For being the city that flourishes in various colours of creativity and arts, Slovenia’s capital has become renowned as the Open City, for decades being the progressive and welcoming city for diverse alternative lifestyles and activities. Culture, for example, is embedded in its everyday life and is not considered a privilege. The year-round agenda features a multitude of international festivals and other events, encompassing a wide range of musical and artistic genres, where traditional lives side by side with the alternative.
Avant-garde artists in Ljubljana had challenged established cultural patterns already in 1920s and 1930s. In the 1980s, many artists, including a group of artists around Ljubljana’s Student Cultural Centre, better known as ŠKUC, brought new creative energies to the scene. Furthermore, when Slovenia was still part of the former Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, ŠKUC founded its gay section, named Magnus which was the first gay activist group in all of the Eastern European countries and also the first among all of the communist countries of the time.
In 1984, the Magnus section organized LGBT film festival, at the time known as the Magnus Festival, which was Europe’s first LGBT film festival of all times! In addition, the famous Ljubljana’s LGBT Film Festival, which still runs every year to this day, was also one of the first festivals of the kind in the whole world! The city’s dedicated LGBT activists and artists, organized in a number of non-governmental organizations, continue to contribute to the face of Ljubljana today.
The Ljubljana’s LGBT Film Festival, the Europe’s oldest festival of the kind, has been every year for more than three decades featuring films by gay and lesbian filmmakers and other films dealing with themes related to homosexuality. This year, the LGBT Film Festival will open on the 24th of November and it will last until the 2nd of December 2018. Some of the accompanying programme has already started on the 17th of November with a screenwriting workshop and it continues with Slovene LGBT literature being presented at the Slovenian Book Fair, and with other workshops, performances, discussions, presentations taking place daily.
The 34th edition of the festival is bringing 26 movies, including documentary and experimental documentary, and 13 short movies from 27 countries spanning over most of the continents: Europe, Asia, Northern America, Southern America, and Africa. It is a great idea for accompanying programme to the business meeting held in Ljubljana, the Open City.
