Aktuelle News & Schlagzeilen

Emil Koller chooses Robe for Pula Film Festival

The 2025 Pula Film Festival - staged at the Pula Arena in Croatia, the world’s only remaining Roman amphitheatre with its four side towers fully preserved - featured Robe moving lights as part of a design by Emil Koller to support the movie programme.

The 72nd edition of this event, running from July 10 to 17, 2025, saw an increase in visitor and audience numbers, and more participants from the Pula Pro industry programme for film professionals and students maximising the professional networking and education opportunities. Koller has lit the event - including opening and closing ceremonies - for the last twenty years. This year’s opening ceremony was broadcast live on Croatia national television’s HRT1 channel.

“My role with lighting is very much to enhance the environment in which these movies are being staged”, says Koller. A 23-metre-wide x 10-metre-high projection screen took centre stage, allowing approximately 5500 movie enthusiasts to enjoy the nightly cinematic offerings of two movies, typically one Croatian and one international. Their start timed to coincide with sunset. At the core of Koller’s lighting rig were six Robe Fortes rigged on top of the screen and used for dramatic backlighting of the speakers and the orchestra for the opening ceremony, and also for beaming projections all around the arena, accenting the grand Roman architecture.

The Fortes were complimented by six Robe MMX WashBeams - rigged alternately - also along the top of the screen. Twelve LedPointes - making their debut at Pula Arena - were placed around the back of the stage for specials. Six LEDBeam 350s were deployed each side of the stage for washing the side walls in colour, and they could also sweep out into the arena when needed. They were also used when actors and directors went up on stage after their movies had been screened.

Six BMFL Spots were positioned at the back of the arena on poles located in the audience tribunes for front spotting and beaming, with two BMFL FollowSpots - complete with LightMaster externally mounted programmable handles - sitting on top of the projection cabin right at the back. Throwing around 75 metres to the stage, these were used as primary follow cover for presenters and others who needed highlighting onstage.

As the opening ceremony was also lit for broadcast, Koller says he “appreciated Robe’s attention to detail with good tungsten emulation and colour profiling/mixing” which meant that all the newer LED sources could be matched seamlessly with the discharge lamp fixtures for continuity. During the nightly movie screenings, Koller created a series of static scenes that worked as eye-catching illuminative backdrops to the various movies.

All the lighting equipment was supplied to the week-long event by IDD Production, who have been the Film Festival’s lighting rental vendor for many years. They had three days to set up, programme and be ready of the opening. Having moving lights on this show has made a massive difference, according to Koller: “We can rig, focus and program so much faster and have a much wider range of options, so I can be vastly more creative”, he says.

(Photos: Pula Film Festival/Matija Sculac/Louise Stickland/Paul Clarke)

www.robe.cz

© 1999 - 2025 Entertainment Technology Press Limited News Stories