About the festival

About festival

KHARKIV INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF ARTS AND TRAVEL (ART TRAVEL FESTIVAL) – is:

a festival-competition of artists whose works are related to the theme of travel;
competent assessment of competitive works by members of the international jury;
 a place for friendly communication and exchange of experiences of filmmakers and photo artists from all over the world: holding master classes and professional meetings of professionals in the field of screen arts, photo arts and tourism.

«Journey as Art. Art as a journey»

Our festival was founded in 2018 and was first implemented live in Kharkiv (Ukraine) on May 25-26, 2019 as part of the 11th International Tourism Forum “Kharkiv: Partnership in Tourism” with the support of the Kharkiv City Council.

1276 works from 102 countries of the world were accepted to participate in the first festival. Graduates of the festival from 20 countries of the world presented their best works to the Kharkiv audience. The works were screened live in the cinema named after the outstanding Ukrainian master of cinematography – Oleksandr Dovzhenko, with the participation of a professional international jury and the festival’s audience. In the following years (due to quarantine restrictions related to covid-19, and then due to tragic events in Ukraine), the festival was held in a remote format, but won the support of artists from all over the world.

During all this time of its existence, ART TRAVEL FESTIVAL became a participant of the Odessa International Film Festival (OIFF) in the Film Industry Office section (Odesa, Ukraine), Create Kharkiv Summer Fest creative industries festival (Kharkiv, Ukraine), Golden City Gate festival (Berlin, Germany), International Tourism Film Festival (Antalya, Turkey), discussion meetings with the participation of regional authorities on issues of tourism development, etc.

Odessa International Film Festival (Ukraine)
Create Kharkiv Summer Fest (Ukraine)
Golden City Gate (Germany)
International Tourism Film Festival (Turkey)
Discussion meetings with the participation of regional authorities on issues of tourism development (Ukraine)

Since 2022, the festival has been a member of the International Committee of Sustainable Thematic Film Festivals (CINETOUR), a respected international committee of thematic festivals.

 

The team

The team that creates the festival are Ukrainian volunteers who are professionals in the field of cinema, photography and traveling – directors, screenwriters, art critics, photographers and designers, teachers, whose fate is connected with the city of Kharkiv. And also professional filmmakers from different countries of the world who join the jury and our projects. So they are:

  • director, graduate of the Kharkiv State Academy of Culture – Oleksandr Chernobai (Ukraine),
  • head of the City Tourist Information Center of Kharkiv, public figure – Svitlana Ryazanova (Ukraine),
  • associate professor, candidate of art history, honored cultural worker of Ukraine, member of the National Union of Creative Artists of Ukraine – Viktoriya Bugayova (Ukraine),
  • world record holder, as well as the first around-the-world triathlon runner, the track of which ran through the city of Kharkiv; athlete, traveler, artist – Jonas Deichmann (Germany),
  • author, director and producer of documentaries and TV programs, member of the jury of International film festivals, as well as festivals on the topic of tourism – Irina Khangoshvili (Georgia),
  • tourism ambassador of Ecuador, creative director of Grupo Uribe advertising agency, artist – Santiago Uribe (Ecuador),
  • candidate of cultural sciences, associate professor of higher education at the Menuba College Multimedia Institute, screenwriter, actress – Leila Berhouma (Tunisia),
  • a graduate of the National Higher School of Cinema, Television and Theater in Lodz and the European Center “Natolin: European Studies in Journalism”, participant and author of many professional tourism projects in Poland – Piotr Owcharski (Poland),
  • Kharkiv specialists – designer Oleksandr Tseluiko, copywriter and translator Olena Chepurna, and administrator of our site Vitaly Sheptun,
  • and many other friends and partners of ours.
 
Also in 2019, the initiative to establish the festival was supported by a video greeting to the participants and viewers by the author and presenter of the television program “The Inside Out World”, honored journalist of Ukraine – Dmytro Komarov.

The author of the idea of the festival, its founder and president is a screenwriter, teacher; associate professor, candidate of art history; a member of judging teams of international festivals and screen art competitions (as an expert in dramaturgy and screenwriting skills) – Anna Kurinna.

All this is far from a complete list of those extraordinary people who fell in love with the idea of our creative project and joined its implementation. Later, we will dedicate a separate page to all of them.
 

«Our world is beautiful! Just look around. And you will see!

 Beauty is everywhere!»

 

The idea of the festival gives us “wings” to generate new and new ideas! Our main goal is to support and popularize professional screen art and travel photography in the world. We will also be very happy if, after getting acquainted with our festival, you want to learn more about Ukraine and our city – Kharkiv, known in the world as “unbreakable” and “Kharkiv-reinforced concrete”.

Our team creates this festival with soul and great love for Art and Travel. So, we will be glad if you feel this passion by joining the participation in the festival!

 

Our winners

 
In different years, the winners of our festival were professionals: Best Friends Film Production and Dzen Yevstigneykin (Ukraine), Pavel Jaworskyi (Poland), Valentina Ippolito (Great Britain), Olga and Andriy Andreev (Ukraine), Santiago Uribe (Ecuador), Ahmet Bozaglan ( Turkey), Harshit Singh (India), Steven Brese (Canada), Constanze Alma Wouters, Rob Jacobs (Belgium), Valeriy Riyako (Ukraine), Dazhi Huang (USA), Kirill Neezhmakov (Ukraine), Alexander Draheim (Germany) and many other high-level artists from different countries of the world.
 

 

A NEW BREATH OF THE FESTIVAL

While creating this project, we dreamed that it would become a place for friendly communication and exchange of experiences of filmmakers and photo artists from all over the world – a place for inspiration. So that new ideas and collaboration of artists were born here.

Such an embodiment of our dream has already become:

A workshop for festival participants and anyone interested – “Masters of time: the technique of creating a time-lapse” – by a member of the festival jury, a master of time-lapses, a native of Kharkiv – Kyryl Neezhmakov.

And also a series of workshops by artists from Ukraine, Ecuador, Germany and Chile on the topic of video shooting with drones, with the participation of students and teachers of the Department of Audiovisual Arts of the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts – Drone Talks. Anyone could participate.

As a result of the festival (during the presentation of the project at the Film, Tourism & Creative Industries Networking in Odesa, 2021), a new creative team of artists appeared, which later created videos for the promotion of Ukraine’s travel routes in the world – “Cultural tourism” and “Industrial tourism“. The director is Oleksandr Chernobai, the screenwriter is Olga Tarab, with the participation of graduates of the School of Drama and Screenwriting “Scenarist UA”, Kharkiv. These works already have awards. What we are very proud of!

 

Slogan of

KHARKIV INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF ARTS AND TRAVEL
of the 2024 season is:

«Let`s get to the top!»

The road to Victory is like a journey. But not the one in which you are alone. This is the one where you take your friends with you in order to stay connected and go through a difficult path together. To eventually climb to the top of the dream goal together. It is the same feeling when you want to see the most beautiful place, climbing a big mountain to the very top, and share this beauty with the closest person on the trip.

So, the history of the festival continues right now. So, let’s leave room on this page for our new achievements.

To be continued…

Thank you all for your support! Thanks also to those who are just reading this text now to get to know us. Nice to meet you!