(Danish: "NightFilm Festival"; from nat, "night")
Annual film festival in Denmark, started in 1990. Funded and promoted by various major corporate and cultural sponsors (usually including the Carlsberg Foundation).
As the name would suggest, the NatFilm Festival takes place at night. Once a year, the major cities and towns of Denmark (and recently, a couple of cities in nearby southern Sweden, too) host a nationwide film feastival, starting in the evening and continuing through the night, for several consecutive nights. Usually, the festivals feature screenings of both major motion pictures (often as sneak previews, ahead of premiere dates), more obscure films, and numerous packages of short films. The festival organisers generally make an effort to provide a broad spectrum of motion picture styles and forms.
It is also customary to have a special tribute to a significant figure of the motion picture industry. To date, the special tributes have been:
The first festival, in 1990, featured 52 titles screened, but the festival has grown considerably since then - in 2000, 161 titles were screened. Since the first festival which sold tickets, in 1991, the number of tickets has grown from 7,735 to a high in 2003 of 39,754 (for 146 titles screened).
Because of the wide focus of the festival, there is room even for the curious little oddities of cinema, such as the genuinely curious Gay Niggers from Outer Space, screened as part of the blaxploitation "close-up" theme at the 1997 festival.
The next festival is scheduled for March 26, 2004 to April 11, 2004. Be there or be square.