Interview: Vincent Forclaz (Arkaos)
Genre Cinema fan’s, documentary fan’s, audiovisual fervent people and passionate about the image industry in general. Vincent Forclaz is the local channel 9 filmmaker, VJ with David Vincent and also freelance in the video industry. He is in addition the co-founder of Arkaos, a platform that offers an original showroom of Swiss short film and more…
Q In two words, who is behind Arkaos?
A We are a five people committee of friends: David Bonjour, the president, Didier De laco, vice president and webmaster, Simon César Forclaz, secretary, Patrizia Aïoutz, cashier and myself…I don’t have a title, but I’m one of the founders ! The association has approximately 80 members.
Q What are the motivations that made you set up this project?
A Arkaos was created in 2003, it was an idea that my friends and I had for a couple of years, the idea to reunite people with the same passion about film, professionals or not, in order to make film, shorts and to put together human resources, techniques…to create a platform for creation. At the beginning we imagined to create a production house or a studio. We build up networks with people’s ideas, many shorts were made, we even made institutional films, shows, publicities, leaflets…later we understood we didn’t want to become a production house. What we liked was to create fiction, to be totally free, without owing anything to anyone and to be perceived as a network.
We set up our first short film festival in Sion, “the shortest day” in December 2004. The idea was to bring r all the shorts made in Valais together and to broadcast them in one day as a showroom of what could be made! It was a success. Since then we do it every year and we have broaden it up.
Later came “the mini shorts big competition” in 2005. A simple concept of a monthly competition open to all with an imposed topic and duration. At first, the idea was to motivate ourself to do things by having some structure. The concept Kino was not far behind…And with the popularization of the media and its tools, almost all families have a computer and a camcorder. In my opinion the competition works well, we are strict and that stimulates creativity. Today we receive every month about fifteen films. The public and the participants come and it’s a party every last Sunday of each month.
To resume Arkaos is:
- An annual short film amateur (in the noble sense) festival. “The shortest day”.
- A monthly competition “the mini short”
- A network with passionate people
- An address book (when a production house sets up a project in Valais it happens that they call us to have some of our people)
- Lots of auto financed projects, many shorts and small series shows
- Heavy sending of films to other festivals
- Collaboration with other manifestations
- The organization of kino and other events
Q Is the very short format limited by Arkaos?
A No. We do have ideas of scenarios to make longer films…to be continued. About the mini shorts, we have established a length of 1 minute 30 seconds, so that if the film is boring, it isn’t for a long time. With the experience we know that when you give 5 minutes maximum, people have the tendency to make a film of 5 minutes, no matter what the content is. The very shorts forces filmmakers to get directly to the point, to have a strong pitch. However, the very short format can hold up to develop a stronger story, but we have had a couple of very short beauties. Yet, we screen everything, if filmmakers bring longer film we screen them out of competition which means they are screened but not voted. We offer a broadcast and screening network!!
Q Besides the duration of film is there other standards that filmmakers have to respect in order to send you out their films?
A Here are the criterions:
- The duration of 1 minute 30 seconds max (off title)
- The topic is imposed with the filmmaker’s freedom on it’s approach
Q Does Arkaos has foreign film bringing them visibility in Switzerland?
A It’s already the case. In our annual festival, half the program is from France. As for the mini shor
Q Tell me about the monthly event, how is it set up?
A The monthly competition is organized every last Sunday of each month. Participants bring their films that day, between 5pm and 7pm, in digital format. Then we choose at random the order for the screening. Before 7pm, we don’t know how many films we will have. We choose 3 people to make the jury if possible that have some type of connection to images. At 8pm we start the screening. The audience votes for 3 favorites. We count the votes, the jury deliberates and we drink beer. When the results come out, we project the films out of competition. Later the jury gives small prices away linked with the topic of the month, the first winner gets a DVD and the public winner get the right to choose the next topic.
Q To accept films that you haven’t seen, doesn’t that represent a risk?
A Of course, we never know what we are going to get! We’ve had 2 films in the frontier of acceptable but the filmmakers told us before hand, we could watch them and take a decision to screen them or not. We can also tell the public about it before…The filmmakers are very respectful about this.
Q How does Arkaos chooses the films that are send out to other festivals? Like the “mini court” of Paris? And how many films can we count?
A The Arkaos committee chooses the films in function of the themes of festival. We publish the list of films we have in our forum so that if people do not want us to send their film or if we forget about a film we can be told. And go…usually that represents about 40 films per year.
Q What festivals does Arkaos send out films to?
A Sismic’s, Très court, 2300, Plan 9, Cinéma tout mobile, rencontre de Broncéliandre, Tournez-les hauts et courts, Canal +, festival du film court Madagascar, Pharma Folie, Lausanne Time Film Festival, soon the Lausanne Underground Film and Music festival, and something to the USA to laugh.