Whether you're a diver or not, the second annual Silver Shark International Festival of Underwater Images is sure to provide inspiration to take the plunge.
Whenether youre a diver or simply someone who loves the sea ,you can take a virtual plunge this weekend at Kyivs second annual Silver Shark International Festival of Underwater Images.
The three‑day event, organized by Kyiv’s Katran diving club, brings together filmmakers and artists who focus onthe sea. The festival is affiliated with the renowned World Festival of Underwater Images in Antibes, France. Kyiv is not a maritime town, and Ukrainian cinema is far from Hollywood. But the Silver Shark festival is once again expected to lure hundreds of divers and spectators to celebrate the beauty of the underwater world.
The Kyiv festival began as a challenge, of sorts, between friends attending the 1999 Antibes festival. Katran General Director Natalia Balashova, a regular at the Antibes Festival, recalled talking with the festival’s founder and president, scuba diver Daniel Mercier. Mercier asked Balashova, half‑jokingly, if she would organize a similar festival in Kyiv.
“We both laughed at first,” Balashova recalled. “The Antibes Festival is a very solid event.”
But a year later, Mercier asked again. This time he wasn’t joking, and Balashova didn’t laugh; she decided to give it a shot.
The first festival featured 253 works by 86 participants from Ukraine, Russia and France in five categories: photography, slides, art (paintings and graphics), videos and children’s art. The Delta youth club from Kharkiv took first place in photography, the most popular category of the festival. And even Mercier was impressed with many of the 50 entries submitted in the children’s art category.
“The photos made by children were especially good – the children showed amazingly delicate and precise perception,” said Mercier, who was named honorary president of the Kyiv festival.
In the video category, there were 29 submissions, including features and video essays. Oleksandr Penkin, 50, from Yalta took first place with “Daughters of the Stars,” a mystical account of a mermaid’s underwater life.
Mercier was impressed with the sophistication of the submissions.
“I was surprised that so many films were presented and with such a variety of topics,” he said. “The quality of the videos is quite high; even the amateur films, which is rare.”
The winner of the artworks category – and the festival’s chief prizewinner – was French artist Andre Laban. His series of underwater landscapes, “Passion of Depth,” was rendered in light‑blue and green hues depicting the depths of the sea and giving a feeling of its enormity and power.
A veteran of the famed Calypso explorations of French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, Laban was also a cameraman and celebrated sculptor. But his award‑winning festival landscapes are actually paintings he creates underwater, using oil on board.
The 2001 festival was more than a competition. It was like a beach party where divers met to chat, share their adventures and plan future expeditions together. Some submissions didn’t really fall into any one category and Vitaly Yeremenko, for instance, simply presided over his vast collection of seashells and mollusks and was primed to tell his hunting stories.
“Of course various clubs compete,” Balashova said. “There are people who don’t like each other, but the festival is like the Olympics – an armistice.”
“For a debut, it was very successful,” Mercier confirmed. “[Silver Shark] is a good example for me when I recall all the mistakes and hardships of making the first [Antibes] festival 28 years ago.”
Participants in the Silver Shark festival couldn’t agree more, saying its arrival in Kyiv was long overdue.
“[Before the festival] we had already lost hope of seeing the rebirth of underwater cinema in Ukraine,” said Ihor Neduzhko, a veteran cameraman of Kyiv Scientific Film Studio, who has been involved in underwater shooting for more than 20 years.
Penkin, the winner of the video‑feature category, said the festival gives a boost to Ukraine’s fledgling film industry.
“It is a very necessary festival,” Penkin said. “It will help Ukrainian film ratings grow.”
This year, organizers hope the festival will be even better. Two weeks before its start, 43 paintings and 24 video had already been submitted.
“I was very worried,” Balashova confided. “I thought that for the first festival people would bring their old works, and this year there would be nothing … but now they seem much more active.”
Indeed, the festival has been expanded to accommodate all that underwater activity – and the three new categories of TV programs, Web sites and short video‑essays have been added. A variety of scuba clubs will be on hand to present and discuss their activities.
Beside Mercier and Laban, this year’s honorary guests will include Christian Petron, founder of Europe’s leading underwater film studio, Cinemarine, and a cameraman for filmmaker Luc Besson’s “Le Grand Bleu,” as well as marine environmentalist and sculptor Simon Moris.
Among the themes of this year’s festival will be underwater archaeology – and Petron will lead a roundtable debate on the topic.
SILVER SHARK FESTIVAL
April 26‑28
Florentzia Cinema, 31 Mayakovskoho
Tickets Hr 12 per one day; Hr 18 per three days;
free admission for children.
SCHEDULE:
April 26
5 p.m., opening; 6 p.m.‑9 p.m., contest films
April 27
10 a.m.‑11:30 a.m., contest films
Noon ‑ 1 p.m., “Underwater Archaeological Research of the Black Sea” roundtable with Ukrainian and Russian archaeologists and Christian Petron.
1 p.m.‑3 p.m., three films by Christian Petron.
4 p.m.‑7 p.m., contest films
7:30 p.m.‑10:30 p.m., best films of the Antibes Festival.
April 28
10 a.m.‑11:30 a.m., program by Serhy Hlushchenko, leading Ukrainian underwater photographer and TV host.
Noon ‑ 2:30 p.m., screening of award‑finalist films.
3 p.m., awards ceremony.
