EU4Culture: Fotofestiwal in Łódź will bring Poland, Belarus and Ukraine together this June

Four winners of the regional ‘Family Connections’ photo competition, held earlier this year by the EU NEIGHBOURS EAST programme and FOTOFESTIWAL, are among the 25 international photographers selected to participate in this year’s Fotofestiwal, International Festival of Photography in Łódź, Poland.

The photo festival will take place on 15-25 June with the support of the EU-funded programme EU4Culture.

Katerina Shosheva (Moldova), Marysia Myanovska (Ukraine), Nazik Armenakyan (Armenia), and Pasha Kritchko (Belarus) will join this year’s Fotofestiwal in Łódź, and will also be taking part in expert meetings at the industry event Photo-Match: Big Other Portfolio Review, co-financed under the Creative Europe programme.

The theme of this year’s Fotofestiwal is Hope, an edition that will mostly bring together art projects from Poland, Belarus and Ukraine “that prove that even in times of the deepest darkness and in the cracks of uncertainty, we can develop some hidden positive scripts”, says a press release by EU4Culture.

This year, Fotofestiwal will also host the programmes of the Minsk Month of Photography and the Odesa Photo Days Festivals, which cannot take place in their home venues.

“Both those events cannot be organised in their respective countries due to political reasons,” explains Krzysztof Candrowicz, one of the festival’s organisers. “So we are preparing a huge space in the heart of post-industrial Łódź, the OFF Piotrkowska complex to present the works of Belarusian and Ukrainian artists, among others.”

During the ten days of the festival, the audience will be also invited to attend presentations of photography books and exhibitions organised by partner galleries as well as film screenings, discussions and concerts.

The festival was one of the selected projects in the ‘EU4Culture call for cultural and cross-innovation projects in favour of the civil society and citizens of Belarus’ and received a €25,000 grant for its organisation.

EU4Culture is a four-year project funded by the European Union to support the culture and creative sector in the Eastern Partnership Countries. The project is implemented by the Goethe Institut (lead), Institut Français de Géorgie, Danish Cultural Institute and Czech Centers.

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