The 13th Tartu Love Film Festival, organised by the team at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, has announced its full lineup, consisting of 11 features and three documentaries, including the Baltic premiere of the Berlinale Gold Bear winner, provoking docu-feature hybrid Touch Me Not, directed by Adina Pintilie.

Tartu Love Film Festival aka TARTUFF, running from the 13th until the 18th August, is the biggest open-air film festival in the Baltics. It occupies the Town Hall Square of Tartu for a week, with two films screened to an audience of around 3000 people every evening. The screenings of documentaries take place in the historic Athena theater. 

Russian director Ivan I. Tverdovski, who’s Correction Class won the audience award at TARTUFF in 2014 will attend the festival in person this year to present his latest film Jumper, the third part of his trilogy about the abnormalities of life in contemporary Russia. Operating again on the border between fantasy and realism, Tverdovski tells a tale about a biologically anomalous boy whose tolerance to pain inspires his mother to lead him on a criminal path. The film has already gained critical praise and won the Special Jury Prize at Karolvy Vary Film Festival. Leading actress Anna Slju will also attend the screening.

Another hit on the festival circuit (Berlinale, Tribeca etc) is Laura Bispuri’s Daughter of Mine that sees two women (the biological and foster mother) fighting for the love and custody of their daughter.

Gabriela Pichler’s tragicomic Amateurs arrives after an impressive festival run, having screened at Rotterdam, Tribeca and Gothenburg, where it won the Best Nordic Film award. Telling a bittersweet tale about adaptation and the transforming identities of migrants and “natives” in a quiet former mining town in Sweden.

Rupert Everett’s directorial debut The Happy Prince arrives in Tartu after a busy festival run that included Berlinale, Sundance and BFI London. Everett has gained significant critical praise for his role as the film’s protagonist Oscar Wilde.

In addition to Touch Me Not, TARTUFF’s documentary programme includes RBG, a portrait of the legendary women’s and human rights defender, judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg and road documentary Tanzania Transit that offers, through the portraits of Tanzanian train travellers, a colorful look at the country, that is, like most other societies, troubled by racial and ethnic prejudice and intolerance.

The festival will be opened with the screening of a 50-minute performance "Põhjavaim" (Northern Spirit) where scenes from 50 Estonian films are blended with dream-like visual projections on the walls of adjacent buildings backed by choir music performed live by a 400-member mixed choir. The video is directed by Estonian director Jaak Kilmi, while Küllike Josing oversees the musical direction and artist Alyona Movko provides the visuals.

FULL PROGRAMME

Features

Adam - dir Maria Solrun, Iceland-Germany-Mexico, 2018
Amateurs - dir Gabriela Pichler, Sweden, 2018
Becoming Astrid - dir Pernille Fischer Christensen, Sweden-Denmark, 2018
Daughter of Mine - dir Laura Bispuri, Italy, 2018
Dear Mr. Q - dir Rao Heidmets, 1998
Heavy Trip - dir Juuso Laatio, Jukka Vidgren Finland-Norway, 2018
Jumpman - dir Ivan Tverdovski, Russia, 2018
Out of Africa - dir Sydney Pollack, USA-UK, 1985
Red Dog - dir Kriv Stenders, Australia, 2018
The Happy Prince - dir Rupert Everett, UK-Belgium-Italy, 2018
Tulipani, Love, Honour and a Bicycle - dir Mike van Die, Netherlands
We - dir Rene Eller, Netherlands, 2018

Documentaries

RBG - dir Julie Cohen, Betsy West, USA, 2018
Tanzania First - dir Jeroen Van Velzen, Netherlands, 2018
Touch Me Not - dir Adina Pintilie, Romania-Germany-Czech Republic, 2018

MIDPOINT TV Launch being prepared for 2019 with new additions 

MIDPOINT TV Launch is now open to submissions and preparing for its 2019 edition with a number of new and exciting additions. Evaluating the previous history of the program and presenting its future outline is the Program Coordinator Katarina Tomkova. Read the interview with her here.

MIDPOINT TV Launch presents new development executive training MIDPOINT TV Launch 2019 open for submissions

For the 2019 edition, MIDPOINT TV Launch is presenting a specialized training for so-called development executives. This part of the program is intended to raise a new generation of broadcaster executives and commissioning editors in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region. Read more here.APPLY FOR MIDPOINT TV LAUNCH 2019 HERE!

 

Laila Pakalnina, a renowned Latvian film director and screenwriter will come to Krakow, Poland in October to tutor the documentary group at the Film Spring Workshop.

This will be the 13^th edition of the audiovisual training which offers lectures, workshops, film screenings and meetings with artists as well as access to the state-of-the-art technology and film equipment to be used by young filmmakers to make their own films. Application deadline is the 5^th of October.

Documentary group is one of the most popular creative groups of the workshop. For 10 days the group participants will work on their projects, starting with developing their ideas and ending with the post-production. These who will join the group without the idea for a documentary, can still find the subject on the spot, as according to Pakalnina, film is waiting for us around the corner.

- I call my method of work “Fishing in the river of time”. As life is extremely talented, we just put camera, set composition and wait. And life happens. So film happens. Sometimes immediately, sometimes in hours and even days. But it happens – the group's tutor declares .

Young documentary makers, apart from practical work on their films, will learn how to pitch their ideas and will participate in consultations, discussions and screenings of the films made by them as well as other activities included in a very diverse and interdisciplinary  programme of the event.

- I like to make films on simple subjects - delivery of the mail, bicycle road, just a bridge etc. In fact like in very beginning of film history brothers Lumiere did – Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat; Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory etc. Maybe it is because filming simple things or actions you always catch something more, something meaningful. As for example in the shot with postwoman there is something more than just postwoman, there is universe – because it is documentary, it is not created by me but by life. I am just fixing this universe from the certain angle in certain framing - the group's tutor says about her films.

Laila Pakalnina has graduated from the Moscow Film Institute (VGIK), Department of Film Direction. She is a director and scriptwriter of 28 documentaries, 5 shorts, and 5 fiction features. As she describes herself: altogether she has 38 films, 2 children, 1 husband, 2 dogs and 2 bicycles. And many ideas for new films. Her films have been screened at Cannes, Venice, Berlinale, Locarno, Karlovy Vary, Rome and many other international festivals, where they have won numerous awards. She was nominated twice for European Film Award for a documentary Dream Land and a short film Fire. Laila Pakalnina’s Dawn (Ausma) was Latvia’s official entry for Golden Globe & Oscar consideration for Best Foreign Language Film.

Film Spring Workshop will take place from the 17th till the 26th of October in Krakow, Poland. Apart from the documentary group, other creative groups at the workshop include:  VR & AR, interactive narration, screenwriting, animation, feature film previses, new production model, CGI and modern editing, commercials, music videos, Selfie TV, keeping control in extreme filming conditions, web filmmakers group.

In August 2018, the Czech Republic and Slovakia commemorate the 50th anniversary of the invasion of the Warsaw Pact army into Czechoslovakia, justified by the Soviet political elite as the suppression of a counter-revolution taking place in the country. This important point in the history is presented from an unusual point of view in the documentary "My Unknown Soldier" directed by Ukrainian filmmaker Anna Kryvenko.

The film consists of well-known as well as never-published archive footage from all over Europe and Russia, and it is narrated by one of the soldiers who participated in the occupation, and by proxy by his niece, the director of the film. The documentary offers a fresh perspective on the events of 1968, and it shows not only the history of Soviet military machinery and propaganda, but also its reflection in the the politics of contemporary Russia.

"The original inspiration for the film was suppressed family history. Specifically, the history of my own family. When I visited my relatives in Ukraine, I discovered old photo albums in which one character was cut out of many of the photographs. It took me some time to find out at least the fragments of his story - the story that my family was trying to forget," Kryvenko explains the genesis of the film. “It was important to me to show that there’s an opposite side in any life situation, and it is not always an absolute contrast - Good vs. Evil, Victim vs. Assassin, East vs. West. Within these constructs, there are actual human beings who suffer. One of the film's motifs is the feeling of inherited guilt, guilt for something one did not do. I, as well as many other people from the former Soviet Union, still feel this way. To my film, the present day is just as important as the history."

Using archive footage, the director reconstructs possible scenarios of what her grandfather could have experienced as a member of the invading army. With the main storyline as its key, the film opens up the topics of power abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder in soldiers, as well as question of sympathy towards the occupiers and the occupied population of Czechoslovakia. "The story of my ancestor could be the story of any of the young soldiers who came marching into the country in August 1968. They were human beings trapped in the machinery of war and the games of the global superpowers," adds the director.

The events of 1968 present a permanent, unhealed trauma of the Czech and Slovak history, and are still not forgiven today. This fact is also reflected by Kryvenko in the documentary through her own experience as an immigrant living in Prague. The global political situation has also found its way into the film, particularly the Russian occupation of the Crimea and the ongoing struggles in Eastern Ukraine.

The premiere of the film is going to take place on August 17, 2018, on the roof of Prague's Lucerna Palace, and then will be screened at multiple venues throughout the city. Later on, the film will be distributed through the KineDok platform and streamed online via DAFilms.cz.

The film was made in a Czech-Latvian-Slovak co-production with the participation of Czech Television, Radio and Television of Slovakia, and the Film and TV Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. The film was also supported by the European fund Eurimages, the Czech State Fund for Cinema, the Slovak Audiovisual Fund, and the Latvian Film Center.

Media Contact:
Michaela Dostálová, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., tel .: 774 555 570
Find out more about the movie My Unknown Soldier on Facebook www.facebook.com/MyUnknownSoldier and on the director's personal Instagram profile www.instagram.com/anna.kryvenko

An independent study on economic, cultural and social impact of Sarajevo Film Festival, conducted by Olsberg SPI, showed that the festival generated $30,8m income for the local economy, and jobs for 1.385 workers. Total economic output from the Festivals activities in 2017 amounted to $6,1m and 99 full time employees. For each Bosnian marka (BAM) of public money put into the Festival, BAM 2.11 ($1.3) of total taxation was generated. Festival contributes to development of the film industry in the region, has a positive effect on the image of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and creates a sense of unity among the locals. 

31 July 2018, Sarajevo – Olsberg SPI, one of the leading international consultancies in the field of creative industries, has conducted an independent evaluation of the impact Sarajevo Film Festival (SFF) has on the local economy, tourism, culture and society. 

The study found that the Sarajevo Film Festival generates significant economic impacts for Sarajevo and for Bosnia and Herzegovina. When multiplier impacts were taken into account - including the activities of the Festival’s suppliers, and the generation of secondary spending in the economy - the study found that the total output related to the SFF amounted to $10.3 million. This supported 99 FTE (full time equivalent) employees, and an overall GVA (gross value added) contribution of $1.1 million. The results show that the festival significantly contributes to the larger economy of Sarajevo Canton and Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially tourism. Out of 30.000 tourists that visited Sarajevo during the festival dates, 10.000 resided in the city for the festival, which generated an income of $30,8m and created 1.385 FTE jobs in the tourist sector.

For each BAM of input from private sources, the Festival generates a GVA return of BAM 1.41; for public sources, this is raised to BAM 1.49. The Festival also provides strong tax revenues for the public sector: for each BAM of public money put into the Festival, both from Bosnian and international public sources, BAM 2.11 ($1,3) of total taxation is generated.

In addition to the impact on the local economy, Sarajevo Film Festival has significantly altered the international perception of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It also has a strong influence on local residents, inspiring the sense of belonging and pride. In terms of its cultural importance, participants of the study have placed the Festival alongside key events in the Sarajevo's history, such as the 1984 Winter Olympics.

The festival also plays a vital role in the local audience development, and contributes to the production and the overall quality of the audio-visual industry in the Southeast European region. The Declaration of Sarajevo, adopted following a 2015 conference at the SFF and presently being considered at the Council of Europe, also provided a strong impetus to the development of a policy on Gender Equality in the film sector.  

Olsberg SPI's evaluation included a detailed analysis of the budgets and accounts of the Sarajevo Film Festival, a series of confidential consultations with a number of stakeholders, including the representatives of sponsors of the Festival and various levels government in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as the surveys of the industry and audience participants at the 2017 SFF which gathered over 1,000 total responses. The survey was conducted during the 2017 edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival, and was announced at last year's CineLink Talks on CineLink Industry Days.

Sarajevo Film Festival generated $30,8m for local economy and has a positive effect on international perception of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Sale of Individual Tickets Will Start on Friday

BH Film Program: 77 Films, 21 World and 13 International Premieres!

After the successful 2018 focus on South East Europe and the Nordic countries, When East Meets West is back to work on the new edition to be held on January 20/22, 2019.

WEMW 2019 will keep the same formula primarily based on a double focus on one Eastern and one Western European region. The main idea is to bring to Trieste a large delegation of key players and decision makers from each annual spotlight territory and to select 20 projects in development from all Europe (plus North and Latin America) with a co-production potential with one of the countries in focus.

The upcoming edition of WEMW will have a new exciting East & West focus on Central Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine) and Benelux (Belgium, Luxembourg and The Netherlands). The choice of these guest countries has been carefully done in cooperation with all national funding bodies and reflects a clear need and strategy to enhance the cooperation with and between these geographical areas.

WEMW 2019 will aim at bringing back in Trieste the record number of participants from last year (over 450 from more than 40 different countries) and will keep all successful past ingredients of the programme: along with the co-production forum for 20 projects in development with co-production potential with either Central Eastern Europe, Benelux or Italy, WEMW will launch the fifth edition of Last Stop Trieste and First Cut Lab, two parallel sections for documentaries and fiction films in post-production from Eastern Europe and Italy, meant to facilitate their access into the international market, and the second edition of This is IT, work in progress section for fiction films co-produced with Italy.

WEMW 2019 will be organized once again by the FVG Audiovisual Fund in collaboration with the Trieste Film Festival and thanks to the precious and constant support of Creative Europe/MEDIA Programme, Direzione Centrale per il Cinema – MiBAC and CEI – Central European Initiative.

More information will be soon available at www.wemw.it

“Take a camera, shoot something, show it to somebody” - Jean Luc Godard

 

Few spots around the world give young filmmakers a shot at making a doc, from idea to screening, in just 5 weeks, under some of the finest tutoring in the world today: New York Film School, a few workshops in France and in Romania, at Aristoteles Workshop. Since 2006, generations of artists have come here to find their voice. Adina Pintilie, Golden Bear winner this year at Berlinale, is such an artist. Come August 1st, a new batch of filmmakers gets to have their say. What kind of creators will they be? Clues may hide in the stories their tutors have told so far.

 

Stories of a lesser known Romania

The Aristoteles Workshop recipe is identical 13 years since our first call: take young, talented artists, divide them into teams of three and immerse them in the middle of beautiful nowhere in Romania, with film gear and production vehicles. Add tutors from the world’s finest film schools and stir for five weeks. Each team produces a film. For 13 years now, one in three has been landing on the festival circuit, winning audiences and awards.

This edition’s beautiful nowhere is Baru, in the county of Hunedoara. The production base for all operations will be the campus of Babes Bolyai University, with whom Aristoteles Workshop has closed an unprecedented partnership. The workshop will take place there, August 1st through 31st.

Dan Nuțu, AW producer: „This year the only continent we had no applicants from was The Antarctic. The workshop went well and beyond the confines of Central and Eastern Europe. It’s a landmark on the map of docs filmmaking.“

The successful applicants, 15 young filmmakers and artists from eight countries in two continents, will be divided into five crews: director, director of photography and editor. Each one will produce a short doc, telling a story about Romania as they see it, in under 30 minutes. As they can shoot on a 2 hour radius from basecamp, we can expect films on the lost treasure of the Dacians and coal mine dramas alike.

 “The Pope” of documentaries, in the Carpathians

The workshop will kick off with a masterclass by Thierry Garrel, head of the docs department with TV channel arte for over 17 years, also known as “the docs Pope.” “It’s like learning to make movies from Scorsese,” says Dan Nuțu.

Participants will then pick their topics and start pre-prepping. They will be accompanied by four producers/ professors of documentaries from The Netherlands, France and Denmark. They all participated in international documentary film festivals: IDFAmsterdam, Visions du Reel,  Cannes Film Festival or European Film Academy Awards and masterclasses sprinkled around the globe. They access heated subject like women rights, geopolitical crises or the aftermath of war with verve and grace. For instance…

How masters tell true stories

A coup forces Madagascar’s democratically elected president out of the country. The coup’s leader is received at The Elysée Palace by France’s Nicolas Sarkozy. What does the fight for freedom look like in a former French colony? Lotte Mik-Meyer knows how to tell world spinning stories, from conflict spots like Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Egypt or Madagascar, as is the case with “Return of a President.” For the past 15 years she has been teaching docs in Denmark, Vietnam, The Middle East and The United States of America. This year, she adds Romania to the list.

A “lone wolf” detonates a bomb in Oslo and opens fire on a nearby island. 77 people lose their lives for being in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Post factum, there’s search for meaning, questioning and the memories of the surviving families. How do we tell a story about how fragile life is and how a coincidence can mark destinies? John Appel has completed, since 1987, over 45 films. A jury member at some of the finest docs festivals (IDFA, Karlovy Vary, Visions du Reel), he teaches at Netherlands Film Academy and Amsterdam Film school, and has masterclasses in China and Mexico alike. “Wrong time, wrong place” (2012) is one of the most awarded of his productions. He’s been part of Aristoteles Workshop for the last five years.

New York Times called it ‘a cinematic tone poem as much as a biography.’ “A skin too few – The last days of Nick Drake” is one of the music documentaries signed by Jeroen Berkvens. “Jimmy Rosenberg - The Father, the son and & the talent“, another, won the Grand Prix in Krakow, the Grand Prix at Montréal’s Festival du Films sur d’Art, a Big Sky Award in Montana and The  Golden Calf in the Netherlands. Jeroen teaches documentary direction at The Netherlands Film Academy, coordinates documentary film production at HUMAN, a public broadcasting company in The Netherlands, and is a world commuter on a long string of masterclasses and courses. Which also includes Aristoteles Workshop.

How do the traces of war show in the lives of young veterans’ families? “Of Men and War” tells the story of young dads, returned from battles in faraway lands but still fighting the psychological aftermath. Laurent Bécue-Renard’s film opened at the Festival de Cannes (Official selection 2014), was nominated for Best European Documentary at the European Film Academy Awards 2014 and won awards on the scenes of International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam IDFA, San Francisco Film Festival and many others. Laurent, who lived and worked as a journalist in Sarajevo during the siege, tells of world conflicts through the contorted lives in search of lost normalcy. He is a first timer at Aristoteles Workshop.

Following one week of masterclass and four of production, the best movie of this edition will be selected and awarded by an international jury.

Until a new class will emerge with freshly cut edits, the already completed Aristoteles Workshop films can be seen on cinepub.ro, a FVOD platform for cinema lovers and creators.

As of 2018, AW is partnering with the Babes Bolyai University in Cluj Napoca, The Facultaty of Theatre and Television and with cinepub.ro, the online platform where Romanian films stream for free legally worldwide.

This year’s edition is financed by The National Cinema Centre CNC, The Romanian Filmmakers Association UCIN and DACIN SARA, with the support of NouMax and The Mayoralty of Baru, Hunedoara county.

We chill and enjoy a good story with our partners Aqua Carpatica and Domeniile Sâmburești.

Word of good movies in the pipeline spreads through our media partners cinemagia.ro and liternet.ro.

 

About Aristoteles Workshop

ARISTOTELES WORKSHOP (AW) is a training and development centre dedicated to fostering a new generation of creative documentary filmmakers around the world, established by producers Dan Nuțu și Cristina Hoffman in 2006, with substantial material and spiritual support from the French/German cultural TV channel Arte.

Well known documentary experts offer full tutoring and mentoring to talented, passionate and proactive filmmakers and artists committed to undergo an intense 5-week learning experience in a newly formed team.

AW has produced over 40 documentaries widely appreciated by audiences and festival juries alike, and winners of important awards in Cannes Film Festival - Quinzaine des Realisateurs, DoK Leipzig, IDFA Amsterdam, or Locarno International Film Festival.

Over the years, the program was financed by Arte, TVR, The National Cinema Centre CNC, The  MEDIA Programme, AFCN (The National Cultural Fund Administration), UCIN (Romanian Filmmakers Union), DACIN SARA, The Cultural Romanian Institute, as well as private sponsors such as Farmexim, Istyle, Cabinetul Țuca/Zbârcea&Asociații, NouMax, Mandragora, along the mayoralties of Sibiu, Arad and Baia Mare.

About The Documentary Filmmaking Masters Program at the Babes Bolyai University in Cluj Napoca

The Faculty of Theatre and Television at the Babes Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca is a multidisciplinary, multicultural institution with a wide spectrum: Theatre, Cinema and Media, the latter with majors in film direction, cinematography, multimedia, sound-editing, audiovisual communications and filmology. All programs are taught in Romanian, Hungarian and English.

The Documentary Filmmaking Masters is the first academic initiative in non fiction film production in Romania, propelled by Aristoteles Workshop alumnus Dan Curean and his colleagues. It is taught in English and primarily targets graduates in Cinematography, Photography, Media, Filmology, Film Direction or graduates of other disciplines seeking a specialization in documentaries. It immerses its students into all documentary production stages and all are expected to produce a long feature documentary for their dissertation thesis and to participate and interact with industry professionals in docs festivals in Romania: Astra Film Sibiu, Docuart Bucharest or Pelicam Tulcea. Visiting professors include Peter Gothshalk – commissioning editor at Arte France/Germany, dr. Arnau Gifreu – University of Girona, prof. dr. Robert Wierzbicki – University of Mittweida, Germany, dr. Rebeka Jorgensen – Fulbright Scholar, professor and filmmaker.

 

About Cinepub

Cinepub is the only FVOD online platform dedicated to Romanian cinema, legally streaming independent and national and international patrimony films since 2015. Open data meets culture in a live, free archive of Romanian cinema and one of the largest worldwide. Thursday night is premiere night on Cinepub.ro.