The first of three week-long sessions of the Ex Oriente Film workshop will take place in Trieste, Italy, in cooperation with RE-ACT Workshop from June 17th to June 23rd, 2018. We are happy to announce tutors of the first session.
We are proud to present our team of tutors: 12 recognized professionals will guide and advice the Ex Oriente Film programme projects during 6 days of lectures, screenings, individual and group meetings and practical case studies. The Institute of Documentary Film would like to thanks them for their time and express its gratitude for their engagement with the Ex Oriente Film 2018 projects.
The workshop lead tutors for Ex Oriente Film 2018 are the General Delegate of the Venice International Film Critics’ Week and Visions du Réel programmer Giona A. Nazzaro (Switzerland/Italy), Head of Studies of the European Documentary Network Mikael Opstrup (Denmark), director and script editor Ivana Pauerová Miloševičová (Czech Republic) and director and producer Filip Remunda (Czech Republic).
The guest tutors for Ex Oriente Film 2018 are:
Stefano Savona (Italy)
One of the most prominent voices of Italian documentary, Savona’s films are regularly presented in A-list film festivals and distributed in Italy and France. His last film Samouni Road (2018) was just presented in the Cannes’ Directors Fortnight and awarded with the Golden Eye (L'Œil d'or) for the best documentary across festival sections. Savona's filmography also includes Notes from a Kurdish Rebel (2006), Cast Lead (2009, Special Jury Prize at Locarno Festival) or Palazzo delle Aquile (2011, co-dir. Alessia Porto & Ester Paratore, winner of Cinéma du Réel).
Eduardo Williams (Argentina)
Paris based Argentinian film director. He first studied at Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires, and then in Fresnoy, France, under the tutorship of Portuguese director Miguel Gomes. Among the most original figures of contemporary cinema, Williams’ films have been shown around the world at events such as Cannes Director’s Fortnight and Cinefondation, Toronto IFF, New York Film Festival, in Tate Modern and Museum of Moving Imagine. His feature debut The Human Surge (2016) won the Golden Leopard at Locarno IFF in the category Cineasti del Presente.
Salomé Jashi (Georgia)
Alumni of Ex Oriente Film, director and producer, Salomé Jashi plays a major role in the definition of the nowadays Georgian documentary landscape. Her most recent film, The Dazzling Light of Sunset (2016) has been awarded in Vision du Réel International Film Festival in 2016 and toured festivals around Europe. Her debut, Bakhmaro (2011), a co-production between Georgia and Germany, was awarded at Ji.hlava IDFF and at DOK Leipzig.
Carine Cichowsky (France)
Paris based producer, Carine Cichowsky is the co-founder of Survivance, a company looking towards the future and also towards the past by creating documentaries and distributing rare films on DVD. Currently, Carine is producing a new feature film by Lebanese director Ghassan Salhab. In 2010 she produced the award winning five-part documentary cycle Mafrouza (dir. Emmanuelle Demoris) about life in a shantytown built inside the antique necropolis of Alexandria. It got the Golden Leopard at Locarno IFF.
Marco Alessi (Italy)
Marco Alessi began his career in 1998 directing and producing aStromboli, a docufiction selected for the Concorso Cineasti del presente at the Locarno Film Festival. He is a producer of Stefano Savona's films. Since 2001, Alessi has also been working as a freelance writer/producer for major TV production companies. In 2001, he started to produce documentaries by himself and in 2010, he founded Dugong Films, a company focused on the blurred line between documentary and fiction.
Wilbirg Brainin-Donnenberg (Austria)
She is the director of the Screenwriters Forum Vienna. She worked for the Austrian independent film distribution company Sixpackfilm and was Head of Diagonale Film Industry Meeting from 2010 to 2013. She curated numerous film programs as freelance curator and created film events for the Austrian Film Museum and Oberhausen ISFF.
Luca Scarlini (Italy)
Essayist and storyteller, he often appears on stage with singers and actors. He teaches at IED in Florence, at the Holden School of Turin and at Ca' Foscari University in Venice. A translator from English and French, he collaborates with several publishing houses. Scarlini is often involved in cinema and theatre projects as consultant and researcher.
Marko Grba Singh (Serbia)
Director and film curator, recently appointed artistic director of BelDocs IDFF in Belgrade. His feature debut Abdul & Hamza (2015) was awarded the best feature in FIDMarseille and received mention in Ji.hlava IDFF. His first short movie At Least We’ve Met premiered in 2012 at Visions du Réel and was screened in at more than 40 festivals around the world.
Ex Oriente Film is an international training programme for documentary professionals supporting the development and funding of creative documentary films from Central and Eastern Europe. The core of the Ex Oriente Film is based on three week-long residential workshops held over 9 months. In the first session called "Out of the Comfort Zone – Vision, Space, Story" a panel of tutors composed by directors, curators and producers will take the director-producer teams in the different directions their project could take. In a balance between inspirational sessions and hands-on session the tutoring team will help them exploring the infinitive creative solutions offered by the cinematographic language.