The third annual Festimage photography and digital art contest, which closed on 20 May, included 2001 entrants from 65 countries.
The finalists will be announced on 12 June. From among these, an international panel will select the top five entries, with a prize of 5.000,00 euros to be awarded to the winner. Just like with the two previous editions, Spain was the country with the most participants in the event, with 526 entrants this year. There were 308 entrants from Brazil, 229 from Argentina, 152 from Germany and 135 from Portugal.
Festimage 2008 also had a significant number of entrants from India, France, Mexico, Colombia, Russia, Romania and Georgia.
Entries from two thousand contestants were submitted to an Admissions Panel, which ended up rejecting about 20 percent of them.
This panel consisted of professor José Mamede, from the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil, and by photographers Juanjo Martín, from Spain, Kolujenkov Vladimir, from Russia and Armands Grundmanis, from Latvia.
The winner of last year’s Festimage was Arup Ghosh, from India. In 2006, the 1st Prize went to Colombian Luís Henry Agudelo.
Festimage, promoted by the City Council of Chaves, is entirely Internet-based, on a site with versions in Portuguese, Castilian Spanish, French, English, German and Russian.
The city of Chaves will use the entries to hold several exhibits and multimedia projections from 8 July to 31 August.
The finalists’ entries will be printed on paper and also later put on display at the gallery of the Vila Real (Portugal) Municipal Theater and take part in the “Outono Fotográfico”, an event which is held annually in the Spanish city of Ourense, Spain.
Also, some of the finalists’ entries will undergo bigger enlargements – some over 6 meters high – to be placed on a few façades in a few streets in the historical center of Chaves.
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