Copyright Directive

13/09: Parliament approves controversial EU copyright reform – The Parliament Magazine

MEPs have approved controversial EU copyright reform, which includes a proposal for a publishers’ neighbouring right.

12/09: Parliament adopts its position on digital copyright rules – European Parliament

Parliament adopted its revised negotiating position on copyright rules on Wednesday, adding safeguards to protect small firms and freedom of expression.

12/09: UNIC welcomes the European Parliament vote on the Copyright Directive – UNIC

Following the plenary vote in the European Parliament on the Directive for Copyright in the Digital Single Market on 12 September, UNIC would like to welcome the outcome and thank the Parliament for supporting Europe's cultural and creative sectors.

Film Festivals

17/09: Full theatrical release vital for audiences says UNIC – UNIC

UNIC added its own voice to those seeking to ensure that films selected for competition at leading film festivals receive a full theatrical release.

11/09: Venice Festival winner invisible to cinemas audience worldwide – CICAE

 The International Confederation of Art Cinemas has recently called for a ban on movies produced or distributed by Netflix that were part of the official competition of the Venice International Film Festival. The award night of the prestigious festival proved that the cry out was well founded.

Creative Europe Media

20/09: Joint statement supporting the Creative Europe MEDIA Programme – UNIC Website

Alongside organisations working across the European audiovisual sector and in light of ongoing discussions surrounding the future of the Creative Europe MEDIA Programme and the next Multi-annual Financial Framework 2021/2027, UNIC would like to re-iterate its utmost support for Creative Europe MEDIA and its proportionate share of the overall Creative Europe budget.

CICAE

14/09: New General Delegate appointed at CICAE - CICAE

The International Confederation of Art House Cinemas (CICAE) is pleased to announce the appointment of Boglárka Nagy as the new General Delegate of the association. 

Events

4 October: European Creative Industries Summit (ECIS) 2018 - Vienna8-9 October: Challenging (the) Content – Content made in Europe in the digital economy - Vienna8-11 October: NATO Fall Summit10 October: CICI Lunch - European Parliament, Brussels 15 & 16 October: UNIC Cinema Days - Brussels 

FNE spoke with Italian directors and producers Giordano Bianchi and Martina Marafatto from Border Studio about their experience at the Digital Production Challenge II. Giordano Bianchi and Martina Marafatto are alumni from DPC 2017, where they participated with their project The Champion.

CEE Animation Workshop is a year-long programme of training, project development and networking for producers and their creative teams, focusing on animated or hybrid projects of all lengths and types (shorts, features, series). The aim is to provide tutoring in the field of content development, starting with script consultancy, as well as artistic and production consultancy. Lectures and presentations of recent trends in production, marketing and distribution, case studies of international co-productions, financial and legal matters and other important elements will be provided by acclaimed international experts.

A particular focus will be on the inclusion of artists of different profiles who will collaborate in group-work with participants, sharing their experiences and skills. The programme is intended to position producers and creatives in international animation industry networks and to develop animated projects in line with the current market and distribution demand. Besides on-site workshops, the programme will comprise the opportunity to pitch projects and receive online consultancy.

CEE Animation Workshop is divided into three 6-day modules. The first module will focus on content development, the second one on production and financing, and the third one on accessing the market. The third module will be organised alongside the CEE (previously known as Visegrad) Animation Forum, an established pitching and market access platform, inviting decision-makers from the field of animation.

WHO CAN PARTICIPATE

1. Producers and their creative team members (film director or scriptwriter) with an animated project of any form and length in development
2. Professionals from the field of animated film without a project (studio representatives, public and private funds employees, sales, distribution and marketing companies representatives, broadcaster representatives, etc.)

Only participants from low production capacity countries are eligible to apply.

>>> Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tunisia, Ukraine

SAVE THE DATE

Deadline for submissions: 22 October 2018

The programme is structured as 3 x 6-days workshops:

Workshop 1: 30 Nov – 6 Dec 2018, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Workshop 2: 20–26 March 2019, TBC

Workshop 3: 3–9 May 2019, Třeboň, Czech Republic

PARTICIPATION FEE

Producers with an animated project in development: 1,800.00 EUR

Additional creative team member per project: 900.00 EUR

Participants without a project: 1,800.00 EUR

Scholarships available.

The participation fee covers all the costs of the organisation and participation in the programme, including accommodation and meals during the workshops, online script consultancy meetings and the pitching forum participation fee. Costs of travel to/from the workshop location and any additional costs not listed above are not covered.

HOW TO APPLY

Please, complete the application form and enclose all the required documents by 22 OCTOBER 2018.

If you apply for a scholarship, please submit a motivation letter with a description of the reasons directly to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

CEE ANIMATION is the new umbrella name for all the activities previously known as VISEGRAD ANIMATION FORUM, or VAF.

September 27, Bitola – The festival day at the Manaki Brothers festival started with the introduction of the cinematographer of the film Foxtrot, Giora Bejach. The film was screened in the competition program for the Golden Camera 300 award.

-We tried to put in different films, with different aesthetics and cinematography. We were always thinking of the whole quality of the film. I saw Foxtrot at the Venice Film Festival and we didn’t have the possibility to bring it to this festival that same year, but here it is now, the selector Blagoja Kunovski – Dore said.

It is a great film, and Bejach won the Bronze Camera 300 a few years ago for the film Lebanon at the ICFF Manaki Brothers.

-The main challenges in a film are bringing the story, the grief and the situation we call “knocking on the door” in Israel. The main goal was to bring it to the screen with the aim of showing how the character feels and we tried the camera to seem as if though it is inside the situation, not an observer. We wanted to show his world coming down at the moment of the loss of his son, and the top shot was the one to achieve that. I actually work with a handheld ARRI ALEXA camera. I like it very much because later I don’t have to do much in post-production. This camera allows the picture not to be too sharp, I liked that style, but it is still my personal taste, Bejach said.

The film is very strong, the viewer feels like a soulmate of the main character, as someone having compassion with him.

-The film is already screened in Israel and the film critics loved it, but the Minister for Culture didn’t even see it, she is against this film even though she hasn’t seen it. But exactly that fact that the Minister for Culture was against the film brought even more publicity to the film and the people wanted to see it. Usually, the films in Israel are seen by an audience of about 60.000 people, and we now have about 130.000 spectators who have seen this film. Politics is involved, and it wrecks the film industry, not only in Israel, but everywhere, Bejach explained.

The selector Ana Vasilevska introduced some of the present representatives in the Makpoint program, Lidija Mojsovska, director of the film The Award, Zagorka Pop-Antoska Andovska, producer of the film Father, and talked about the quality of production of the Macedonian films, as there is an info that barely about 10 films from 307 Macedonian films can be seen at festivals.

-We sometimes rush in the production and the decision on the possibilities. I had a lot of problems. I think that the situation should get better. Every young author has experienced production problems and this is a good start of production improvement, Mojsovska pointed out.

Zagorka Pop-Antoska Andovska is a playwright, but she had the role of a producer in the film Father, a work by Irma Basheska devoted to her father Zharko Basheski.

-One thing should be pointed out, that the young authors start go fly high with a small budget or sometimes even with no budget to show and prove to themselves that they know what they’re doing. There are a few examples where there are production problems and a great commitment on making a piece of work start to finish which is respect-worthy. The film Father was shot with equipment owned by the DASTA Academy, which is also a producer of the film. We worked with what we had and, as a playwright, I can say that there are great examples where the story is the dominant thing that drives the film, especially now when there is technology that brings to a final film product, Pop-Antoska Andovska said.

It was a common stance that the young authors should be aided and motivated because many of them have only one or two films put in their CVs by the age of 40. That is way too little to speak of serious experience.

Zharko Ivanov is the director and script writer of the animated film The Monk, and also Igor Ivanovski of the film Form B16, and they spoke of the tradition of making animated films in this country.

-The animated film in Macedonia had a tradition up to the 80s and it died off afterwards. About ten years ago, we started working on it again. Availability of technology enhanced the production of animated films, Ivanov said.

According to Ivan Ivanovski, animated film is done with far less money and support.

-We work with very little money from our colleagues from abroad. I see the idea and the creativity in Macedonian film, but I don’t see inventiveness. What matters to me is for the film to be brave. I always consider that to be a big advantage, to work honest and brave, and the tough production circumstances shouldn’t be an obstacle, Ivanovski thinks.

Honoring the 100-year anniversary from the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman’s birth, the film Persona will be screened tonight at the ICFF Manaki Brothers. This film was shot in 1966 on an island in the Baltic Sea where the author himself lived, where he shot his films and where he is buried. On this occasion, the Swedish Ambassador Mats Staffansson and the director of the Cinematheque of Macedonia Vladimir Angelov introduced the program for the marking of this anniversary.

-I am honored to be a guest of this big and respected festival, especially at the marking of the anniversary of the birth of the great film, theater director and production designer, who was very productive. The film Persona is one of his most complicated films, but also one of his most criticized ones. Still, the film Persona is a psychological drama which is the Mount Everest of film art. Bergman’s films are very deep, he is fantastic person, and it is very unusual that he didn’t win an Oscar, even though he had 8 or 9 nominations. But he wasn’t very concerned about that, the Swedish Ambassador Mats Staffansson said.

Partner of the festival is the Cinematheque of Macedonia, whose director Vladimir Angelov talked about the preparations for the marking of the 100-year anniversary of the birth of Ingmar Bergman.

-I would like to point out that Bergman is also an author of 4 autobiographies, aside of his work on directing and script-writing, so he was truly a complex person. I had the opportunity to meet him in Stockholm in 2003 and that was a revelation for me, it was one of the most important moments of my life. I think that we will have a good year of celebrating the work of Bergman and I would like for us to succeed in translating some of his books, the director of the Cinematheque of Macedonia Vladimir Angelov said.

Meet-up with Dominique Bax and Saïd Ould Khelifa, directors of the Annaba Mediterranean Film Festival in Algeria

The cinematographers film festival Manaki Brothers today introduced Dominique Bax, artistic director, and Saïd Ould Khelifa, director of the Annaba Mediterranean Film Festival in Algeria.

Bax has more than 30 years of experience in exploitation, distribution and organizing of festivals and educative workshops. She is a director of Magic Cinema in Bobigny, the Paris suburb that has educative programs and cultural and pedagogical activities, also a director of the festival Theatre and Film since 2014, and director of the festival Resonances and Film Gatherings with a Civic Approach. She is the one responsible for the publication of the piece of work Theater and Film in 30 volumes.

She is also a president of the Association Crossroad of Festivals (Carrefour des festivals), which consists of the film festivals in France, and is also a member of the script aid committee at the Cinematographers National Center (CNC).

On the other hand, Saïd Ould Khelifa made a successful career in journalism as a reporter, chief of the international rubric (Algeria, France), collaborator of the daily newspaper The Nation (USA) and the magazine Cinéma Politique (France).

Gena Teodosievska, the director of the festival Manaki Brothers, introducing the guests at the start of the meet-up, pointed out that Bax and Khelifa as people devoted to film for 40 years already, people who know film festivals around the world very well, as well as film critics.

Blagoja Kunovski – Dore, the artistic director and selector of the official competition program at the Manaki Brothers festival, reminded the attendees of the meet-up that Mrs. Dominique Bax was a member of the jury at the festival in Bitola in one of its previous editions.

Bax and Khelifa think that the film festivals can also determine someone’s fate, so they shared their own life experience.

-The presence of films at festivals is an opportunity for getting to know the country they come from, Bax pointed out.

But she also said that the small cinematographic societies have a problem with the placement of their films at leading world festivals because the same festivals, e.g. the French ones, choose an easier way of creation of their programs, so they take films from the distributers themselves.

-There are very little films from Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, the Slavic countries from Eastern Europe, Portugal etc., at the festivals in France, Bax made a notice.

On the other hand, Khelifa thinks that there is audience at the festivals and the cinemas that wants to watch artistic films.

-We saw Summer here at Manaki Brothers, a film by the Russian director Kiril Serebrenikov, which was also at the Cannes Film Festival, Khelifa says.

Bax and Khelifa’s mission as film critics is discovering new authors.

-We were at the Venice Film Festival in 1994, and I met a producer of a film that amazed me there. I told the producer that a great injustice will be done if his film doesn’t get the Golden Lion. The film was titles Before the Rain, the director is Milcho Manchevski, and the producer is Simon Perry, Khelifa presented his mission as a critic through an anecdote.

Bax thinks that the function of festivals is to offer an opportunity for discovering new authors and cinematography pieces.

-We are here because we want to discover the Macedonian film authors and present them at the Annaba Mediterranean Film Festival, Bax and Khelifa pointed out.

The exhibition Miss Stone: Somewhere Between Ellen and Autonomy is open

As part of the ICFF Manaki Brothers, the Cinematheque of Macedonia opened up the exhibition at the Bitola cultural center Magaza last night and started the film screenings that mark the 60-year anniversary from the premiere of the Macedonian feature film Miss Stone, all with the title Miss Stone: Somewhere Between Ellen and Autonomy, where photographs, scenography sketches, propaganda material and other archive materials were exhibited. On the occasion of the anniversary, the Macedonian public had the opportunity to see the presentation of a significant part of the saved materials that are nowadays part of the written documentation collection of the archive of the Cinematheque of Macedonia. In its time, Miss Stone was one of the most expensive and most ambitious Yugoslav productions, the first Macedonian film in color, but also in a totalscope technique.

-The film Miss Stone started its shoot in 1958 and its filming didn’t go that easy, it was a big project and it can all be seen through these 20 panels exhibited, where you can see the whole history of Miss Stone. It can be freely called a film behind the film. The film has a very rich life up to 1962, when a big flood hits Skopje and a large part of the materials in Vardar Film are destroyed and that is where the international distribution of the film ended. Still, the Cinematheque has made a protected copy from multiple different copies. I hope that we will soon make a digital restoration which will bring the film back to life, Vladimir Angelov, the director of the Cinematheque of Macedonia, said.

He announced that the film will be screened at the Days of Macedonian Film in Zagreb, from October 3, in the cult cinema Tushkanac, where the exhibition will also be set up. The director of the ICFF Manaki Brothers Gena Teodosievska said that she accepted his idea of setting up this exhibition during the festival with pleasure because they share similar stances with the director Angelov on what preservation of film and Macedonian cinematography means.

-The Cinematheque of Macedonia is our partner together with the Film Agency, the Municipality of Bitola, Institute and Museum Bitola, the Center for Culture and the National Theater in Bitola and they all have their share in the preservation of the Macedonian culture and film. This is one of those precious events. The Cinematheque of Macedonia is one of the rare institutions that even in facing a lack of finances tries this exhibition to look dignifying, Teodosievska said.

Sara Logan Hofstein was a guest at the student program last night. But the most interesting moment from this year’s student program was the hangout with Roger Deakins with the students, Gjorgji Pulevski, selector of the student program, says.

-The director Gena Teodosievska and I felt that there won’t be enough time for the students to ask Deakins all the things they want to and that is why we asked the legendary cinematographer to devote some time to the future film authors in an informal manner. A great atmosphere came around, the hangout lasted more than what was planned, the students posed various questions: ones in terms of lighting and other technical solutions connected to his work, but they also wanted to find out about his life philosophy.

Two interesting things that Deakins said that left an impression on me: the way of dealing with unanticipated mistakes and how to be resolved at the same moment, and he also shared the fact that he was fired twice and that it didn’t make him question giving up this job. At the start of his career, some producer told him that he is not that good at the cinematography work, Pulevski says.

This year, the student program is so ambitious and with a lot of workshops for the first time.

-We wanted this program to be a stamp of impression for the students, which will become a fundament of the development of their technical and creative capacities, we will try to make this idea happen more every other year, Pulevski says.

September 26, Bitola – Before leaving Macedonia, the Academy Award-winner Roger Deakins held a special Master Class only for the students attending the festival, a lot of questions were asked, the students used the rare opportunity to meet and get answers live from one of the great names of world cinematography.

This morning, guest at the press-conference was Kalojan Bozhilov, cinematographer from Bulgaria, who introduced the film Aga.

-A stunning film, a visual poem, which was a Berlinale gem. Some film critics thought that it was a pity for it not to be in the competition at the Festival, but it might be a Bulgarian Academy Award candidate. The film is very unique, done in tough circumstances and it was probably a huge challenge to film in a polar eternal winter, below 20-25°C, the selector Blagoja Kunovski – Dore said.

Bozhilov explained that this film won’t be a Bulgarian candidate for the Oscar this year because it still has to pass the festival light of Varna, but it might happen next year.

-in fact, when we arrived in Yakutia, it was -40°C, but it was the same situation as filming anywhere. The most important thing was not to have to retake scenes because the snow level was rising. You could only film once, no retakes. That made everything go slower. We were filming for 40 days in total. I chose to film on 35mm strip. A filmstrip, not digitally, because of the cold weather, the picture and the story itself. I used an ARRI White Cam, which is quite good. ARRI is a world leader. Milko and I are already a duo, this is the second film we work on, Bozhilov shared experience.

Giving her gratitude for the beautiful film, the festival director Gena Teodosievska pointed out that she was amazed when she saw the film at the Berlin film festival and were trying together with the selector Kunovski to bring the film to the Festival in Bitola.

-I like the fact that there is a storm inside the characters, and the faces of the characters are still. We truly made a compound of the human nature and nature itself, but also put them apart in the wide shots, Teodosievska pointed out.

The film Refuge, directed by Sara Logan Hofstein, was screened as a special feature. It is about an American-Jewish negotiator who moves to Vienna and starts a relationship with a refugee from Ethiopia. The film story connects to the life story of the director and script writer Sara Logan Hofstein.

-I am a Jew from USA who lives in Vienna. A lot was happening in Austria in 2015 that gave the possibility to pull back lines to the events of 1938. The chancellor of Austria stepped down, refugees came in and were put into camps, not concentration camps, but camps nonetheless, personal items were taken from them, the same that was happening to the Jews and all that deal touched me personally as a Jew. Still, about 95% of Austrians, especially the young population, supports the refugees and their struggle, the old regime is in fact the one still holding on to the dated and dangerous values. But the good thing is that it became clear to the Austrians that they were not victims in World War II, but perpetrators, they got that and moved on. We didn’t want to go hard on anyone with this film, but to motivate everyone to do what they can. One person might not change the world, but a movement can, and that is the message. As a short film, it was tough to get the big companies interested in supporting the filming. I want to point out the wonderful sponsorship by ARRI, who gave us the whole working equipment, the director and script writer of the film spoke.

The film is done by a family crew: Sara is daughter of Michael and Maria Hofstein, who appear in this film as a cinematographer and producer respectively, and who, on the other hand, have great experience at the Hollywood productions and studios.

-We are like gears of a family machine. We are a family of filmmakers, we have spent our whole life in the studios in LA, and then in Europe for 20 years. We work very harmoniously as a team, Michael Hofstein, the cinematographer of the film Refuge, said.

From the European Cinema Perspectives selection, Slagjan Penev introduced the film Eternal Winter and the cinematographer András Nagy. The film is based on a true story for some Hungarians who were taken to Soviet concentration camps in 1944. This question has been raised in the Hungarian society for the first time.

-700.000 people were deported and 300.000 of them never returned. This a traumatic episode for a society and it was not talked about for 60-70 years, so it must have been a surprise for the Hungarian public. A lot of Hungarians don’t even know of these events, Penev said.

It is shot on very snowy mountains and they’ve had close encounters with wolves, but the most important thing is that a true story is told in this film for the first time, one which motivated the elders to tell their stories.

-The most important thing is that the people that were there, in Novgorod, couldn’t talk about it at the time, before 1989, and afterwards, they just didn’t want to. This was the moment that started some sort of a talk, and the media fully supported the film. My favorite part of the film is the events from the mine, the whole crew worked underground for a whole week, and we tended to transfer the same feeling of the people who actually worked here at that time, Nagy said.

Introduction of the European program Less Is More (LIM)

Gorjan Tozija, director of the Macedonian Film Agency, and Massimiliano Nardulli today presented the collaboration between the Macedonian Film Agency and the program Less Is More, created by the Le Groupe Ouest (France). Numerous activities will be held as part of this program and the partnership, and as an especially significant one is the organizing of the workshop for local film professionals titled Pre-Writing Workshop.

-What we introduce now is something that is in preparation for the following edition of the Festival, the jubilee, the 40^thedition of the ICFF Manaki Brothers. This program truly is as though created for Macedonia. The main motto of the program is “Less is more” and it focuses on the young cinema-makers who still haven’t made a feature film, up to having made two previous feature film already. The film skill is to make a better film with less money, and that is what we need. If you give someone a lot of money, it is not a guarantee that he will make a good film, but on the contrary, our experience shows that here the films done on a smaller budget have far bigger success. The idea itself, the specific of the script-writing, the more original, inventive, use of recent subjects in them is what will define the budget and will contribute to the appearance of a new wave in Macedonian cinematography, which is our strategic point, Tozija pointed out.

He also pointed out that the MFPA should also aim towards more foreign collaborations. Massimiliano Nardulli, representative of the European program Less Is More (LIM), aimed at lower budget films, where film authors with no or up to two previous feature films can apply, presenting the program, said that Macedonia has a lot of talent and will have its role in the European cinematography.

-Your country is full of stories and a reservoir of talent. This program’s focus is the script and we work with smaller budget projects so that the authors can get to a more creative approach, but also because of the fact that the independent films are in danger from the big productions, Nardulli said.

He pointed out that he is proud that Macedonia is the first country from the Balkans that joins this project.

The short film program for the Small Camera 300 is also in full swing, as the films are judged by the international five-member jury.

The Makpoint program is rather interesting for the audience in Bitola, where the most recent Macedonian productions are screened, quite often even before their official premieres. The screenings are followed by talks with the authors, moderated by Ana Vasilevska, the program selector.

Today marked the end of the IMAGO Balkan Conference, the conference of the Federation of world cinematographers from 53 national associations and over 4300 member-cinematographers. Aside from the cinematographers from the region, the Macedonian representatives Dejan Dimeski, Naum Doksevski and Dushan Kardalevski, the conference was also attended by the leading men of IMAGO, the president Paul René Roestad and Nigel Walters.

September 25, Bitola – Today’s festival day started with the introduction of the film from the European Cinema Perspectives program, The Marriage and the director Blerta Zeqiri.

This is a Kosovar film which showcases an unusual love triangle, where, only two weeks before Anita and Bekim’s wedding, Bekim’s secret lover, Nol comes to town.

-The film opens up a subject of which existence we are not aware, but it is more at the margins of the society. The problem the LGBT community faces is quite boldly treated. Although it has all the aspects of a Balkan community, there are very beautiful patriarchal scenes, treating the traditional values, because the people in the audience aren’t always ready to see scenes of two male actors making love, Slagjan Penev, selector of the European Cinema Perspectives program, said.

The film The Marriage is the first feature film of the director Zeqiri and it had quite a great success at festivals so far.

-The influence by the actors was quite big in the making of the script, but I also want to point out their bravery to accept being part of this project because when we started to prepare the film in 2012-2013, there was a big accident at a party in Kosovo promoting an issue devoted to the LGBT community. A large group of extremists came by, wrecking everything, and some people were beaten up. That is why we were also terrified that something similar might happen to us considering the subject of the film. We kept the film a secret, the media didn’t know the theme, but they helped us by not publishing anything until we finished the film. A great deal was done also by the actors Alban Ukaj, who is very popular, who has worked abroad and is known as the Kosovar Brad Pitt, everyone loves him, and the role of Nol, the lover in the film, is played by the Kosovar rock-star Genc Salihu, Zeqiri said.

The cinematographer Lukas Milota spoke about the film Winter Flies, which was screened last night as part of the Golden Camera 300 competition. The film and cinematographer were introduced by the selector of the official program of the Festival, Blagoja Kunovski – Dore.

-The children are not professional actors. Working with them was quite a long process, the rehearsals lasted more than six months, but at the end we got the effect of teenage adventurers who set off south across the frozen landscape in search of an adventure, Milota said. He is present at the Manaki Brothers festival for the second time.

Milota said that he used an ALEXA Mini camera, because it was quite compact and easy to handle, especially for this film.

Marija Apchevska introduced two film crews from the short films selection. The director of the film Birch, Paisley Valentine Walsh spoke of the idea of the film.

-The childhood memories were the main idea to shoot this film. We tried to stay close to the memories the whole time, Paisley said.

The film is shot on a filmstrip, which is very hard.

-The harder thing is the fact that you also have a dog and two children and you don’t have the opportunity to shoot the scenes multiple times. We made the choice of working on filmstrip because we think that it gives more connection to the audience, Vincenzo Marranghino, the cinematographer of the film Birch, pointed out.

The second film from the short films selection that was introduced today was the film Without Love, which was shot in hard conditions on a mountain.

-We were shooting three days in Mavrovo, the location is in Macedonia, and it was hard to work in those conditions. We know that the scene of jumping in the lake leaves a stronger impression, and it wasn’t easy to shoot it, but we did it, the director and script writer of the film, Dina Duma, said.

As part of the First Films First program, the cinematographer Christian Berger and the production designer Christoph Kanter held a Master Class on the subject Creating Visual Style in Haneke’s Films. The attendees were greeted by the festival director Gena Teodosievska and the program coordinator Stefan Arsenijevikj, who said that it is a great honor for this program to collaborate with the Manaki Brothers festival for three years in a row. The moderator of the Master Class was Samir Ljuma. The Master Class focused on three films by Haneke where the two guests collaborated. On the question if the production designer is some sort of a cultural anthropologist, Kanter answered that it is true because there should be some quite thorough research of what everything was like in the time showcased in the film. Berger pointed out the collaboration with his fellow cinematographers, one of whom is Roger Deakins himself, who he had discussion with over issues while working on the film The White Ribbon. In terms of framing, Berger highlighted that with time the good cinematographer simply develops a feeling of exactly what information he should give to the viewer. He has quite often been inspired by art and paintings. Berger and Kanter were unanimous that, while working on films, everyone needs to make sure they have the same interpretation as the director of what is not written down in the script.

Following the screening of the documentary film Living the Light last night, a film devoted to the life and work of the cinematographer Robby Muller, the recipient of the 2016 Golden Camera 300 for Lifetime Achievement, the director Claire Pijman and Robby Muller’s wife, Andrea Muller answered the questions from the audience.

-I am honored to be here amongst such good and famous cinematographers, and even though I shot and edited this film, I always see something new there and I am truly thankful for giving us the chance to screen it here. The film’s structure was dictated by the huge archive of recordings and photographs, the director Pijman said.

His wife Andrea said that the light, the work were important to Robby Muller as much as the family, but the film shows quite well that the trust was quite important for him and for the communication with the family, but also for the work. Robby wanted to work with directors he can trust and when he gets that trust back, the collaboration bloomed.

Roger Deakins also attended the screening and said that he very much appreciates Muller’s work, especially the way he used color and that he has had great influence into his own work, pointing an example in the film To Live and Die in LA, which had changed the way Hollywood works.

The film devoted to Robby Muller had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival shortly after his death. His wife Andrea said that it was rather complicated for the family to watch the film, but they realized that it is a great landmark of Robby Muller’s work. She also gave her gratitude to the Manaki Brothers festival and said that when she was coming to Bitola, it had a special significance because she followed the path of her husband, who has attended the Manaki Brothers festival couple of time before.

On the other hand, this year’s festival star, Claudia Cardinale and her crew, visited the city of Ohrid last night. She was amazed by the Ohrid pearls, the nature and the churches of Ohrid.

The director of the ICFF Manaki Brothers publicly gave her gratitude to the Institute and Museum of Ohrid and to the director Eleonora Novakovska for providing the opportunity for the world-renowned film diva Claudia Cardinale and the important guests of the festival to get to know the cultural treasure of Macedonia. The guests visited Ohrid this last Monday and, even though it was a non-working day, the director Novakovska allowed for them to see the valuable exhibits of the cultural treasure of Macedonia.

This morning, the Center for Culture in Bitola was filled with children’s voices, as the youngest audience came for the start of the children’s program.

The student program is also underway, as 30 students from 15 academies from the region are present at the festival.

Tomorrow, the second day of the IMAGO Balkan Conference will be part of the Festival’s program, as well as a meeting with Saïd Ould Khelifa and Dominique Bax, who will speak of the film festivals and film criticism.