Cross-media

Sunset Unije (diverse) Festival

2021 · multi-week island community cultural-ecology festival · festival program

Island-scale summer festival blending film, ecology, art, and community action on Unije.

Cjeloljetni otočni festival na Unijama koji spaja film, ekologiju, umjetnost i zajedničke akcije.

Sunset Unije (diverse) Festival — production still

This project credentials: Cross-media & events · Corporate event production

Notes from the producer

SURF was, before anything else, a scheduling and financing problem dressed up as a festival. We wanted Unije to feel inhabited by culture from June to September, not for one weekend, and that meant running a calendar we could only half-afford at any given moment. The budget sat around 128.621,75 kn on paper, but the money arrived in fragments and out of order — a Span sponsorship here, a Tourist Board contract that doubled from 5.000 to 20.000 kn mid-season, grant applications to HEP and INA that we filed and then waited on. We spent in phases and leaned hard on volunteers and in-kind help from the island. That is not a complaint; it is the actual method.

I am proud of the concrete things that happened: the ecology week, Liburnia bringing films to the beach at Kino Plicak with proper screening rights through the Croatian Film Association, and the Stoljetna fotografija that put about 400 people on the shore in one frame. I am less proud of the paperwork we never closed. We did not produce a consolidated final account or a real impact evaluation for the 2021 cycle, and I would rather say that plainly than pretend the season ended in a neat report. The festival worked; the bookkeeping of what it was worth stayed unfinished.

- Matija Radeljak

The story

Sunset Unije (raznoliki) Festival, or SURF, began with a practical islander's question rather than a curatorial one: how do you keep Unije, one of the smallest inhabited islands in the Kvarner archipelago, culturally alive across an entire summer instead of through a handful of isolated events. The answer, in 2021, was to treat one full season as a single continuous program. The first edition ran from 19 June to 4 September, more than seventy consecutive days of public activity on an island most people reach only by ferry.

The project was built as a co-production between the local association Udruga Riba ribi and Aning Film, with Koraljka Haberle directing the program and Matija Radeljak producing. Roughly a hundred activities spanning film, ecology, education, sport, music, and community actions were scheduled not as separate strands but as one connected calendar of weekly blocks and themed weeks, with several smaller festivals nested inside the larger one.

The financing was the hard part, and it shaped everything else. The working budget was drawn up at 128.621,75 kn against costs that always ran ahead of confirmed support: honoraria for performers and workshop leaders at 53.100 kn, technical equipment at 30.645 kn, and logistics and administration on top. Support was assembled piece by piece rather than in one grant: applications to HEP and INA's Zeleni pojas line, an 8.500 kn sponsorship from Span, and a Tourist Board of Mali Losinj contract that started at 5.000 kn in July and was revised up to 20.000 kn by an August annex. The gap between planned and confirmed money was closed with phased spending, parallel funding applications, crowdfunding with locally made rewards, and a great deal of volunteer and in-kind island labour.

The season had visible peaks. A dedicated ecology week from 13 to 16 July brought workshops, lectures, and technology demonstrations, tied to the INSULAE H2020 project and REA Kvarner. In August the film program landed: Liburnia Film Festival brought award-winning titles to open-air screenings at Kino Plicak from 8 to 10 August, with screening rights formalised through a contract with the Croatian Film Association (Hrvatski filmski savez), followed by a full Sunset Unije Film Festival week. The social anchor was the Stoljetna fotografija, a mass participation photograph on 6 August that gathered roughly 400 people on the beach. The cycle closed on 4 September with a community work action.

What SURF proves as a service is event and cultural co-production under real scarcity: assembling grants, sponsors, rights agreements, press, and volunteer labour into one operating platform, and turning a small place into a season-long calendar that residents and visitors could actually read. It was covered across regional and national outlets during and after the run, and the Sunset branding carried on into 2022. What the record does not yet contain is the tidy ending — a consolidated final account and a formal impact evaluation for the full 2021 cycle were never produced, and the honest version of the story says so.

Milestones

2021-06-10 — Span sponsorship agreement signed with Udruga Riba ribi
2021-06-19 — Festival opens on Unije (first edition, season-long format)
2021-07-01 — Cooperation contract with Tourist Board of Mali Losinj
2021-07 — Ecology week (13-16 July): workshops, lectures, tech demos with INSULAE H2020 / REA Kvarner
2021-08-06 — Stoljetna fotografija mass-participation photo, ~400 people
2021-08 — Liburnia Film Festival open-air screenings at Kino Plicak (8-10 August)
2021-08-10 — Screening-rights contract signed with Hrvatski filmski savez
2021-09-04 — Closing community work action ends the 2021 cycle

Outcomes

Delivered — Continuous multi-week program on Unije, 19 June to 4 September 2021, spanning film, ecology, education, sport, and community action.
Ecology week — 13-16 July 2021 block of workshops, lectures, and technology demonstrations with INSULAE H2020 and REA Kvarner.
Mass photo event — Stoljetna fotografija on 6 August 2021 gathered roughly 400 participants.
Film program — Liburnia Film Festival open-air screenings at Kino Plicak and a dedicated Sunset Unije Film Festival week, with rights via Hrvatski filmski savez.
Media reach — Multi-outlet regional and national coverage during and after the 2021 cycle.
Continuation — Sunset branding carried on into 2022 community programming.
Open item — No consolidated final account or formal impact evaluation for the 2021 cycle exists in the archive.

Credits

Koraljka Haberle — Festival director (Udruga Riba ribi)
Matija Radeljak — Producer (Aning Film)
Aning Film d.o.o. — Production company / co-producer
Udruga Riba ribi — Organizer / co-producer
VMO Unije — Local community partner
Robert Nikolic — President, VMO Unije
Turisticka zajednica Grada Malog Losinja — Co-financier
Span d.d. — Sponsor
Liburnia Film Festival — Film program partner
Hrvatski filmski savez — Screening-rights partner
Ustanova REA Kvarner — Program partner (ecology week)