Prague festival showcases contemporary visual culture

Datatransfer is the name of a festival of contemporary visual culture being held at Prague's Archa theatre this weekend. Organisers say the festival, which is taking place for the sixth time this year, aims to present progressive trends in digital film, graphic design and photography. Jana Zielinski, one of Datatransfer's curators, told me more.

"We are trying to show in the Czech Republic contemporary visual phenomena. We will show style magazines in an exhibition called Style Society, and during the three days, from Friday to Sunday, we will show in screenings different films about graphic design, fashion, animation, music videos which we think are important and which are visually strong.

"We will show a photographic exhibition about urban culture, about graffiti done on glass, and as well there will be a panel discussion about style, visual culture and about magazines."

I see also you are showing a classic Czech sci-fi film called Ikarie XB1 - what is that?

"It's a very famous film by Polak and Juracek, who are important directors from the '70s. We would like to show people this film, which is not screened very often any more, but it's a unique sci-fi film from the future which is very, very visually strong.

"And we think it should be screened on a big screen for the audience, so that's why we have decided that after we show Czech Style, which is about Czech contemporary visual styles and from Czech contemporary directors, we would like to show this retro film."

Generally speaking how much of the input in this festival is Czech and how much is foreign?

"I would say that about one third of the programme is Czech and two-thirds are foreign."

And you have a football theme this year - why football?

"Well, we think that this year we have two major visual events in the world - one is the World Cup in football, in Germany, and the other one is Datatransfer (laughs)."

For more information go to www.datatransfer.cz