximately forty-five new movies will meet in this beautiful island to compete and to participate in a World Cinema “fiesta”.

On May 12 in Caracas a cooperation agreement among the Centro Nacional Autónomo de Cinematografía (Venezuelan National Film Board), the Margarita Tourism Corporation and the private New Trends on Cinema Foundation was signed.

The Margarita International Film Festival will have an Official Section in Competition. (fiction, animated movies and documentaries) for the Golden Pearl, its foremost distinction, to film, director, actor and actress, selected by an international jury that will also confer the Special Award of the Jury. Others prizes in this section will be the Public's Award and the Press Award.

This Caribbean meeting will also offer the Open Horizons section, a rich program out of competition for long and short features from the five continents. A chapter to distinguish new creators and new tendencies on cinema. It will propose between twenty and twenty-four productions.

Another of these sections is Venezuelan Cinema on Focus is dedicated to show the latest productions of this Latin American country.

The festival will include the Special Tribute to A Lifetime in Cinema that will make a yearly homage to an outstanding personality in the international film scene (filmmaker, producer, actor, scriptwriter, director of photography, etc,) and it will include a retrospective.

It will also annually offer Special Tribute to a National Cinematography whose contributions to the development of the cinema, as art and industry, have been essential to universal production.

This deal will make possible a very old dream. The Festival will put emphasis in connecting the Europeans and Latin Americans productions.

Moreover the Margarita International Film Festival will organize workshops, seminars and music concerts.