Three festival views This issue, Kinoeye presents three reports from festivals in Italy, Germany and Macedonia and looks at how films presented there tackle social, narrative and aesthetic trends. ITALY Not just a Bosnian war epic Rolando Colla's Oltre il confine (Across the Border, 2002) Is it possible to make a contemporary film about Bosnia which goes beyond simple bloodshed? Colla's film, which opened the 14th Trieste Film Festival, tries to do just that. Elke de Wit spoke to him in at the festival. GERMANY Globalisation, within limits The 53rd Berlin International Film Festival This year's Berlinale was dominated by images of refugees and the disintegration of relationships, strangely offset by blockbuster American films. Felicitas Becker looks at what was on offer. MACEDONIA Survival, continuity and eminences grise The 2003 Skopje Film Festival Skopje's festival continues to grow and with it comes more success. Igor Pop Trajkov is relieved that the festival still has many of the advantages of a "small" event but warns of worrying signs for the future.

HORROR Three on Tesis 31-year-old writer/director/composer Alejandro Amenábar confirmed his status as Spain's newest horror auteur with the blockbuster The Others in 2001. But even before he hit Hollywood, Amenábar's resume included the 1997 cult hit Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes, unwisely remade by Cameron Crowe in 2001) and his 1996 debut, Tesis (Thesis / Snuff). As revealed by three Kinoeye contributors, Tesis raises interesting concerns about horror spectatorship and the mass media's exploitation of scenes of violent death. The violence of the spectacle Highlighting what appear to be mutually exclusive levels of meaning, Marguerite La Caze examines how Tesis seems to encourage the fetisihising of violence. Neil Jackson argues that in Tesis "snuff not only functions as a rendition of perverse sadistic or masochistic drives, but also satisfies an inherent need to confront images of mortality." The cultural construction of snuff Whose "postmodern" horror? Challenging existing ideas about "postmodern" horror cinema, Matt Hills points to Tesis's suggestion that fan practices can be important to academic research. More horror film in Kinoeye and on the web   Kinoeye on screen A season of Czech horror films curated by Kinoeye's Horror Editor, Steven Jay Schneider will be playing at New York's American Museum of the Moving Image from 17 May 2003 and then travelling to other US cities throughout the year. The schedule is printed here. For more on Czech horror, see Kinoeye's special issue on the subject.

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