The 7th Visegrad Film Forum (VFF) with a five-day programme full of master classes with renowned experts, runs from April 17 – 21 with the leading topic of film image.

Among the guests you find names such as Slawomir Idziak, Polish DoP who was nominated for an Academy Award as well as a BAFTA; French director and scriptwriterJoan Chemla; well-known production designer art director and special effect supervisorEggert Ketilsson; Marcel Łoziński, one of the internationally most acclaimed Polish documentary filmmakers and Mick Audsley, British film and television editor with more than fifty film credits including Interview with the Vampire (d. Neil Jordan, 1994), Twelve Monkeys (d. Terry Giliam, 1995) and more. 

Get more information: https://www.visegradfilmforum.com/2018/

 

 

The Slovak Film and Television Academy (SFTA) granted the Slovak national film awardsThe Sun in a Net 2018 on Friday, April 6. The most awarded film was The Line (d. Peter Bebjak) which won six prizes including the one for Best Fiction Film. Documentarian Robert Kirchhoff won Best documentary for  A Hole in the Head and producer and director Katarína Kerekesová won Best Animation for the episode from tv series Websters – Hero Daddy. Multiple prizes went to filmmakers of Little Harbour (d. Iveta Grófová) which won in three categories – Best Film Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction. 

The full list of nominees and winners find here: http://www.aic.sk/aic/en/news/archive/the-winners-of-the-sun-in-a-net-2018.html

 

 

 

The MIDPOINT Intensive Serbia Selection

We are pleased to announce the selection of 4 projects for our first MIDPOINT Intensive Serbia workshop aimed at Serbian film professionals. The projects will participate in a 4-day workshop in Belgrade starting on April 29, 2018.

A big thanks goes to our dear partner Film Center Serbia for co-hosting this event.

The participants are teams of writers, directors and producers who are working on their 1st or 2nd feature film – and they are as follows:

/ Blame On Me – writer Boris Grgurovic, writer/director Ivan Stojiljkovic, producer Marija Stojanovic

/ Maria Untitled – writer/director Andrijana Stojkovic, producer Andrija Lucic

/ Regret – writer/director Kosta Djordjevic, producers Milos Ivanovic & Andrijana Sofranic

/ The Way Summer Ends – writer/producer Svetislav Dragomirovic, writer Ljubinka Stojanovic

Read more about the selected projects here.

Hungarian writer, director and script consultant Csaba Bollok will act as the Core Tutor, and the workshop will consist of group feedback, individual consultations and plenary sessions and meetings with international decision makers from the film industry.

MIDPOINT Intensive Serbia will run concurrently with the MIDPOINT Feature Launch's second workshop and MIDPOINT Shorts, which are also supported by Film Center Serbia, and will take place on April 29 – May 2, 2018.

The Winners of Czech Film Academy Awards - the Czech Lions

We would like to greatly congratulate our alumni for their awards at the Czech Lions:

/ Ice Mother - Best Film - Producer Pavel Strnad took part in the MIDPOINT Feature Launches between 2015–2017 as a tutor and the MIDPOINT Intensive @ KVIFF 2017 as a participant.

/ Filthy - Best Editing - Director Tereza Nvotova and her film debut Filthy participated in the MIDPOINT Feature Launch 2014.

/ Atlantis, 2003 - Magnesia Award for the Best Student Film - Director Michal Blasko took part with Atlantis in the MIDPOINT Feature Launch 2015. 

Congratulation to Croatia's MEDIA Desk’s Anniversary

Big congratulations to the 10th anniversary of Croatia's MEDIA Desk, which was celebrated on March 28 in Zagreb through panels on the state of the industry, exclusively comprised of women.

The title of the celebrations was "Strong Women of the European Audiovisual Industry in Zagreb for the First Time". The program consisted of panels on various aspects of the European film industry and featured all women speakers.

MIDPOINT’s director Barbora Struss was invited to talk as part of the panel focused on the importance of media in various aspects of the European audiovisual industry.

Serial Eyes - Open Call

MIDPOINT TV Launch’s partner, the Serial Eyes training program, is currently accepting applications, the deadline is May 15, 2018. The Serial Eyes program prepares the next generation of European TV writer-producers to bring first-class storytelling to television screens. The core of the training is the writers’ room experience: the twelve Serial Eyes participants learn to work as a group and develop a European model of how to run a show running.

The full-time course takes place from September 2018 through May 2019 in Berlin at Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin, with visits to Copenhagen, London and the Series Mania Festival in Lille. Participants must be available and present full-time through the end of the program.

Upcoming Activities

The MIDPOINT TV Launch 2018 program is going to have its second workshop in Pilsen during the Finale Plzen Film Festival from April 19–25. More about the MIDPOINT TV Launch 2018 here.

 

 

A retrospective of works of one of the most relevant contemporary film directors

A renowned Austrian film director, Ulrich Seidl is this year’s special guest of 11^th Beldocs Film Festival, which is hosting a retrospective of his films.  Seidl is one of the most relevant contemporary film directors, known to the Belgrade audience mainly for his feature films: ’Import/Export’ and trilogy ’Paradise: Love’, ’Paradise: Faith’ and ’Paradise: Hope’. His visit to Belgrade was arranged by the Austrian Cultural Forum.

Born in Vienna in 1952, he began his prolific documentary career with his graduation film ’The Prom’, for which he was ‘asked to leave’ the film academy. ’The Prom’ is a satiric documentary, set in his hometown of Horn and following preparations for a graduation ball, during which class differences of the Austrian society are laid bare.

The Siedl’s style is characterised by a sharp film expression, uncompromisingness and controversy, while his main interest lies in suppressed gaps of the contemporary European society. Seild, in most cases, opts for narration on global problems through the prism of small, invisible people on the edge of society, using the specific-to-general approach, or, in his own words – he is focused on ’big, small life things’.

This retrospective presents six feature-length documentaries at the new Kinoteka’s building in Uzun Mirkova Street, encompassing his entire career, from his earliest to most recent works.

'Matura / Der Ball' (1982), Good News (1990), Loss is to be expected (1992), Animal love (1996), Jesus, you know (2003), In the basement (2014).

BelDocs Festival:

During the last decade, Beldocs Festival has become the most loved spring documentary film festival, which gathers the best works of contemporary documentary filmmaking. The most important contemporary documentary films have had its premiere precisely at Beldocs. In this year, again, a documentary film market will be organised, for the second time supported by the European Union through the Programme: Creative Europe, sub-programme Media. 

This year, as well, Beldocs is continuing to develop and educate its audience through a quality and premiere programme, offering, in addition to domestic, an international selection, as well as numerous accompanying programmes of events. The festival will be held at Sava Centre Hall, Dom Sindikata, Kinoteka’s film theatres at Kosovska and Uzun Mirkova Street, the cinema Fontana and the Museum of Contemporary Art.

In this year, a #europeanfilmchallenge prize competition has been launched, in which the documentary film audience compete for valuable prizes – full paid trip to an A category film festival. After Berlinale, the next round is a trip to Cannes and the second round started on 12 February. The rules are the following: a competitor should see 10 European documentary films on any of possible platforms (VoD, SVoD, cinema, festival, television, etc.), name the film and the platform, place a photograph as a proof and hash tag #europeanfilmchallenge. After certain period of time, the competition organiser will select a winner, who will receive an attractive prize.

This year’s 11 Beldocs Festival takes place from 7 to 14 May.