Semarang hosts European Film Festival

A two-day European Film Festival, themed "Old and Young Europe", is taking place at Diponegoro University in Semarang, Central Java, from Wednesday to Thursday, organizers say.  

“The European Film Festival is part of a series of events run by representatives from the European Union in Indonesia, and the Semarang event is being run in cooperation with Kronix Film and Widya MItra,” the event’s Semarang organizing committee chief, Rebana Adawiyah, said Wednesay as quoted by kompas.com.

Rebana added that the event was aimed at improving public appreciation of European films, which she said had more cultural vaue than blockbuster films from the US.

She also said she hoped that people involved in the Indonesian film industry would be inspired by the European films and would be moved to add more cultural elements to the films they make.

“We aslo hope the public appreciate their own culture just like Europeans do,” Rebana said.

Six feature-length movies and one short film, produced in two different decades from seven European countries, are scheduled to be screened during the festival.

Admission to the festival screenings is free and tickets can be obtained 45 minutes before the movies starting times (1 p.m., 3.30 p.m. and 7 p.m).