A Safe Space for Brave Programming:

Heleen Gerritsen on Navigating goEast

Author

Olga Blackledge and Eva Zak

Abstract

Heleen Gerritsen reflects on her eight-year tenure as director of goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film (2017–2025). In conversation with Olga Blackledge and Eva Zak, she discusses how the festival evolved in response to global crises, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and growing political polarisation – all while maintaining its openness and commitment to experimentation. Gerritsen speaks about the ethics of curatorial decision-making, new formats such as TikTok cinema, and the importance of giving visibility to marginalised voices beyond traditional film forms. A key concern is access to film heritage: many Soviet-era works, particularly from former republics, remain in Russian state archives and are difficult or impossible to access today. As Gerritsen puts it, these films are “held hostage by archives”. The interview also covers the Symposium, the East-West Talent Lab, and the challenge of balancing intellectual ambition with audience engagement in a festival that has consistently reflected its time. The interview was conducted via Zoom on May 20, 2025.

Keywords

Heleen Gerritsen, Rebecca Heiler, goEast Film Festival, documentary film, post-Soviet cinema, Central and Eastern European cinema, East-West Talent Lab, decolonisation, film heritage, animation, TikTok, film archives, Deutsche Kinemathek.

We would like to start the conversation with some background on the history of the goEast Film Festival. Since its inaugural edition in April 2001, it has become an institution. Could you start with a brief introduction to its mission and goals?

When it was founded, the motivation behind goEast was definitely political. The first edition of the festival took place in 2001, but the ideas and the conception of the festival started earlier, already in the 1990s. That was a period when the eastward expansion of the European Union was already being prepared and discussed, but in Western Germany, there was not much knowledge of the former Eastern Bloc and its direct Eastern neighbours. Cinema is often seen as a medium that has a low threshold, that is accessible for audiences, and that can be used as a tool for cultural diplomacy on a very democratic level. Claudia Dillman, who was the director of DFF (the German Film Institute) at the time, was politically very smart. She approached the local Hesse ministry of Culture and the city of Wiesbaden, where our film archive has always been located, and hatched this plan to found a film festival, to build cultural bridges between Western Germany and Eastern Europe. Of course, at the time, our idea of Central and Eastern Europe and of the post-Soviet region was very different from what it is now. But from the very beginning, the idea was to bring that culture here, to Germany. The Symposium was a part of this plan, because DFF is a film heritage organisation, an institution of memory, where many film scholars work, so the festival also had an academic quality from the very beginning. Now, the Symposium is much more of an interdisciplinary event, as it also involves a lot of active filmmakers. But in the beginning, I would say, it was very academic. Literally, there was a long table that looked like a press conference with men in suits, presenting very intelligent talks. The lineups were great, with scholars like Serhiy Trymbach speaking about Ukrainian cinema, and the topics were very inspiring and interesting. I think the first symposium dealt with our image of the Caucasus, and also, directly, with the aftermath of the Chechen War. Various people were invited. For instance, Russian producer Sergei Selyanov was also there. Those were very different times, and there was still a lot of optimism concerning German-Russian relations. Still, I find it very inspiring to read the old catalogues. You can actually find all of them online on CEEOL, the Central and Eastern European Online Library.¹

You have been the Festival’s director for eight years, since 2017, and this year your tenure is coming to an end. Could you tell us how the festival has changed over these years? What did you prioritise?

I always say that the good thing about goEast is that I did not have to reinvent the wheel. The concept was really strong from its inception. I think what has gotten more to the foreground, but which was already happening under my predecessor, Gaby Babić, is continual collaboration with the film industry from Eastern Europe, especially with young talents and up-and-coming filmmakers. The East-West Talent Lab is incredibly important for us. We have narrowed it down to only documentary formats, which has proven to be very productive. So, the Talent Lab is set up for projects that are in their very early stages. It is also a testing ground to see if a certain topic or a certain approach to a documentary will work with audiences, if financing is attainable or not. And it also has a human rights aspect. Plus, we introduced a research grant for the early stages of working on films, specifically for documentaries with a human rights focus. We noticed that there is this tendency, especially in the so-called post-Soviet countries, to just grab a camera and go make a film, which in many cases, especially when the topics are delicate, can be quite dangerous. So, the idea behind the grant was to provide funding to kick off the research and potentially to get some risk assessment done, to get the insurance, and not to be alone with one’s film project. I think this is important and can also be a festival’s responsibility.

Of course, we have had to deal with a lot of hindrances and challenges that shaped the festival. First came the COVID pandemic, after which we developed various online tools and ways to respond to the crisis, so to speak. And then, of course, the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine has informed a lot of decisions regarding the entire festival, how we deal with Russian filmmakers and their works, and how we deal with Russian archives. I think the most significant response to the invasion was the Symposium “Decolonizing the (Post-)Soviet Screen” in 2023, with the subsequent book publication at Apparatus Press, edited by the fantastic Irina Schulzki and myself. I think this was a pivotal moment because so many filmmakers came together. I am also thrilled that through the Symposium film critics and press, a lot of whom are German and from the region here, changed their perspective on Ukrainian culture and on the war itself. So I think under my tenure, maybe more than ever, we had to react and respond to what was going on in Central and Eastern Europe, but also to what was going on in Germany. For instance, we often got this question, “Why aren't you putting Russians and Ukrainians in one programme, or in a discussion panel?” And I would have to explain that first of all, we are not a peace congress, we are just a film festival, and second, it would be very cynical of me to put people on a stage, force them to make peace together, and then sell tickets. That is not our job, that is not our position. Reacting to such attitudes, I think, has shaped my tenure immensely. On the other hand, we in this region have the luxury of having funders who are very open to experiments. We could afford to have a traditional festival with a red carpet and screenings at the cinema, and Q&As, but we chose a different path. We have the opportunity to experiment with such formats as, for instance, XR. We also had two TikTok compilation programs for the cinema. To me, TikTok is such a fascinating medium, because it is accessible to people who would never be able to make a film. We had, for instance, a lot of representatives of various ethnic communities from Siberia not only showing their way of life but also speaking directly into the camera and giving their opinion about things. The political content of those videos is, of course, very superficial. Sometimes it is heavily nationalistic, sometimes really scary, racist content, like from the Kadyrovtsy, from Chechnya, for instance. I thought TikTok was very interesting because for our Western German audience, it is a direct view into certain aspects of Eastern European life and post-Soviet life that you would not get through film. TikTok is still audio-visual, so I wanted to experiment and put it in the cinema.

A TikTok program in a cinema theatre is a fascinating idea. How did you compile the TikTok programme, and how did the audience react to it?

I approached it more as a collection. And I decided not to edit it, to emphasise that this is user-generated content, not content created by us. So, what we did was we first took screenshots, where you also had the comments, hashtags. and the reactions on the screen for a few seconds, and then we showed the video, and then onto the next one. They were compiled usually according to certain criteria, like topic or region. Sometimes we also used irony. For instance, one of the titles was ‘Triangle of Slavness’. There was a lot of sarcasm in the programs, because that exists in the videos as well. There was a huge category of Eastern Europeans living in the diaspora, both in the USA and in Europe, making videos about typical things that their parents do, dressing up like their parents, and talking about the ways in which their experience at home is different. They are supposed to be funny, but if you see these TikToks together, it really makes you think about such things as belonging and othering. For some groups of people, for a while at least, TikTok became an alternative online home where they could express themselves. The LGBTQ+ community on TikTok is another example; you can find many stories of marginalisation and hard-hitting social and political commentary there.

The audience’s reactions to the TikTok programmes were very positive, because people discovered a lot in them. They were also interesting to filmmakers – and this is what I was particularly impressed by and what I enjoyed about this programme – because of their direct creativity, inventiveness, and just a new approach to the medium that is completely undogmatic. Whether this is cinema or not – this is a different question, but if you watch this programme in a cinema theatre, one could say it is. What I was trying to avoid is that people would look at it as a compilation film, because, like I said, I wanted to underline that this is user-created content, and that each video, in and of itself, is its own little world. But of course, once you start editing, montage principles come in, and people do see them as one film. But at least we tried!

You have touched on Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and how it impacted the festival. The world has changed a lot, quite quickly, in the last few years. In addition to the full-scale invasion, major countries have swung to the right. Politically engaged work, even on a logistical level, international travel, is becoming increasingly dangerous. How do you view goEast's role in this precarious situation?

This is true, but I am also very proud that we managed to sustain a platform where people feel safe enough to have deep discussions and maintain a respectful tone. However, the topics are sometimes frightening for people. For instance, Russia and Ukraine, and also Israel and Palestine. Some festivals would call themselves a brave space, but I think that is nonsense. It is about creating a safe space where people respect each other and look eye to eye, and have meaningful conversations. I am very happy that we managed to continue that, especially in these times, because it is absolutely necessary.

The Festival is also a place where people, ideally, would get inspired, energised, network, and support each other. 2022 was really a crisis year for us. I remember being at Berlinale and speaking to my friend Natalia Libet, a producer from Ukraine, and she was saying that she was not sure about the situation in Kyiv, and that she would probably have to leave with her daughters. And I was telling her that they could stay at my place for a few weeks. But I was one of many people who did not believe that there would actually be a full-scale invasion until the last minute. At the same time, we were already thinking about it and weighing what we were going to do with the Russian films in our programme.

Festivals always reflect what is going on around us. We especially saw this in our Main Competition programme – I think we had two Ukrainian films and three Russian films in the line-up that year, and we were already not feeling too good about that. When the invasion started, our selection committee immediately got together to discuss the options. And, as you know, one day later, the Ukrainian Film Academy published a call for the boycott of all Russian films, and we had to react. Obviously, screening war-themed films from the Soviet Union was not possible. For instance, we had been planning to show Dziga Vertov's Istoriia grazhdanskoi voiny / History of the Civil War (1921, Soviet Russia), reconstructed by Nikolai Izvolov, but we took it out of the programme immediately, because of its subject matter and because it would come from the Russian State Archive, which we were not going to collaborate with at the time. We had a lot of conversations with Ukrainian filmmakers and with Ukrainian organisations, and we came to the conclusion that if we kept the Russian films in our programme, representatives of the Ukrainian cinema community would just not come, they would not show up. Of course, under the circumstances, it was obvious that the Ukrainians now had priority, because they were under attack, and they were suffering the most from the situation. There was also Sergei Loznitsa’s position. I think we showed his film Babyn Iar. Contekst / Babyn Yar. Context (2021, Netherlands, Ukraine) that year; we did not take it out of the programme. So we had Loznitsa, and we also organised an ad hoc discussion panel with several representatives of the Ukrainian film community, including the Ukrainian Institute. It was a hybrid event. And it was just about the Ukrainians' point of view, what they wanted to achieve with the boycott. They actually renamed it ‘suspension’, saying that the boycott is not forever, but that the relationship to Soviet film heritage and Russian colleagues has to be reconsidered. There were very different points of view on that panel, some of them more aggressive, others much milder, I would say, but it was an extremely interesting discussion. It was also interesting to listen to the audience’s reactions. For instance, there were filmmakers from Moldova, and they shared their experiences from childhood, when they would speak Romanian at home and then would have to speak Russian in school, and how the Russian language was forced upon them. We also talked about the policies of Russification in the film industry, and it was very insightful. This discussion is still available on our Vimeo channel in its entirety.² That was the first response to the war of aggression, and then we took it from there.

We have never completely boycotted Russian filmmakers on the basis of their passport, but we have not screened films that were funded by official state funders or by organisations affiliated with sanctioned oligarchs. So we had to exclude quite a lot in that first year. Also, it is a huge problem if you cannot work with Gosfilmofond or with the Russian State Film and Photo Archive, because a lot of films from the former Soviet republics remain there. It is sort of a hostage situation for film heritage. And working with the Dovzhenko Centre is also complicated, since it is under attack, literally, from the Russian Federation, but also from its own government. Just trying to support institutions like that is challenging at the moment. We have tried to work with films on a case-by-case basis, and of course, we are still in touch with Russian filmmakers, especially if they are independent documentary filmmakers, and we try to support them behind the scenes.

We cannot be a stage for building bridges. We build bridges between Germany and Eastern Europe, but not between Ukrainians and Russians. We did have a panel with activists from Siberia; these were anti-war activists from Buryatia, Tuva, and the Sakha Republic. This is something we have been increasingly focusing on, especially in the context of decolonisation, which I think is a useful lens to use to understand what is going on in the post-Soviet sphere. It does not always fit our Western idea of decolonisation, but it is a really useful perspective. To me, this panel was very touching, because we also had Ukrainians in the audience, and afterwards they had conversations with the activists, and I think they are still in touch. And this year we had, for instance, Oleksiy Radynski, who, in my opinion is one of the smartest people researching the post-Soviet sphere and the economic ties that are still there between Russia and the West. This is a big dilemma. We cannot decolonise an area if we do not decolonise the economy. It is great that we, in the sphere of culture, always think that we have to lead by example, that we have these moral standards. But it is sometimes not entirely realistic. So it is a long, complicated process, and it is still ongoing.

We also wanted to know more about the mechanics of the festival. Could you talk about the selection process for the Festival’s competition and the retrospectives?

It is a bit of a mix, I would say. The Competition is at the heart of the festival, and the Competition films are chosen by the selection committee. We have films that are entered into the festival by the rights holders, but we also scout, we actively go looking for films. The selection committee is a mixture of people. Some have been with the Festival since the very beginning. They all bring their own expertise to Central and Eastern European cinema, but of course, there are also members who really know regional audiences, and I think this combination is extremely important, so that you can translate to the local audience. Films that are very specific, very regional, and not accessible to a German audience might be very interesting, but they do not really fit our mission. So, it is important to have a mix. On our selection committee, we, for instance, have Igor Soukmanov, who used to be the program director of the International Film Festival Listapad in Minsk, and who is an expert in Soviet and post-Soviet cinema, as well as Gaby Babić, who is the former festival director. She is more of an expert on film from the Balkans in the widest sense of the word, and she is also an expert on feminist film from Central and Eastern Europe. We bring different perspectives to the selection committee.

First, our programme coordinator and I would make a pre-selection and shortlist around 60 to 70 films. Then the committee discusses all of those, and we come up with a second shortlist, which usually contains about 30 films for 16 slots. And only by that stage, we start looking at the diversity and genre aspects, at how countries are represented, and so on. As for the other programmes, I like to work together with guest curators, but we make sure that we also have someone who knows our local audiences, or in the case of the Symposium, the local universities with whom we can cooperate. In the last two years, we have exclusively had curators from Central and Eastern Europe who also live there. Before that, we had Barbara Wurm, who is now in charge of the Berlinale Forum. As for the topics, they come to us in various ways. Usually, we get inspired upon meeting someone, or we see a film somewhere, or we have an idea. But we also have to be realistic. Ideas need to be funded. So, not every topic makes it into the festival, even though during the last few years we were successful in securing funding.

As for the Homage and Portrait sections, I prefer doing retrospectives of filmmakers who are still alive, and whom we can invite, which limits our options, because for Homage, you also need to have someone with a certain body of work, and for the Portrait section, we usually screen seven or eight films, sometimes more. We also have historical programmes that are usually inspired by anniversaries and similar events. For instance, in 2018, my first year, we had a “Prague 68” program. This year, 80 years after the Second World War, the special programme was “Missing Images From Odesa to Dakar”. But in the back of my mind, there is always the question - can we actually finance this?

And how does the funding work for the Festival?

The funding is usually project-based. The major part of the financing comes from our Ministry of Culture and from a foundation here in the region that funds a lot of programmes, as well as from the city of Wiesbaden. But that is not enough to do these special sections. And we would be able to invite only a limited number of guests to the Symposium. Also, journalism is no longer a profession in which people make an actual living, so if we want foreign press, or even German press, we also have to pay travel costs. So, we always need to apply for project funding for that, and luckily, there are a lot of options, but it does limit the kinds of topics on which you can focus.

goEast highlights the work of lesser-known filmmakers in the East and showcases them in the West through a serious and critical lens. How do you view goEast in terms of audience and remaining accessible to viewers who are new to or newly interested in Central and Eastern European film, as well as to experts, academics, and those already steeped in the world of film aesthetics, theory, and ethics?

I think it is the biggest challenge, because we address very different target groups, as you mentioned – there is the more academic target group as well as filmmakers themselves. Wiesbaden is not a university city, but we do address students from Frankfurt, from Mainz, and Giessen – universities with film history departments, and in some cases also Eastern European studies or Slavic departments, so those tend to be our main audiences. But, of course, these are not big departments. It is not like there are thousands of students in these departments, and some of them come here to do an internship or to volunteer, so we lose them as members of the audience. And Wiesbaden is a city with shifting demographics. We have a large population with a migration background who reflect very different communities. It is quite diverse. The German population, however, is getting increasingly older. They are the kind of audience that mostly go to arthouse cinemas. They also go to the opera, but if they go to an arthouse cinema, they would see something like a classic Polish film by Andrzej Wajda, but if they are being honest, they would prefer a light French comedy. We also work a lot with communities, for instance, the Poles. They are active cinema goers. They bring their neighbours and friends and say, look, this is a film from my country. So this is a large part of our audience, too. Also, the Kosovo community is fantastic. They really respond well to the films that we program here. But ideally, we would, of course, have a more diverse audience in the cinema. Reaching ordinary German cinemagoers in Wiesbaden is our biggest challenge, and this is something one needs to continuously work on.

We also wanted to ask about the types of films that you show during the Festival. There is a mix of live-action and documentary films, but there is also animation. Could you please speak to the inclusion of animated films into the festival?

I personally like animation a lot. Our target region has a fantastic tradition in that field, but also new talents. For instance, the genre of animated documentary is really powerful in the Czech Republic, they have many specialists at the Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU), so it makes sense for us to also screen animation. We even invited people from FAMU to do an “animadoc” workshop here. But animation still suffers from the prejudice that it is only for children. I think we are stubbornly trying to break with that stereotype as much as we can. Two years ago, we screened Arshaluysi lusabats’ě / Aurora’s Sunrise (Inna Sahakyan, 2022, Armenia, Germany, Lithuania) as an opening film.³ That worked really well – one of the co-producers was from Germany, and they created a lot of publicity for the film. In addition to that, the filmmaker met with Cher in LA, I think, a few days before goEast, and Cher endorsed this film, so we could use that for publicity as well. We have had animated or hybrid films in competition, too, and sometimes journalists react weirdly to that, but the audience does not. Animation attracts a lot of people. We only have feature-length films in competition, but we screen a range of formats. I do not know what my successor is planning, but I think it will be in a similar direction. Rebecca Heiler has worked a lot with short films, and I think that there is not as much dogma in terms of what they are supposed to be – live-action or animated – when it comes to shorts. We have always liked experimental cinema, films that do not strictly follow narrative arcs or the rules of dramaturgy. Not all the films that we screen are narrative-driven.

We were hoping we could also speak about the Symposium. It is obviously an important part of the festival. How do you choose the topics for it?

I love the Symposium, it is a wonderful and truly interdisciplinary format. Plus, we have the luxury of also screening entire films in good quality at the cinemas, which, as you know, is not always the case when you have a film conference, for instance, when films are screened from a PowerPoint presentation, and you just see excerpts. The fact that active filmmakers also attend the Symposium just really opens up the debate.

This year, our topic was a bit provocative. It was “Omas, Babas, Babushkas: Gender and Ageing in European Cinema”. It is part of a bigger research project called AGE-C, which is carried out by several European universities, including Frankfurt University and the universities in Cluj and Trieste. The three curators of the Symposium are members of the research project – Asja Makarević, a researcher who also worked for the Sarajevo Film Festival; Andrea Virginás, who works for the University in Cluj; and Boglárka Angéla Farkas, who is a filmmaker herself, but now is also working on her PhD. The three of them compiled the program, and it was more interdisciplinary than ever, because we also had speakers from the field of gerontology, we had sociologists speaking about the current developments, mostly in Eastern Europe, but also comparatively, we had experts from the literary field, and of course, film historians. So that was quite a wild mix. And usually we invite speakers and panellists who also propose films, or they refer to certain films in their contributions, and then we try to find those films, and see if they fit in the film programme. So there is a lot of back and forth going on between the active participants and the organisers. When you speak about films and then you watch them in their entirety, it is very different from just screening excerpts.

During COVID, such screenings were difficult to organise, but in the summer of 2020, there was this small window when the cinemas were suddenly open, but with only very limited audiences allowed, and we actually managed to have a Symposium in Frankfurt in the Film Museum. The topic that year was “Film Heritage in Transition. Central and Eastern Europe 1985-1999”. It was particularly difficult to find screening copies, not only because of COVID, but also because, in general, there are a lot of rights issues with the film heritage from that era. In the 1990s, countries and archives were in turmoil, archive structures and laws were changing, and a lot of films that were produced back then were not archived. It was typical for this era to find the screening copies under someone's bed or in a cupboard somewhere. So, that was quite challenging but also very interesting. That year, we had the opening film that was chosen by the two curators – To vlemma tou Odyssea / Ulysses‘ Gaze (Theo Angelopoulos, 1995, Greece, Yugoslavia, Albania, Serbia, Romania, United Kingdom, Germany, Bosnia, France). And while sitting in the cinema in the first row, I realised it just did not age well at all. In my memory, I had just these beautiful pictures from this film, but when we were watching it, I was cringing. The dialogue was so full of clichés! But that is something that you discover during the Symposium. The Symposium is not about selecting the best film programme, but it is about selecting the most interesting and fitting film programme. That can include films I would now call ‘bad’.

Sometimes we also have more urgent topics. For instance, in 2019 we had a Symposium called “Constructions of the Other – Roma and the Cinema of Central and Eastern Europe”. There were so many new developments at the time, and filmmakers from the Roma community were becoming more and more active. There is, of course, a large body of work from the Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia that totally exoticises the Roma people as one group and does not perceive them as individuals. So we tried to bring these aspects together to speak about films about Roma and Sinti, as well as about Roma and Sinti as creators and filmmakers, and about new initiatives, like The RomArchive, which was launched in 2019. Last year we had a somewhat similar approach with “The ‘Other’ Queers – Cinematic Images from the Periphery of Europe”.⁴ This Symposium was curated by Jasmina Šepetavc from Ljubljana University and Yulia Serdyukova, who is a producer and activist from Ukraine. It was both about the queer gaze and looking at classics like, for instance, Strogii iunosha / Suvoryi iunak / A Severe Young Man (Abram Room, 1935, UkrSSR). We also showed short films from independent filmmakers with queer backgrounds. So I think the Symposium offers a lot of opportunities, and I like to give guest curators sufficient freedom. This approach has worked really well, but then, of course, every year the Symposium and its audience are different.

You have already mentioned the East-West Talent Lab. Could you please talk more about it and the emphasis within goEast on mentoring the next generation of filmmakers and film scholars?

The East-West Talent Lab is very beneficial for the festival’s dynamic. Each year, if we manage to finance it, we can invite up to 30 participants. They are mostly in their 20s. Some of them already have a bit of a track record, others are complete beginners. The dynamic that develops among them is wonderful, and it does the festival much good. Their programme is quite intense. It is coordinated by Andrea Wink, who has been with the festival since its very start, and she also runs another festival here in Wiesbaden called ExGround. The Lab is organised with a lot of care. We have mentors and tutors specialising in different aspects of filmmaking and producing. We look at the participants’ new projects individually, and we also try to set them up with German producers, as well as with producers from other countries, so that their projects would get some financing and infrastructure. For instance, this year we had Czech producers coming from Prague. We have also had French producers. These producers are interested in the region that we are working with, specifically documentaries.

It is gratifying when it comes full circle, when the project was pitched here for the first time, and then you see that the film has a world premiere somewhere. For instance, Foto na pam’iat’ / A Picture to Remember (Olga Chernykh, 2023, Ukraine, France, Germany) was the opening film at IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) three years ago. This film started its journey in the East-West Talent Lab, and then it had its German premiere in our competition. This feels like a homecoming. We have also had films that were nominated for the European Film Award, but this is not absolutely necessary for us. All the projects that we have here and all the filmmakers that we nurture are important to us. And we are happy when people have fond memories and like to come back to the festival. The Lab is also a process in itself, and it is great getting to know these young filmmakers who are sometimes completely fearless and bring new, unique perspectives. They keep surprising us. You would think that after 25 years of goEast, all the stories have been told, but no. And the point you made earlier about how the landscape has changed, and travelling has become more difficult – this very much affects the Lab, because German visa rules, especially for younger people, are very strict. We have had cases when people did not get their visas in time, and they could only participate online. It has gotten a little better, but in 2022 and 2023, there were also a lot of young filmmakers originally from the Russian Federation stuck in places like Istanbul, where the consulate would say, you are not in the right place, you need to apply for your visa at the German embassy in Moscow, because you have only been here for six weeks, and you have not registered. Our Uzbek participants would also not be able to come because all interview slots had been booked out weeks in advance, because there was this wave of Russians coming through Uzbekistan, trying to get to the West. So, of course, this affects us directly, and the thing I am impressed by the most – not just the Lab participants, but also in the Competition – is that people are willing to take a bus from Kyiv, or a train, and then a flight, and another train. I think the most extreme case was filmmakers coming to us from Kharkiv who were on a bus for 45 hours. We are just a film festival, and that is incredibly humbling that people are willing to take this journey, and that apparently it is important for them to not just screen their films, but also to network or to participate in the East-West Talent Lab.

GoEast has been present online, and it has been partnering with the online platform Klassiki. What was the motivation behind this online presence?

We always had a video library during the festival week. But when I started, we would still work with DVDs, and it was strictly on-site. That is unimaginable now. During COVID, we used Vimeo at first. And then a lot of rights holders objected to Vimeo. We started considering using another platform, so that is how we started trying out different tools, and we now have our own German platform, which is both our video library for professionals, and we also do some limited streaming of competition titles for general audiences. But UK-based Klassiki approached us, because at some point – I think it was in 2021 or 2022 – they were planning to expand to Germany. This still has not happened, but the idea of cooperating with a festival in Germany that had the same countries of focus as they do was very attractive for them, and we struck a deal that they would negotiate with the rights holders directly for some of the festival films, but they would also facilitate a special web page where all of our symposium lectures would be streamed free of charge. And this is also still available, for the 2023 Symposium.⁵ In 2024, we had a lot of participants who did not want to appear on camera for various reasons, which made it a bit more difficult. This year, we only had audio recordings. But for 2023, I am very happy that we did it, because the topic was “Decolonizing the (Post)-Soviet screen”. I think for Klassiki, this was also important, because they were originally very focused on Russia and the former Soviet Union. In general, a lot has changed in London during this time – for instance, Calvert 22 shut down.⁶ So the relationship between Klassiki and goEast was mutually beneficial.

We wanted to ask about your successor. Rebecca Heiler is taking over the festival. You are both Slavists. Is it a coincidence? And what are your wishes for the Festival?

Well, Rebecca started working for the festival before I ever did. She was the head of our editorial department from 2016 to 2019. And she also ran the programme called “Oppose Othering”, which is also for up-and-coming filmmakers. The idea behind the programme was to empower minorities through film.

No, I do not think it's a coincidence. I think knowing your way around Central and Eastern Europe and speaking at least some of the languages is key to successfully running this festival, especially in tough political times like these. It certainly opened many doors for me. For instance, going to Central Asia, even though people speak Uzbek or Kazakh more and more, Russian is still a lingua franca. I also always say the Russian language does not belong to the Russians. Once you start colonising, other people will also use your language. But Rebecca has a different focus. Her main language is Czech. She also understands some Russian, some Polish. And she has worked with the Central European region a lot.

My hopes for the festival? When I started out, there was already a network, and I was immediately welcomed, not just by the people that worked here, but also by journalists that came here every year, and they made it very clear that I had inherited this wonderful thing. There was this immediate trust, and I hope that this continues, and that goEast will remain a safe space for brave programming. I also value that we have both films for a wider audience, but also intellectual programmes. There is just a lot of anti-intellectual, anti-academic sentiment going on in the world right now, and we should not fall into this trap.

Great point. And in your departure to Deutsche Kinemathek, which is so exciting, what are your professional plans and goals?

Keeping a very vital institution alive. Making the archives accessible, but also preserving them. A part of my motivation was also political. We do see a right-wing shift in this anti-intellectual climate. But also, there is always this danger with film that it is seen as a commodity. We have the monopoly of platforms that just make films disappear, so there is a huge debate to be had about licensing law, but also about how we envision film heritage as a part of the film industry. So those are my main missions for the moment. But then, of course, there are fantastic collections and fantastic people there, and Deutsche Kinemathek is really a national and international treasure. Just making that visible, and also creating a home for that, are important tasks. With goEast, I noticed over the past years that I was much more passionate about creating historical programmes and working with archives than I was about scouting new films. To me, that was a clear sign that it was a good point to have someone else taking over, who may bring new energy, and is going to revitalise goEast, and I will try and do the same at Deutsche Kinemathek. And we will host the FIAF Congress in Berlin in 2027, which is also a very exciting prospect.

Olga Blackledge
University of Pittsburgh
olb11@pitt.edu

Eva Zak
Adelphi University
ezak@adelphi.edu

Bios

Olga Blackledge is a visiting assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Eva Zak is an assistant professor of art history at Adelphi University.

Filmography

Angelopoulos, Theo. 1995. To vlemma tou Odyssea / Ulysses‘ Gaze. Greek Film Centre, MEGA Channel, Paradis Film, La Générale d'Images, La Sept Cinéma.

Chernykh, Olga. 2023. Foto na pam’iat’ / A Picture to Remember. Real Pictures LLC, Lufilms, Tama Film Produktion.

Loznitsa, Segei. 2021. Babyn Iar. Contekst / Babyn Yar. Context. Atoms & Void, Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center.

Room, Abram. 1935. Strogii iunosha / Suvoryi iunak / A Severe Young Man. Ukrainfil’m.

Sahakyan, Inna. 2022. Arshaluyisi lusabatsy / Aurora’s Sunrise. Bars Media, Broom Films, Gebrueder Beetz, Filmproduktion.

Vertov, Dziga. 1921. Istoriia grazhdanskoi voiny / History of the Civil War.

Suggested Citation

Blackledge, Olga and Eva Zak. 2025. “A Safe Space for Brave Programming: Heleen Gerritsen on Navigating goEast”. Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe 20. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.17892/app.2025.00020.393.

URL: http://www.apparatusjournal.net/

Copyright: The text of this article has been published under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This license does not apply to the media referenced in the article, which are subject to the individual rights owner's terms