WORLD OF SHORTS
the berlinale 2015 issue
a shortfilm magazine published by daazo.com – the european shortfilm centre
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5 The golden scene of “Kurzfilm” – all you need to know about the short film landscape of the 65th Berlinale and its hubs for creativity and networking
CON Con Matija Radeljak
12 Mapping your Mind – Berlinale Shorts directors talk about their films with the power of visual arts 37 The pieces of a puzzle: storytelling – the how how-to -to of conceiving, developing and perfecting a great story, from the different points of view of filmmakers, story editors, film festival curators and other leading industry professionals
Matija is a Zagreb-based producer with a strong passion for producing author-driven stories regardless of their format. His priorities are female authors of fiction films intended for a European co-production and theatrical distribution. His company Aning Film was founded in 2010 and supports motivated artists through its Zagreb, Berlin and Paris hubs.
What pops to mind first when you hear the word “Berlinale”? Everlasting friendships.
58 The Pitch Page – seven short film plans we can hardly wait to see realised 71 The Bear is just the beginning – get in the celebratory mood for 2015 with our guide to the most anticipated film festivals for short films
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Your best Berlin memory? A bar around the corner. You wouldn't believe the quality of deals made there aer 3 a.m.
Your desert island film? Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse.
Your dream date? One which I actually dare to propose.
What would you be in a parallel life? Homeless. Woody Allen or Miloš Forman? Miloš Forman and Miloš Forman.
TRIBUTORS tributors Anita Voorham
Joonas Makkonen
Anita is a script consultant for films and TV series. She is currently part of the Torino Film Lab, Berlinale Script Station and Venice Biennale College-Cinema and works with individual filmmakers.
Joonas is a Finnish director/screenwriter, whose debut feature film Bunny the Killer ing is now in post-production. e film will have a theatrical release in Finland in 2015. Joonas has also directed various short films and regional TV commercials.
What pops to mind first when you hear the word “Berlinale”? Excitement. e Berlinale is huge and varied. ere is a lot to see and a lot of people to meet.
What pops to mind first when you hear the word “Berlinale”? Berlin. Also, it sounds a bit like a film fest as well!
Your best Berlin memory? e concert by e Broken Circle Breakdown Band in Bassy Cowboy Club in 2013. It was an extraordinary, exhilarating and intimate concert.
Your best Berlin memory? I still haven't been to Berlin, unfortunately.
Your desert island film? is is an impossible question... I'll go with Babel, it's long and shows a lot of the world which should be nice under the circumstances. Your dream date? Tilda Swinton or Julianne Moore. Don't make me choose. Oh, Cate Blanchett... If I have to choose then Julianne Moore, her choice of material is phenomenal.
Your desert island film? Fight Club. Your dream date? Mila Kunis. What would you be in a parallel life? Hmm... a scientist. Or a professional athlete. Woody Allen or Miloš Forman? Mr. Allen.
What would you be in a parallel life? A really talented musician. Woody Allen or Miloš Forman? Woody Allen. WOSH by Daazo.com 3
words by Zsuzsanna Deák
DeAR Short Film FriendS Here we are again, just a few days before the first major European film event of the year, when thousands of film professionals, cinema lovers, and the stars of the present and the future will gather in the February cold of Berlin with one purpose: to celebrate cinema.
novelty and refreshing innovation. It feels, however, even better to return to the safe realm of narrative and indulge in the feelings a good story evokes, or even the escapism or life-saving qualities (think Scheherazade!) it offers.
As I’m writing this, I’m thinking of you all, dear World of Shorts readers, and wondering what part of the world you are in right now. Whether you have booked your tickets to Berlin yet, whether you will come to the Berlinale for the first time this year or, like me, you return here year aer year. Are you a Berliner who just pops over on the U-Bahn to Potsdamer Platz, to the most spectacular building complex anywhere that houses cinema – or will you fly long haul from faraway countries to be part of this crazy cinematic whirligig? Are you yet to make your first film, or have you got a portfolio of award-winning works on your computer?
We decided to dedicate this issue to the wonders of storytelling and the ways you can perfect the plot and the script of your film. See how a short film can be changed into a feature (page 52), read about the long journey of developing a story (page 48), and find out about the final touches: how story editing can help your script enormously (pages 40 and 44). Our contributors discuss the storytelling qualities of music (page 51), the new forms of transmedia (page 56) and even our responsibility to the narrative of humankind (page 38).
In short: I’m interested in your story. e capability of storytelling is one of the most amazing phenomena mankind has developed over tens of thousands of years. A couple of years ago, the tagline of Berlinale Shorts was “Say goodbye to the story” – we did so and enjoyed what came out of it: a truly splendid bunch of experimental creations, full of
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As always, besides our main focus, we also examine the short film programme of the Berlin International Film Festival through interviews and drawings and discuss its hubs for training and networking. We also offer a wide international festival panorama so that you can confidently pick your next destination aer the Berlinale. But, until then, enjoy the home of the Golden Bear – and if you see me there, come and tell me your story, I’m all ears…
THE
OF
GOLDEN SCENE
KURZFILM kurzfilm Between 5th and 15th February, we will all be Berliners of the film world. This is when thousands of cinema enthusiasts gather in the city of bears to celebrate the Seventh Art. In Europe, the Berlinale shows the way ahead for a new year. Turn the page to read about the festival’s short film programme and the numerous training and networking opportunities it offers.
A Spot for mirroring the other – an interview with Berlinale Shorts curator maike mia höhne, page 6 The carefully hidden short films of Darren Aronofsky – the president of this year’s Jury has done his share of short film making too, page 9 Making it meaningful by removing it all – an interview with last year’s Golden Bear winner, Caroline Poggi, page 10 Mapping your Mind – or what the Berlinale Shorts directors have drawn for World of Shorts, page 12 “Meeting place and matchmaker” – an interview with Florian Weghorn, programme manager for Berlinale talents, page 28 The Wim takes it all – the short gems of Wim Wenders, page 31 The Talents speak – meet this year’s Berlinale talents participants, page 32 “Leave the film as messy as life is” – an interview with micah magee, returning to the Berlinale with her film Petting Zoo, page 34 WOSH by Daazo.com 5
for mirroring the
interview by Dániel Deák
Creating a spot for films to be seen – that is one of the most important goals for Maike Mia Höhne, the curator of Berlinale Shorts. And what is the connection between these films? She explains the importance of this year’s leitmotif “White Flags Are More Visible”; we also get a glimpse how she works as a curator and a filmmaker.
e programme of the Berlinale Shorts is always well contoured. Like an exhibition which is an artwork in itself. And as an artwork it is personal in a certain way. What is your personal motivation behind this work? My personal motivation is to give the films I love the best spot to be seen – within the context of other films and as the films themselves. A feature film is never in competition with other feature films – there is always a lot of time in between; seeing one and seeing the other. e competition of short films in one programme can be of a very dynamic and powerful dimension. It is a beautiful experience – to speak to one another via the films and of course on stage as well. e whole selection is mirroring the other – one needs the other to be reflected and seen. at’s what we are doing here. Reflecting society through different aesthetic ideas and films. e Berlinale is one of the biggest film events globally. It is good to see that all the Berlinale Shorts screenings have a
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full house. What is the significance of short film in this ecosystem? I guess within the context of the Berlinale, Cannes or Venice, it is really to strike out that young filmmakers are urging to be seen, that established filmmakers are constantly creating and yes, the shorts always have a big audience, thus, are very dynamic and contemporary as a whole. Once you said “all the films contribute to the leitmotif ”. Like “Una ciudad en una ciudad”, or “Say Goodbye to the Story” in past years. What is this year’s leitmotif? …And how the previous ones live further? “Weisse Fahnen sieht man besser” or “White Flags are more visible”. Imagine… is year the lines between fiction and documentary become rather blurry; it is is a strong year for fictional films that go further in very personal approaches towards their own way of storytelling, which can be seen in the films by Christian Bau, or David Muñoz. at’s what
photo by Simone Scardovelli
SPOT OTHER A
Jennifer Reeder does (she will have a focus in Oberhausen this year), as well as Matthew Porterfield.
of the filmmaker’s routes as filmmakers, at the beginning of a film’s career – having such a great audience is a wonderful beginning.
Do you re-watch the previous programmes from time to time?
Maike Mia, the curator and Maike Mia, the filmmaker. Are there any differences?
Of course and yes! All the films accompany me for a long time. Sometimes they pop up again and again. I work a lot – with the programmes and with the single films! I do new programmes through the years, which are interesting to watch as well.
I would say these are two different ways of concentration; being outside or inside of myself. While writing, preparing, editing – I am very close to the material itself, my personal material, my ideas and thoughts – while curating I try to combine the most different approaches and find a common language. I am working with different methods during curating, while curating – always, trying to go beyond the stereotype, the cliché – same goes for my filmmaking. I try to be very accurate in examining a feeling, a moment – the view of two different persons onto a situation. I try to be close to both sides – viewer and filmmaker. And making a film for me is pretty much the same: I try to be very close to a feeling.
e Berlinale is always a kind of a “kick-off ” for the year. Do you follow the films’ aerlife? Which has had the longest journey so far? Very good question – and yes, I do follow the filmmakers but I forget to ask them aer a certain while if their film has been programmed again within the regular festival circuit or not… But yes, I am very close to many of the filmmakers and follow their ways. This year Marcelo Martinessi is back to the festival with his film Karai Norte which was selected for the Berlinale Shorts in 2009. e festival circuit is wonderful, however, it is also important to go back into the process of filmmaking. Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy is now the up-and-coming European filmmaker and I am very happy. In 2009, his shortfilm Diagnosis was selected for the competition, and in 2010, Glukhota (Deafness). In both films his aesthetic ideas and approaches are fully visible and powerful. e Berlinale helped him to set up as a voice in New European cinema and that’s wonderful. at goes without saying, to many of the filmmakers we select here for the Berlinale – not only for Europe, but worldwide. Most importantly, as you say – it is the kick-off at the beginning of the year, at the beginning
I initiated a new selection of films in Hamburg, called KINELAB. It is an open group, anyone working with film in different fields is allowed to participate and curate an evening with shorts, features, or whatever they like. Concerning the selected work, it is important to emphasize the importance of a very open funding system for films – if there is no funding, there will be hardly any films by women over 35 – so we need funding!! Another programme I curate is WOMEN ON FIRE in the GOLEM on Women in Cinema and Life – in front of and behind the camera. My four-year-old son just grabbed my phone’s camera to shoot something. What would be your primary advice to him? 16:9 or 9:16? 9:16!!
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Photo by Niko Tavernise
the CAReFully HiDDen SHORT FilMS oF Darren Aronofsky words by Janka Pozsonyi
is year, the chosen president of the Jury is Darren Aronofsky, one of the most colourful and unique artists of our time. As an acclaimed director of (only) 6 feature films, he has made his mark amongst the biggest and best filmmakers, but, as all the great talents, he had to start somewhere too. As a student at Harvard University, he learned the basics of filmmaking from the greatest filmmakers, and as with every student at a university, he started his career – like all the talents here, at the festival – with short films. His graduation film from 1991 is called Supermarket Sweep. Unfortunately, it is yet to become available to the eager audience. This short film was a finalist for a Student Academy Award, but such success has not given him enough reason to show it to the hardcore fans. He says: "It was just a weird student film. I promise the rest of my filmography will be totally different!" Well, I guess there are some hidden treasures that can’t be shown to the public. It’s a shame though, watching first student films of critically acclaimed directors is super fun, trust me. Supermarket Sweep was not the only gem he made in 1991, he also directed a 30 minute adaptation of a Hubert Selby Jr. short story, called Fortune Cookie. In this story, a salesman finds courage and success through fortune cookies, but he quickly becomes addicted to those lucky sweets, trusting his whole career
on the tiny messages inside. e same writer was an inspiration later on as well, when Aronofsky directed Hubert Selby Jr’s own adaptation of his novel Requiem for a Dream. And just like his first piece of work, Aronofsky hasn’t released this short film or his next one, called Protozoa. Come on Darren, that’s just not fair! But there’s one needle to be found in that haystack of Aronofsky – that’s his short film, called No Time, from 1994. It’s available for every hungry eye, every eager fan out there, through the wonder of the internet. It’s a story of four young people, hanging around, playing all kinds of games and getting into more and more ridiculous situations. 50 shades of comedy are represented very well in just 22 minutes, from slapstick gags, to verbal jokes, to all kinds of situational humour. The film’s title can be read as an ironic goodbye to the short film genre: 4 years after No Time, he turned to feature films with Pi, and never looked back. But there’s hope to be found in his words: “If I was a young storyteller now, I don’t know if I would focus on the dream of a 90-minute film. Storytelling is changing. There’s an opportunity to do a lot of different things. I’m not sure that the most eyes are going to come out of a theatrical release for a dramatic 90-minute feature.” Amen to that, Mr. Aronofsky! WOSH by Daazo.com 9
makinG it MeAningFul By ReMOVing it all interview by Janka Pozsonyi
Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel conquered the world last year at the Berlinale, from where they returned home with a golden Bear for their short ďŹ lm As Long as Shotguns Remain. The thought-provoking story of two brothers is bravely moving on the scale of eternal questions on life and a personal farewell. We asked Caroline about the story, the working process, and the wonderful thrill the Bear gave them last February.
What inspired the story of As Long as Shotguns Remain? Before everything, the story of As Long as Shotguns Remain came from aesthetic desires. We wanted to make a film with two brothers and swimming pools. It was initially feelings that we wanted to transcribe: the feelings of boredom, loneliness and summer holidays in a little village in the south of France. When it's hot, the streets are empty and people hang around in ghost villages. Once we’d had these first ideas, we gradually found our story: a young boy is saying goodbye to his brother. The world in your film feels very isolated, but in a beautiful and interesting way, filled with all kinds of symbols – for example the use of water and the haunting choir music. What was the main meaning/feeling you wanted to depict through the story of these brothers? 10 WOSH by Daazo.com
We wanted to clean the story from every single sign of life which could have had an effect on our protagonists. During shooting and editing we were really anxious to pay tribute to the love we had for our actors and the places where we were shooting. We made sure we removed all trace of life from the film so that the story of the brothers wasn't affected by any external elements (parents, school, jobs, etc). We had a feeling that to make things simple and meaningful, we had to remove them all. For the village to become like a tombstone, we had to remove cars and passers-by. For the actors to become ghosts, we had to take their habits and styles of speech out. With this film, all our work went in the same direction: to try to make things sacred in order to show them differently. Besides the story of your film, the cinematography, the music and the set design all seem really detailed and unique as well.
What is your working process like? What is your next step after the script is finished?
mostly there are economic pressures, public expectations. It's more dangerous, easier to fail. We are writing our first feature film. It's very new for us. We never learned to write a script so it's very long. But, we also just completed a short film. We won't give up this format.
We write a lot by looking at images. That is why we are very slow to write. We hang around a lot on Tumblr, we read a lot of manga, we play video games. We work with this aesthetic galaxy typical for our generation. For the film, we had a very clear idea of the images we wanted. For each scene, we had several related images that allowed us to define the spirit and the atmosphere. We spoke a lot with the DOP about the texture of the image. We also made a storyboard in advance using an iPhone app. In our works, images tell much more than the storyline. Every time when we are asked to explain the narrative, we are very embarrassed because we have the impression that the movie is not so much in its story but more in its feelings emerging from the images.
One year later, we haven’t yet recovered from it. When we saw the selection of the short films for the Berlinale 2015, it gave us a strange feeling. We did not have the impression at all that one year has passed... With the Golden Bear, As Long as Shotguns Remain has travelled a lot. We had the chance to show it in lot of places and to meet people. It gave the film great visibility and a large echo. It was a wonderful experience that will help us to make films.
Do you often work together? How do you divide the tasks when you are making a film?
Check out the trailer of As Long as Shotguns Remain on Daazo.com!
How did you feel when you won the Golden Bear last year?
It was the first time we directed a film together. We don't divide the work, we do everything together. It’s not like one of us works more on the image and the other more with the actors. What does the short film format mean to you? Do you ever feel like making a feature? And if so, would you still be making short films after that? The short film format is very precious for us. It allows us to do weird things, radical aesthetic ideas, less pushed on the narration. It's a perfect place of experimentation. Of course, there are also feature films that do this! But it's not that simple because
Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel receive the Golden Bear Photo © Berlinale
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mapping your mind To illustrate better the relationship between directors and their work, the filmmakers whose short films have been selected for the Berlinale Shorts were asked to draw spontaneously something about their film, using a pencil and a piece of paper – or any other medium they could think of. Anything would do – a symbol, a landscape, fresh and raw, straight from their imagination.
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DäWiT daeWit
An angel, a wolf child, a cat. e film Daewit, animated in the tradition of wood cut technique, tells the story of an abandoned child, who grows up with wolves aer his mother rescued him from his violent father. Aer an enigmatic journey full of privations and in quest for identity he finds his peace in forgiveness.
David Jansen Germany
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BAD AT DAncing
A perpetual third wheel and awkward outsider, Joanna increasingly inserts herself into the relationship of her more charismatic roommate Isabel. The two women test each other’s sexual and emotional boundaries in this surreal dark comedy.
Joanna Arnow USA
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ShADoWLAnD
John Skoog Sweden drawing by Ernst Skoog
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In the film Shadowland images from the Californian landscape pass by at a very slow pace, reminiscent of Scandinavian film noir. Shot on 16mm, the multifarious environment seems to be a place that functions outside the realm of time. Fragments of recognition and memory are resurrected by revisiting locations that have “played� other parts of the world in early Hollywood films. Echoes of classical films are heard within a collage of audio fragments that were once recorded in the Californian landscape.
YúYú
YúYú is based on the true story of a beekeeper who performed an incredible rite of spring in Chongqing China, an area in need to recover its environmental balance. In April 2014 Shé Zuoˇ Bīn attracted millions of bees to his naked body and became a living sculpture. YúYú shows the beekeeper’s journey into a breathtaking trance with nature.
Marc Johnson France
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TAke WhAT You cAn cArrY
A North American living abroad, Lilly aspires to shape an intimate and private place of her own while connecting to the world around her. When she receives a letter from home, it provides the conduit she needs to fuse her transient self with the person she’s always known herself to be.
Matthew PorterďŹ eld USA/Germany
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The MAD hALf hour
î ˘e mad half hour refers to a condition indoor housecats experience once a day. They are expending energy in one concentrated 30-minute burst, without any apparent reason. î ˘e mad half hour cat is usually neurotic...
Leonardo Brzezicki Argentina/Denmark
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SAn criSTóBAL
Lucas is visiting his sister on a remote island in southern Chile before moving abroad. An unlikely romance grows when he meets Antonio, a struggling young fisherman. The intimacy they share makes them navigate towards a new horizon and a different stage of their adulthood.
omar Zúñiga hidalgo Chile
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PeBBLeS AT Your Door
“If we lived in Paradise, we would no longer need hope.� Harmonia lived a happy life in North Korea, but her reality cracks as she learns the truths she never wanted to know. In the end she faces a choice of living in a broken paradise of lies and deception, or treading the unknown, lonely path of the real world outside. Nothing is free, and the struggle to become a whole human being is inhuman. Pebbles at your Door is a film about a woman from the North Korean elite, who faces the reality of her once beloved childhood paradise and the impossible task of healing a life that has been torn from birth.
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LeMBuSurA
A rain of ashes fell in Java Island because of the eruption of Kelud Volcano. Houses, roads, trees were covered by ashes. Some young men came to be aware of the myths about Lembusura Demon, a figure of stealth who lived in the volcano. They believed that the rain of ashes was caused by Lembusura’s anger.
Wregas Bhanuteja Indonesia
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SuPerior
A stranger passing through town sparks a teenage girl’s desire to distinguish herself from her identical twin sister. As one sister struggles to break free, the other insists on preserving their distinctive bond.
erin Vassilopoulos USA
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LA iSLA eSTá encAnTADA con uSTeDeS the iSland iS enChanted With You
In 1511 the Taino people of Puerto Rico seduce and murder a conquistador, in order to test the mortality of their Spanish colonizers. e ensuing rebellion is the first in e New World, and crushed by the Spaniards. In 1803, Doctor Francisco Javier de Balmis, under order of the Spanish Crown, Charles IV, travels to Spanish colonies in the Americas with orphan children. He uses the children as living hosts from which to culture a vaccine for the Small Pox virus. e result is mass vaccination, and the origin of global health initiatives. In 2014, Puerto Ricans play at the waterfalls, cruise ships pass in and out of port, and the island manufactures a vast array of biotech and pharmaceuticals, engendered by the now-expired tax credits established by the United States to improve the economy of the commonwealth.
Alexander carver & Daniel Schmidt USA/Switzerland/Australia 24 WOSH by Daazo.com
Lo SuM choe SuM 3 Year 3 month retreat
Dechen roder Bhutan
The traditional “3 Year 3 Month Retreat” or “Lo-Sum-Choe-Sum” is practiced by Buddhist monks, nuns and other devout practitioners. 3 years, 3 months, and 3 days is calculated as the time needed to achieve a higher state of clarity and motivation. By cutting oneself off from the world, and delving into the inner mind, the retreat is supposed to transform the practitioner. Can Lhamo, a young, wounded girl facing the harsh gaze of the world, find her own form of redemption and retreat?
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of STAinS, ScrAP & TireS
Of Stains, Scrap & Tires is a calm, documentary miniature. The auto export business of three young Nigerians in the Erzberg region is chosen as a point of association and departure for formulating something more fundamental about the first and third worlds, movement and standstill, business, space, and freedom.
Sebastian Brameshuber Austria/France
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PLAneT ĆŠ
On PLANET ∑, giant creatures are trapped inside the ice. Submarine explosions provoke global warming, and a new life begins for animals.
Momoko Seto France
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“MeeTing PlACe and MATCHMAKeR” Florian Weghorn on the 2015 edition of Berlinale Talents interview by Zsuzsanna Deák The 65th Berlinale will be Florian Weghorn’s first in his new position as programme manager for Berlinale Talents. He took over on July 1st, 2014 from Matthijs Wouter Knol. We asked him about the programme’s general direction for the future, the evolution and international spirit of Berlinale Talents, and his visions and goals.
In my work life, Berlin and Berlinale are firmly connected. Only a few weeks aer having moved to the city in 2002, I started working for the festival and it never let me go. Up until 2012 I was part of the Generation team, first as an assistant and since 2008 as the Co-Director and one of the programmers for their film competition dedicated to young audiences. What is your typical workday like? How many different things are you responsible for around the festival and Berlinale Talents? In addition to the office work we spend quite some time in screening rooms or in meetings with our colleagues, partners and filmmakers here in Berlin and abroad as well. I am still amazed about the complexity of this more than 60 years old and still self-renewing organism. What were you looking for when you were choosing the new talents?
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Berlinale Talents is aiming to reach out to emerging film professionals within the fih to tenth year of their career. e Talents need to have at least two short films or a feature length film made to be eligible for the event. While choosing the Talents, we have a decent look at their work to learn more about their individual style and creative abilities. But we are also interested in what the Talents are planning to do next. e future work is where Berlinale Talents can support its participants most. What is the main goal of the talent programme? Berlinale Talents wants to create networks in the broadest understanding of the word. We are not a film school, nevertheless there are around 100 workshops and discussions which offer insight into the latest discourses and technologies of the film world. Gathering 300 promising Talents from over 80 countries and bringing them together with around 100 experts can help both sides meet and elaborate on crucial topics. But it is even more important that people get to know each other and hopefully work together in the future. In that sense,
photo by Peter Himsel
Please tell us about yourself – what did you do before you started your new activity at the Berlinale Talents?
Berlinale Talents sees itself as a meeting place and a matchmaker in the ever-changing, global film community and industry. Will you continue to work closely with Matthijs Wouter Knol, the former head of programme in the future, who is now director of the European Film Market? Of course we will! When I started in the festival section, Matthijs had always been a great partner and colleague to work with. Now having him as a collaborator and friend at the European Film Market has once again strengthened the connections between our departments. Last year for the first time, Berlinale Talents had a "Market Hub" on the premises of the EFM. We are back with it this year, as it has become a landmark and vibrant meeting place for both our Talents and the industry. Are there any changes at Berlinale Talents you look forward to? I am happy to enjoy Berlinale Talents as it is. But as the initiative is part of the ever-changing film world we are adjusting our own structures permanently. This year we are going to start with a new Camera Studio, which was shaped out of our well established Postproduction Studio. Although the processes of digital post-production will remain an important part of the curriculum, the new studio offers us opportunities to focus more on the impact that these technologies have e.g. on the role of the cinematographer and other creative people involved in the visual storytelling. What makes Berlinale Talents different to other talent programmes? Probably the most obvious difference is that we are part of the Berlinale as well as the EFM
which offers dozens of possibilities for the Talents and us to get firmly connected. This year again, more than 75 former Talents return to the festival programmes with a film, and many others are coming back to work here at the market, as film critics or simply to enjoy and discuss the latest films. Many of them still know each other and have started projects together. is huge group of alumni, plus the international network of 5,000 other former participants, make Berlinale Talents a quite unique initiative worldwide. Please tell me about the international aspect of the Berlinale Talents – what happened last year and what changes are about to happen in the future? With its heart still in Berlin, Berlinale Talents has six international initiatives: in Guadalajara; in Buenos Aires; in Durban; in Sarajevo; in Beirut and in Tokyo. Each of these events looks totally different and is shaped in full accordance to the needs of the local filmmakers in the respective regions. What is it that has delighted you and what has shocked you the most since you started with the Berlinale Talents? I myself have learned a lot about filmmaking and about the people behind it in these last six months in the new job. is year's focus for Berlinale Talents is "2015: A Space Discovery". You can imagine me on this discovery trip right now, travelling on some bumpy roads but enjoying many views along the way. How would you describe the philosophy behind the Berlinale Talents in three words? Here we go!
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The Wim takes it all – the short gems of the german genius words by Janka Pozsonyi photo by Donata Wenders This year’s Honorary golden Bear goes to... Mr. Wim Wenders! His glorious triumph as a filmmaker/writer/photographer made him well known around the whole world, from Paris to Texas, from the earth to the Sky Above Berlin. We like to focus on the shorts business, as you know, so we thought it would be a great way to honour him in our way, summing up his colourful work as a short film director.
• He made his first short films in 1967, called Scenes (Schauplätze) and Same Player Shoots Again. Scenes got lost, except the last two shots of it, which became the first shots of Same Player Shoots Again. • Same Player Shoots Again is created of one three-minute shot, repeated five times, always in a different colour. The film’s structure is inspired by the 5 (now 3) round game of a pinball machine. • His next short was Silver City from 1968, which he shot from the 3rd, 4th and 5th floor of the building he lived in at the time. It’s made out of 8 extremely long shots of the nights and days of the streets, crossings and the turning lights. There’s a little hint of a possible story in the beginning, but it goes away as quickly as it can. • In the same year, he made a short film called Police Film (Polizeifilm) about the policemen in Munich, dealing with the students of the 1968 student rebellion. The director declared that it has the comedy of a Laurel and Hardy film while being very political at the same time. We believe him. • He turned from the police towards music in Alabama: 2000 Light Years from Home. In a press conference in Cannes he said:
“It’s about the song All Along e Watchtower, and the film is about what happens and what changes depending on whether the song is sung by Bob Dylan or by Jimi Hendrix.” • In Alabama... he was working with the cinematographer Robbie Müller for the first time, and they have been working together on all of his films ever since. • His last short film before he made his first feature was 3 American LPs, from 1969. It is the story of American music, the story of 3 LPs: a song from Van Morrison, Harvey Mandel and one from the Creedance Clearwater Revival. • Wenders made his next short film in 1992, with the title Arisha, the Bear and the Stone Ring. And yes, the story of this short is just as strange as the title of it. • Besides a few commercials (which are truly great, but we don’t want to sneak in some hidden advertisement here) and a few short documentaries, he’s almost entirely focusing on features now. But as he will walk upon that stage to receive his Honorary Golden Bear, we will definitely make a mental note of his early short films – he wouldn’t be standing here without these hidden gems, for sure. WOSH by Daazo.com 31
THETALENTSSPEAK Berlinale Talents is one of the most exciting hubs in the world for emerging film professionals. We asked four of this year’s participants to tell about themselves and about their plans and expectations. compiled by Zsuzsanna Deák
liAnA AVeTiSyAn – actor (Armenia)
WHYIAPPLIED?
“Why I applied? It's the city of Berlin, it's the Berlin International Film Festival, it's film professionals, meetings, workshops, and it's 300 crazy people gathering together, so what could actually keep me from applying to Berlinale Talents? I had an unforgettable experience of being a Talent at the Sarajevo Talent Campus 2013 (still called Talent Campus then) and so I thought – it's time for Berlin now!”
“I look forward to meeting festival participants, all the guests, organizers and staff members, journalists, film professionals, fellow Talents, my amazing HFAS LA (Howard Fine Acting Studio, Los Angeles) teachers Jean-Louis Rodrigue and Kristof Konrad, and Darren Aronofsky!”
“I wish I had already done preparations... Unfortunately not yet, all the fuss and panic starts on the last few days... But I do have a "showreel" (both camera and stage) and "new business cards" on my to-do list. You want people you meet with to remember you and have a better understanding of your way of working, that's what showreels are for, I think. So I am doing my best to come to Berlin fully prepared!”
MAx SeRDiuK – producer (Ukraine) “I hope I wasn’t chosen because I come from Ukraine which is a popular news provider at the moment. I don’t know why I was chosen. Maybe because during of filling out the Berlinale Talents application form at first I gave an answers for myself: I was trying to understand who I am as a film professional and what is conducting me in this profession. Actually I’m grateful to Berlinale Talents for their sharp questions! Or maybe I was chosen because of the strong (as I think) work excerpt I provided – a video which was not too easy to shoot. So, I would like to know the answer as well.” “My goal at the the Berlinale is to find partners and co-producers, and to talk to distributors about my film project. I’ll try to be open to everyone. I’m looking for like-minded people.”
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“My plans for aer the Berlinale: first, to finish my film project, Tank. Also, I want to change some things in myself because in my profession I need to make the next step. In order to grow I need to be able to accept new ideas, to obtain a new way of thinking. I hope that my participation in Berlinale Talents will help me to make all this happen.”
BRADley lieW – director (Malaysia) “I feel that perhaps my unconventional career decision in moving from Malaysia to the Philippines to work and learn from the vibrant independent film industry played a part in my selection. I believe that my strength is that this has allowed me to look and dream of the world from a regional perspective, not being confined to ideas and views from just my own country.” “I hope to be able to take the knowledge gained from the programme and implement it into my first feature Awit Ng Puntod (Singing in Graveyards) which I'm planning to shoot in August.”
“I hope to be able to meet like-minded and passionate young filmmakers who could become future collaborators. I would also like to meet more festival programmers, especially from the Asian and African regions.”
JAlAl MAgHOuT – animation director (Syria) “I applied to Berlinale Talents because I wanted to meet professionals in my field, which is made strongly possible by the Berlinale Talents programme through a plenty of meetings, master classes, labs and all other activities. at would add an extra value to my experience. In addition, as I’ve been living and studying for a short time in Berlin, it’s very important for me to discover the cinema scene in this city through one of the most important festivals of the world.” “I want to discuss my upcoming projects with professionals, especially that I am a screenplay writer as well that requires me to search for experts and colleagues and discuss with them to improve and empower my experience. I would also like to know more about distribution and documentaries because I have a new experience in animated documentary films. erefore Berlinale Talents would be a great chance to attend the masterclasses and all the other events that would offer me a new and advanced experience as an independent filmmaker, and would give me the possibility to build a professional network for future projects.”
“Right now I’m at the very beginning of two short film projects. Both have psychological themes, and maybe the Berlinale might give me new artistic and industrial perspectives of those projects. I hope to find experts who could contribute to them: by getting involved in the production or by giving me tips, or indirectly, by inspiring me through their artistic views.”
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BeRlinAle TAlenTS – SuCCeSS STORy
“leAVe THe FilM aS MeSSy aS liFe iS” interview by Zsuzsanna Deák Micah Magee participated at the Berlinale Talent campus (now Berlinale Talents) in the Script Station in 2011 with her project Petting Zoo.The film will be screened in the Panorama section of the Berlinale this year. i asked Micah about her experiences at the Talent campus, her filmmaking challenges and her love for the city of Berlin.
When did you participate at the Berlinale Talents and what was your project? Could you tell me about your experience? Petting Zoo participated in the Script Station back in 2011. We had a wonderful group of people in my Script Station year. It was a real eye-opener to see how much our themes and concerns intersected, even though we were working on stories from all corners of the globe. The most valuable part of the experience was the safe environment the programme as a whole built for us to be able to share our stories with each other and become long-lasting friends in such a short period of time. Petting Zoo, the film you developed there has now been selected for the Panorama section of the Berlinale. Yes! We are absolutely thrilled and excited to present Petting Zoo at the ZOO Palast, which (in addition to the lovely name) is one of the most beautiful cinemas in the whole world. Our lead actress Devon Keller, who has never been in Europe before, will be in Berlin all week, so we are stoked to show her the city. And maybe meet James Franco! Fingers crossed! e Panorama programme looks amazing. What was the greatest challenge you encountered during the realisation of the film? 34 WOSH by Daazo.com
e biggest challenge (rattlesnakes, fire ants and sunstroke aside) was communication. Your film is the sum of everything you put into it – so if you want your film to be honest, you have to fight for the construction of the film to be honest and straightforward too. What did the Berlinale Talent Campus give to you - any artistic or practical knowledge you never had the chance to find elsewhere before? My mentor at the Script Station, Gyula Gazdag, was a fantastic and plain-spoken gentleman. From him I took courage to leave the film as messy as life is and not to try to make it fit or be neat in a pre-formed dramatic structure. What would your advice be to a young and enthusiastic filmmaker with a good film plan? My experience has been that there is a certain threshold one has to cross for oneself, where you know you are going to make the film no matter what - without any “if…then” considerations. For us, this was living in the back of a church in downtown San Antonio, ready to shoot the film on food stamps if funding didn’t come through. I don’t know if things have to get that desperate for everyone – I sort of hope not – but I think until you have reached
this point of no return, you don’t have the complete conviction to convince other people to fully join you and make the project bigger and more beautiful and professional. But once you reach that point inside yourself, you find help from all kinds of places you never imagined. Did you meet anyone in Berlin who became a collaborator on this project? Yes! This is in fact a Berlin film, even if it doesn’t look like one. I went to grad school in Berlin at the DFFB (Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin), so about half of my tried and true film crew were Berliners who braved a Texas summer. Our main producers and excellent sales agent THE MATCH FACTORY are Cologne-based with an office in Berlin. Medienboad Berlin Brandenburg supported the film and we are very thankful to Kirsten Neihuus and to Anja Doerken who had faith in the project from the start and accompanied the long post process. Also, we did our mix at the DFFB and will be grading Petting Zoo at ARRI Berlin – a beautiful old family company that laid the early foundation for cinema to grow and thrive and continues to do so. So there are a lot of Berlin connections. What does Berlin mean to you as a city and as an artistic hub for filmmakers? Berlin has room to disappear, to reappear, to try things out. It’s a great place to shoot because of the pool of talent who live here and the range of locations. Because it is such an international city, people are used to working across cultures. And Berlin has fantastic post opportunities – you’ll find a lot of start-ups for sound, colour, music and visual effects doing wonderful, high quality work at competitive prices – Neuton, Omgraphix, Zentralnorden, Alias, e Post Republic, to name a few…
What is your view on short film as a format? Would you ever go back and make shorts or do you want to concentrate on feature films in the future? My first real cinema education was as programming and managing director of Cinematexas International Short Film Festival in Austin, Texas, when it was helmed by Athina Rachel Tsangari (one of the producers on Petting Zoo). Having watched thousands of mindbending short films for that festival, I have to say that the short format is really its own distinct form and an end in itself. You would not confuse short prose or poetry with long fiction – or belittle the work of a poet as a sketch for a possible novel. So I wouldn’t like to write off shorts as “practice” for feature films. Mostly the story defines the form. For some time I have been brainstorming a project with the Shenandoah sisters in Oneida, New York, about the conflicts between tribal capitalism and traditionalist Iroquois philosophy – the stories for this project are so layered that we are still searching for the fitting format – maybe a feature, maybe series, maybe something totally new. This can’t be a short. But I would love to have the opportunity to make another short, and that might happen before the more complicated story can find its way out.
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STORYTELLING You have a story. A really good one. how do you transform that into a perfectly working script that gives back exactly what you imagined? how do you put your thoughts into words? And how can you make your narrative even better, after the first draft of your script is done? Writing the perfect story is a long journey. We talk to some experts in this area who can guide your through the labyrinth of storytelling.
où est charlie? – or your responsibility as a storyteller, as defined by Wim Vanacker, page 38 Staying loyal to the story – and forgetting about yourself – three torino Film lab story editing workshop alumni talk about their work, page 40 Trust and candour – anita Voorham explains how to make script editing successful, page 44 cross-media – forget about it – matija radeljak on the changing forms of storytelling, page 46 The journey of developing a story – nele Fritzsche, the Curator of interForum on how to take a script to perfection, page 48 Storytelling with music – the wonders of howard Shore, page 51 Bunny: short and long alike, it’s a killer – filmmaker Joonas makkonen on developing a short film into a feature, page 52 Transmedia – yes, it works and it’s also on your TV! – a case study of interactive storytelling, page 56
Où est – OR HOW TO unCOVeR AnD ReSPeCT yOuR OWn inneR CHARlie words by Wim Vanacker
“What is the most important thing you could be working on, in the world right now, and if you’re not working on that, why aren’t you?” A statement made by Aaron Swartz, a hacktivist the world got to know through the documentary The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz and a very valid question in the context of filmmaking today as we tend to forget we have a responsibility as well. Look at Paris and the Charlie Hebdo massacre. All of a sudden the entire world rose to its feet to proclaim the importance of freedom of speech and to create their own counter narrative. Something to be admired. The people rose up, out of disgust, helplessness, sympathy or solidarity and caused an, although silent, uproar. We overcame this brutal slap in the face because everyone made themselves the hero of their own story. Everyone took it as their responsibility to join in and to save this crucial freedom.
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There was a battle going on and they threw themselves into it. They were standing in the middle of a time where great injustice happened and they did whatever they could think of to do. ey didn’t stop to ask anyone for permission, nor did they get caught up in the politics of fear and anger, as all of a sudden their personal quest became a collective one and making a statement became primordial. All of a sudden the world, or at least Western Europe, stood for something. It did take very radical measures to get there, but change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through continues struggle. And this was definitely a step in the right direction. But fighting for freedom of speech is one thing; actually having something to say is another. And that’s where filmmaking comes in. After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world. And apparently, that’s what we filmmakers are good at.
We have a voice and a platform so better make good use of it. We belong in the world, not out of it. So may this serve as a reminder that we have a responsibility to make an impact, however small, and to aim for change, be it personal or on a more global scale. We all have a Martin Luther King Jr. inside of us. We all have a dream. I’m not saying everybody needs to become a martyr, like Theo Van Gogh, or Jafar Panahi, but own your story and make it personal. Pick a fight and stand by it. Turn it into a matter of life and death to you. It’s easy sometimes to feel like you’re powerless. Especially when fighting the big, bad funding wheel of fortune. But rest assured, you are powerful. It’s easy at times to feel like you’re not being listened to,
but you are. You are being listened to. You are making a difference. Because, one day, you will make a film and tell a story that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. at film will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it. at is our role, our gi, as filmmakers. Because if we let them persuade us we don’t actually make a difference, if we start seeing it as someone else’s responsibility to share opinions and do the job, we might as well just to go home and pop some popcorn and curl up on the couch to watch the latest Hollywood blockbuster. It’s up to you, dear filmmakers, but next time around, well, they might just win. Let’s remember Charlie and not let that happen.
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STAYING loyal staying to TO the THE story AnD FORgeTTing ABOuT yOuRSelF interview by Zsuzsanna Deák Story editors are the unsung heroes of films: they stay in the background but their contribution to the script and story is crucial. We talked to three alumni of the Torino film Lab story editing workshop about their work: creativity, listening, being a team player and putting one’s ego aside.
BRiTTA KRAuSe Britta Krause studied filmmaking at NYU and the London Film School. After having worked as a writer and director since 1996, she now directs commercials and works as a freelance story editor out of Berlin. AnnA guDKOVA Anna Gudkova has a degree in German History, but while in her third year at university she realised that cinema was to become her main passion in life. In 2003, she started working for Profit Production Company. Since 2008, Anna’s main project has been the Kultburo Educational Centre, where she is Head of Studies and Curator of Pitching at Kinotavr Film Festival.
ARiADnA VAzquez Ariadna started her career as a Development Executive at Vértice Films, a Spanish independent film production company. In recent years, she has worked as script consultant and story developer for documentaries and transmedia projects.
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What is story editing and why is it important when you make a short film? Britta: Story editing to me is a holistic process. It does not only require the obvious such as the knowledge of storytelling and analytical skills, but also the ability to connect with a writer in the sense that you become deeply familiar with their intentions. Story editing requires you to act as audience, a good listener and a constructive critic, sometimes as a protector of the material and as a source of inspiration. Collaborating with a story editor on your short film script will be tremendously helpful in expressing your individual ideas in a way that will make them accessible to your audience. Anna: In the company where I started, the role of the editor was to come up with an idea for a new movie, to find writers to implement this idea, and to supervise the project from the first vague outline to the end credits. e essence of the editor’s work in the film is a perpetual study of new languages, in the broadest meaning of the word. Every director or writer has his own special language. And it is because of that quality that what we see on the screen looks distinctive and unique. Ariadna: Story editing consists of accompanying writers and directors along the script development process. It has a lot to do with helping authors find the deep core of their projects and assist them in building their stories in the best possible way. It is important in the making of a short film because it can help filmmakers discover essential storytelling tools that will enable them to deliver consistent and meaningful stories. Also, story editing can contribute to something which is crucial for any film but even more for short films: creating an emotional connection with the audience. What are the things you have to be careful about in story editing? Britta: e number one prerequisite is that you are in tune with the writer/director. Anna: First of all I’d say that a story editor is not a writer and has to resist to any temptation to replace the author of the script. e best way of collaboration with the writer is to ask lots of questions so the author can find the exact answers, to feel all the subtleties and nuances in their own plot and characters. As a script editor you also have to understand that your work will “die” in the final version of the text or film – and nobody will know what your personal discovery or contribution is in the development of the story. Ariadna: Story editors always bear in mind that our task
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is not giving solutions to the writers. Our work consists of mirroring, evaluating and giving the information writers need to make their own choices. We all have opinions and tastes but, as story editors, we have to put them aside. What truly matters is helping authors find their own way and guiding them to the place they want. Of course, we can make suggestions but we cannot block writers’ ideas and push ours. Can you tell me about your experience at the Torino Film Lab? Britta: The most important part of the training is participating in the group sessions. Usually there are 3 to 5 writers/directors in each group led by a tutor/story editor. Each project is then reviewed, its problems analyzed and solution schemes are developed together. is works amazingly well and because there are 5-7 heads involved, a lot of valuable input can arise from these sessions. Anna: Mostly it was a very intimate interaction within the group of writers/directors with our brilliant and outstanding tutor, Marietta von Hausswolf. e whole group was so passionate and eager to share everything about our life experiences and personal or professional knowledge to make the colleague’s project better, deeper and stronger.I still remember this feeling of being close and helpful – and in the end, really useful to each other. I believe that working in a small group, when there’s a kind of collective brain, is really one of the most effective ways to discover your story and yourself, to overcome some painful problems and to become a real master of your project. Ariadna: As a story editor trainee, I was able to participate in the script development of the four projects of the group I was assigned to, always under the supervision of a tutor. ere was an excellent work environment that enhanced creativity. At the end of the last workshop, I remember looking back and realizing how positive the evolution of the projects I was involved with had been. 42 WOSH by Daazo.com
What was the most crucial message of the training? Britta: Watch, read, observe, discuss - as a story editor you should expose yourself to the world of storytelling and those who deal with it as much as possible. Anna: Filmmaking is a group work. Sharing is happiness. Forget yourself and care about the script. And – you never know… Ariadna: Sometimes story editors must help writers find the truths of their projects. Other times, story editors have to help writers to not lose during the scriptwriting process the truths they have already found. What would you advise to a young filmmaker unfamiliar with the work of the story editor? Britta: As a young filmmaker chances are that you will profit a great deal from working with a script editor. Maybe look at your last film and review the reactions including your own - if you feel that you did not really manage to take your story to where you initially wanted it to go, or that your audience just did not really get it then you should definitely give it a try. Anna: Find the right person. It’s a precious chance – to have someone who will be there for you during the whole period of your film’s realization. Learn to trust. Learn to listen – to yourself and to the other person. Learn to be very sincere – first of all to yourself. Be honest and answer the unpleasant and painful questions – but this is exactly what will make your film perfect and outstanding. Ariadna: Young filmmakers are expected to be able to tell a consistent story and do it in their own particular way in order to prove that they have a unique vision. It is, indeed, a big challenge. Story editing can help young filmmakers discover what is most valuable in their projects and guide them to reinforce it along the script development process, which can be complex, distressing but exciting at the same time.
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TRuST and CAnDOuR – or how to make script editing successful? words by Anita Voorham
Developing screenplays is a joyful paradox to me on many levels. First and foremost script editing is not really about the script, it is about helping the filmmaker connect as completely as possible to his or her story in a way that it will help them make the many practical and creative decisions they have to make until the film reaches its audience. The script is never the final aim, it will vanish.
As with any creative collaboration, intuition is as important as experience, and trust and candour are crucial. Without candour there cannot be any trust and without trust there cannot be any creative collaboration. e reasons for the meeting should also be openly acknowledged, who hired the script editor and with what intentions? Aer all we’re in a film industry, not a playground. When meeting a filmmaker and project, it is important to get on the same page first (pun intended), secondly to assess strengths and weaknesses, and finally to seek directions for further development. Usually I start by reflecting back to the filmmaker how I understood the project. is is where preparation and candour are crucial and misinterpretations on my part are easily discovered. For me it works well if I can listen to the filmmaker, so I will ask a lot of questions during this first phase. While investigating the project together, the strengths and weaknesses of the filmmaker will emerge. Some are strong on character psychology but not on structure, others are great with dialogue but not visuals. I try to complement their weaker side, while trusting
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in their strengths. It is important to keep checking if your language and use of terminology are connecting with the filmmaker. Give everyone time to think, coffee breaks can be really helpful. roughout the meetings, another paradox is useful: less is more. e less I do or say, the more the filmmaker can do and discover himself. When a solution is found and you know that implementing this solution will result in other necessary changes, do not mention those. e crux is prioritizing changes. It is perfectly okay to offer your own solutions, just don’t insist on them. A lot of people respond better to concrete ideas than abstract analysis. Besides, most filmmakers find it a relief to know their story editor has ideas that suck as well. Developing a screenplay is generally a lonely business of second-guessing yourself and hating what you wrote yesterday. e aim for every meeting is to have filmmaker come out it with energy, inspiration and confidence to tackle the next stages of development. e author is a freelance script consultant for films and TV series. She works as a Script & Pitch tutor at the Torino Film Lab.
CROSS-MeDiA ForGet aBout it words by Matija Radeljak
Film in its now truly century-old form is still the ultimate form of entertainment globally, as well as the strongest cultural exchange and information tool. However it is also quite obvious that this form is slowly changing with available options of participation, co-creation, interaction and generally audience based in-content decision making.
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e idea is not so strange when you remember that after the commercial explosion of film worldwide the audience has quickly settled within a certain film genre and always took on the option of choosing its content individually. And while making a film today, with all the technology making it truly accessible to everyone, is still a challenging task, best mirrored in the fact that the overall number of success and remembrance didn’t increase with increase in production, options like “cross-media”, “transmedia”, “multi-platform” seem like only a hassle and an additional weight that doesn’t really make much sense at first. is is where terminology gets in the way of creation, as it makes people trying to understand something that doesn’t necessarily interest them, and they will waste time on it instead of following their original goal, whatever that goal was. For this reason I believe we should distinguish between those terms and understand what it is that we are trained to do, should do, have the option to do and finally actually want to do. With 100 years of tradition within one industry mixing with something completely new and unexplored, it is very easy to grope around in the darkness of authorship, formats and (un)successful productions. Until now, it didn’t really matter if you’re a storyteller or a filmmaker or an undefined visual author, it was simply a kind of a style, a genre that the viewer would accept from any given content. Now those differences are elementary as the values embedded in each of those differences are demanded in completely different circumstances. For this reason those who actually want to make films, not because they’re classical but because this is something they
know and love to do, are all of a sudden told that films are actually something else, while at the same time people with other interests are faced with walls of traditional value chains of the audiovisual industry. To avoid that we need to embrace a few facts: • Film as we know it will always be here as an option, but most probably will not be the primary form of entertainment. • Consequently the film format will lose its influence and thus sustainability. While production is cheaper each day, sentimental cultural arguments are weaker. • Making films will always be a professional option. • Storytellers will always be storytellers. With all that in mind it is only a question of time when the changes become the reality and simply put the more prepared we are the less we will lose in the transition. Generations born today will most probably enjoy their best years with entertainment systems such as fullparticipative holodecks. To think of how to write a 3-hour “holodeck film” in which the audience has full power of interaction with your story and the environment is a mindblowing idea by itself worth 20 or 30 years of evolution for sure. Cross-media is an idea, a term used to describe a period we currently live in, I’d say, looking from the narrow audiovisual perspective of the world. It is a period that enables us to communicate our stories with people who would have never been touched by them, as much as Shakespeare’s masterpieces were unreachable to anyone who couldn’t read until the 20th century. Today, not only is the percentage of people who can read Shakespeare bigger, but delivery methods and “formats” are adaptive, simple, quick and cheap. And, as much as we shouldn’t, our financiers or audiences will never care about the fact our
project is “cross-media”. Why should they? e only way an audience can see a project is in the form of what they get or don’t get. Of course, there are audiences who will do their own grunt work to extend their loving experience, but those are what we call early adopters or fans, those users who seek a very specific story right now, and it is a completely different question of how to approach them. ose audiences who bring actual value the financiers are looking for are 90% of any given market and they approach a story, a format or a medium bluntly and with no expectations whatsoever. If your story attracts them, it is the end of the thought, and aer summing-up those ended thoughts you can bring a concrete proposal to your investor. Let us not forget that 95% of the world population sees our work as nothing else but entertainment, oen cheap and easily replaceable. Just today it took me exactly 3 seconds of a weather app not working to uninstall it and find a better one, and this was after 6 full months of satisfied usage. How can you not think about extending your story while having such a broad choice of content and usable formats, knowing there are people who know how to paint, write, perform or film video art, and are willing to, all the time, more and more, without stopping? How long do you think about un-subscribing yourself from a page that shares something you find inappropriate? Options that we have at our disposal are overwhelming and have only started to develop. Only a few thousand euros worth of equipment is enough to create a sequence that measures up to the biggest Hollywood productions and where communication with the audience is constant. In that jungle of ideas, exchange and worldwide connectivity it is much too arbitrary to try to think outside the box – we live outside the box. And there it is only up to our own willpower to imagine the tangible, to reach the imaginable. Today, truly no other obstacle exists. WOSH by Daazo.com 47
THE JOURNEY OF DeVelOPing A
STORY
words by Nele Fritzsche image by Manja Lekic´
The 65th Berlinale is just ahead. you sense
that there is something in the wind – an excitement of yet another festival with films of all kinds. every one of them capturing a story, glimpsing a life which someone felt should be told and shown. But how are they getting on their way? How are they developed? Which stations are they passing, which challenges are they facing during their journey to become a finished film screened at cinemas?
As a curator for The International Short Film Festival interfilm Berlin and head of interForum, the platform for short film including the international Script Pitch, I watch a great number of short films and read plenty of scripts for shorts. Instead of being able to give an insight into the writing of a story, I am sharing my experiences from the perspective of a festival offering the elaboration and revision of stories. At interForum, I experience the refining of scripts in the context of labs, pitches and talks. Unlike feature films, shorts tell their story in just a couple of minutes. The time to narrate is very limited. us, the dramatic composition of short films becomes crucial – in addition to a never ending enthusiasm for the idea just as in all art forms. 48 WOSH by Daazo.com
With its international competition for scripts of short films, the interfilm Festival offers a lab to work on the development of scripts at a very early stage. Applicants to the Script Pitch send in an abstract which summarizes their story in just a few lines. This requires a fundamental knowledge of their script. One has to be confident of both narrative and structural aspects of the story to be able to put it in a nutshell. In short summaries, one can feel quite rapidly if the writer really knows the story, its twists, the high points, the overall atmosphere. However, the dramatic composition is not at all bound to any classical format or fixed frame. Short film as such offers a great possibility to experiment with story telling. The narrative form chosen by the filmmaker shapes the film. It can be anything from classical hero journey to fragmented essay, but there has to be a driving idea holding everything together, a vision that is building the core of the story. Moreover, short stories and short films claim
the practice of “essence writing� which I would recommend to everyone who would like to write. One has simply not enough time to get lost, to escape in side stories, to get stuck in details. Shorts will always crave a concentration on only some threads and motifs. The most difficult and at the same time the most fruitful skill in creating a strong story is the ability to make decisions. During the process of free writing and story development, feedback can be one of the most valuable ways to work further on both narration and structure. Labs and pitches are one way to confront other writers, filmmakers and professionals with a new script in order to observe their reaction. The very intense work on the story, constant feedback and self-criticism can be confusing and very
challenging. Thus, participating in a lab as one station on the journey of creating a story should be at a point when one feels ready to get the story out. Out of respect for one's own story one should be sure of the questions: What do I want to tell and which step on my way to a finished story am I taking? As the essence of good writing is rewriting, labs offer new input and inspiration for rethinking the story, for developing it further or giving it the finishing touch. As soon as one is ready, a get-together with other creative writers can be inspiring, enlightening and motivating.
(The author is the Curator and Head of interForum & Script Pitch at the International Short Film Festival Berlin.)
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STORyTelling WiTH MuSiC the WonderS oF hoWard Shore words by Janka Pozsonyi “A lot of what a composer does has to do with storytelling, and there are different ways of fusing music with picture to express different storytelling ideas.” These are the wise words of Howard Shore, the 3-time Oscar, and 4-time grammy award winning composer, a true mastermind and an expert invited to this year’s Berlinale Talents. Composing for David Cronenberg, Martin Scorsese, Tim Burton and Peter Jackson, he certainly knows how to complement and embellish a film with an original score.
Besides defining the general mood of the film, a great soundtrack can also emphasize the genre and assist in the development of the characters. Listening to his music for the Lord of the Rings trilogy really reveals how he underscores each one of the characters (and as we know, there’s a great bunch of them up there) with different sets of instruments, notes and voices. People who haven’t read the trilogy of J.R.R. Tolkien can easily separate the different kinds of mystical and magical creatures on the screen by listening to their very own music in the background. 4 years of hard work in recording resulted in 11 hours of music, working side-by-side with the director the whole time. Talk about commitment! But it is not just the hobbits and trolls that got a piece of his musical attention throughout the years of composing – one of his regular collaborators is the great David Cronenberg, who has brought the picture to his sound (and vice versa) 9 times up to now. Together, they work around the edges, or as they call it, the fringes of the frame. ey use the music to add depth and subtext to the stories. It’s not exactly the same process as creating the music for Peter Jackson’s trilogy, which was grounded
in an established literary text; with an original screenplay, the two masterminds can truly add new elements to the stories and additional layers to the characters. Here’s Shore on composing: “A film is very collaborative, tremendously collaborative art and the beginning is always the word, and the book and the expression. The music of the film really begins with the idea of the story. With the directors of the films I work with, we always start with the book. (…) I do research on all the films that I work on. In a way it’s kind of a fun thing to do. You have stacks of books and records and movies, you’ve watched all this stuff for months and months and then you put it all away. You never really bring it out again. Because what you want to do is to have true expression about the subject that you’re writing about." (www.festival-cannes.com)
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Bunny
words by Joonas Makkonen
Short and lonG alike,
iT’S A KilleR The award-winning Finnish filmmaker, Joonas Makkonen made his short Bunny the Killer Thing back in 2010 – and it turned out to be perfect material for a feature film. in this report, the director tells about the process that lead from short to long.
It was the summer holiday 2010 when I was filming the short film Bunny the Killer ing in Finland’s Lapland with my fellow film student friends. Bunny the Killer Thing was written and directed by me, and made with an extremely small budget, involving a small cast & crew. It was mostly filmed by daylight (and using the midnight sun’s light).e Bunny film was an uncomfortable 17-minute horrorcomedy/splatter/exploitation film about a creature which is half human, half rabbit, haunting anything which resembles female genitals in any way. Oh, and it has a big penis. Bunny’s “WTF concept” found its audience, and the film became a small cult film all over the internet and especially in Finland. For us filmmakers, it felt like there was a lot of potential to make a feature film from this silly idea.
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After the completion of the short film, it started to become obvious to me that one day, I would come back to Bunny again, but this time as a feature film. I knew, however, that I would need much more resources than I had with the short film. Bunny the short film was made with an extremely low budget and in five filming days. It was easy to see that you can’t really make a feature film in that way. For a feature there would be at least 30 filming days, which means I would need a bigger budget, about 50 people involved and more resources and time. In the autumn of 2012 I met the Finnish independent film producer Miika J. Norvanto, with whom I instantly found a common ground as a filmmaker and as a human being. We saw the same potential in the Bunny concept. We both thought that this could be the next big Finnish cult classic. No-one had made anything like this in Finland. I feel that Finland is still quite a conservative filmmaking country, but the audience is omnivore and open-minded. Hopefully, Bunny will open more doors for other filmmakers, like for example the so-called Finnish genre filmmakers. When we made the short film, it was a pressurefree experience, something we made just for
fun and because we wanted to create a different, strong and crazy genre film. We had no real plans for distribution. But it was obvious that we can’t make a feature film without thinking more far ahead than just the script writing process. From the first moment, our goal was to have the film distributed outside of Finland. The producer worked as a dramaturg in my screenwriting process. When we started to develop the storyline for the feature, he did some research with foreign distributors. He found out what would be good elements to use in the film, to make its distribution easier. To make the film more tempting for potential distributors, we decided to make the film mainly in English, and shoot it in the winter time with snow on the ground. Finland’s winter and the English language were working actually pretty well with the Bunny concept. The short film was happening in the summertime, and its story followed four Finnish youngsters and their last moments in Bunny’s forest. In the feature, the main plot included a group of Finnish and British young adults partying in a cabin located in the distant woods of Finland. All of this was happening in the middle of the snow-covered winter, of course.
The party got a big twist when the Bunny creature attacked the group. Aer the first script versions of Bunny feature, I noticed that the biggest problem with the story was that the film would not work by only focusing on Bunny the Killer ing itself. The short film might have worked as a onejoke-film, but with the feature I could not count on showing a pussy-thirsty giant rabbithuman-creature only, doing its own thing. So I started to wonder what would be the theme with the whole film. Bunny was a horny sexual creature, and that inspired me to write the human characters as well to represent several different features of the sexuality of humans. It felt a very natural way to go on with the story. So, eventually, the film became fully loaded with sexuality, and it raises the film’s exploitation-entertainment value but it also numbs you. And I felt that it’s a way to highlight my theme. In the storyline there are moments when you need to consider whether Bunny really is the most evil character of the film aer all. e screenwriting process with the feature was a much longer journey compared to the short
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poster by Simo Räsänen
film’s writing process. I wrote 11 versions of the feature’s screenplay, when with the short film I did about five versions. With the short film’s script, the changes between the versions were quite small. But with the feature, the first three versions were like a different film compared to number 4 which was the first version that actually started to look like the actual film we eventually made. I wanted to write the first versions of the script without a very specific treatment, so that I could find the best structure by writing. is is not the way film schools teach to scriptwriters, but for me it was a conscious decision to start writing my first professional feature film. Aer the first three versions, I found the storyline which I thought would be most suitable for the feature version of the Bunny concept. I ended up making a light parody of the “youngsters party in a cabin, and then something bad happens” structure well known from horror films. I thought that this structure has a great amount of genre conventions to use for a crazy horrorcomedy film. When making a feature film, we also needed to be sure that the completed film would be technically so good that the technical quality of it would not bring any problems for its distribution. So, while the short film was made with three lamps and one reflector, the feature had two vans full of lighting and grip equipment. e director of photography of the feature was Tero Saikkonen. He was also one of the two DOPs of the short film. During the years between the two Bunny films, he also acquired new skills and experience as a DOP, and with bigger lighting equipment he had the possibility to make the film look great on a big screen. e situation with the sound changed a lot too; the short’s original sound was recorded with one microphone, but for the feature, we had 7 microphones in use. 54 WOSH by Daazo.com
Before starting to shoot the feature, we also needed to take notice of the current digital cinema distribution standard format, the DCP (Digital Cinema Package). Because of the DCP and its specs, we decided to make the feature film’s master format as 2K resolution with 24 frames per second. To get these specs with a great quality, we decided to use a Red One as our main camera. e short film was shot with a Panasonic GH2 as a main camera, with the master format being 720p resolution and as 25 fps. One other big difference between the process of the short Bunny and the feature Bunny was the time used in the project. e whole production of the short film lasted a year, because we weren’t in a hurry, and we made it very slowly while doing other things too. e feature Bunny’s production has lasted about three years and it’s not finished yet. e filming of the feature lasted 33 filming days, and the short film was filmed over 5 days. We filmed a lot more footage every day with the feature than we filmed in the total filming time of the short film. Also, the feature’s material is of course more professional and of better quality than the short film’s footage. The filming of the feature was rough, but unbelievable at the same time. I knew I made a big commitment when I decided to direct a feature film, and I was waiting to get the possibility to take that next step in my director’s career. Now, being in the middle of the postproduction of the Bunny the Killer ing feature film, I feel great. I am waiting to get the film completed and to show it to the whole world.
words by Genovéva Petrovits
TRAnSMeDiA YeS, it WorkS and it iS alSo on Your tV! i have recently learned about the trans-media project Worldwide Berlin, produced by the german company Berlin-Producers. To better understand the project and what went into making it, i spoke to one of the directors, Martin Koddenberg. He told me about the challenges of this mammoth project that was over two years in the making.
Just a couple of days ago, the national broadcaster RBB broadcast the TV version of the project. According to Martin, the premiere was a wonderful celebration at the end of the long process of making the project. e creators organised a screening and invited commissioners, contributors and friends to celebrate the Worldwide Berlin experience together. e idea of coming together was also taken online, where the broadcast was streamed in three languages, English, German and Spanish. rough this platform the team aimed to create a global viewing experience; a film about Berlin, watched simultaneously by Berliners all over the world. e Twitter hashtag #wwberlin triggered a global conversation around the TV programme. And a second screen app popped up additional background info, depending on the progress of the film. On their website the team created a very complex, non-linear interactive web documentary. e episodes are considerably shorter than they are in the film, never exceeding 2.30 minutes in length. However, the web version features 5 additional Berlins, as well as an interactive map that brings up information for each of the 11 Berlins. is is also where users are encouraged to upload their own content alongside user-generated content gathered from various social media outlets. While web documentary and film certainly complement one another, they are both independent. e web documentary
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follows a more open approach, which is mainly due to its non-linear story telling. e website relies on the user’s constant input. In fact, the clips are so fragmented, yet so well connected, that browsing them always creates a unique virtual path around the world. “e main challenge was translating the idea of ‘exploring’ and ‘comparing’ into the different mediums. We had to come up with two completely different storytelling approaches, while sticking to the same overall story”, said Martin. In the web documentary ‘thematic bridges’ link similar stories together (‘shop’, ‘food’, ‘work’) and allow the user to jump between the different places. However, in the film thematic collages of seemingly mundane tasks (morning routine, cooking, etc) play a similar role in joining the places together and creating the ‘glocal village’. While there was a different director for each of the Berlins, Elke Sasse, the head of project, put the film together in a lengthy editing period that stretched over many months. Simultaneously Martin molded the web clips into shape. “Creating the interface of the website was also a major part of the project. It was our goal to create something immersive that pulls the user right in. e website is less curated than the film; you can’t tell the user how to proceed or
Worldwide Berlin is a global interactive web documentary as well as a 3h feature film. The websites feature 11 different Berlins from all over the world, while the film highlights only 6 of those places.
where to click next. So all you can do is create an interface that is accessible and immersive, so that hopefully the viewer will start to dive right in.” It’s totally true. For me WWB is a good example how to grow a big television and feature film project out of the idea of shooting short reports all around the world. It’s also very interesting to consider how this concept helped to make the film possible and how the creators knew that the project would be suitable for an interactive documentary. e web documentary really is an immersive experience, exploring a world created to fit to your screen.
»» SHORT FilM HigHligHTS »»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
Antonio La Camera
Miro Mastropasqua
Karolis Kaupinis
Philip Davidson
luke9005@hotmail.it
info@miroimages.com
marija@ciobreliai.lt
philip@dayfilm.com
THE
PITCH
PAGE
BeHOlD THe SHORTS OF THe FuTuRe! “Be creative, visual and personal!”
This was Daazo’s advice for filmmakers applying for the Pitch Page section of World of Shorts.
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The Pitch Page offers an innovative opportunity for ďŹ lmmakers to present their film plan without having their heart in their throats, using visual creativity instead of an overwhelming acting appearance. We have received a huge number of groovy pitches: here is Daazo’s shortlist of seven.
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THE PROJECTS 1. Blue PeliCAn László Csáki Blue Pelican is an animated documentary focusing on Hungary during the close of the socialist era. In the 40 years of socialism only a lucky few had the privilege to travel abroad, especially to the West. In 1989 the Iron Curtain fell and the borders opened up. But the first free generation of young people did not have enough money to travel to the West. What is the value of freedom if you cannot use it? is documentary takes us deep into the secrets of how young people then tricked the system in order to travel to the West. All the interviews in the film are original, not re-enactments. 2. BROKe Bjørn Erik Pihlmann Sørensen In Scandinavia’s most affluent suburb, teenager Pia’s millionaire father is declared bankrupt causing the family unit to collapse. A pistol is hidden in a school bag. Rumours concerning her father make Pia’s school day a painful struggle and her privileged status is challenged. e most confident boy in the class harasses Pia’s best friend, then humiliates Pia. She has to put him in his place. 3. THe FAll OF ROMe Balázs Turai A satirical and psychedelic vision of the world at the end of Humanity. In the ruins of civilization, colorful post-humans eat, play, copulate and perform mystical rites involving household appliances. Meanwhile a revived, transformed Nature repossesses Earth to the rhythm of pleasant, meditative music.
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4. PeOPle, AniMAlS AnD THingS Aiste Zegulyte In 1998, three Lithuanian taxidermists won the First Prize at the World Taxidermy Championship. Straight aer the competition, the trio disbanded and stopped talking to each other. Aer 17 years, the taxidermists are still fighting in every competition. A man with the stuffed androgynous pheasant, the unhappily married taxidermist couple and the constipated hunter are now preparing their exhibits for the next World Championship. But whose “posture” and “gaze” are more important in this fight? ose of the stuffed animal or those of the crasmen..? 5. OnCe THeRe WAS A SeA... Joanna Kozuch A tragedy of the once fourth biggest lake in the world which has disappeared aer the building of big cotton plantations and irrigation canals in its neighborhood. Rivers have lost their power, the sea has become dry, fishermen are starving, factories have been closed. Only glittery salt covers this growing desert.
6. THe TROlleyBuS-MAn Jonas Trukanas Viktoras is an obedient accountant who works at the Vilnius Trolleybus Park whose life begins to fall apart. e Trolleybus Park is about to go bankrupt, a foreign investor plans to change drivers to robots. Viktoras decides to fight the foreign capitalist by becoming the TrolleybusMan, a superhero of the simple folk.
7. ReD ligHT Toma Waszarow In a small provincial town, the only traffic light is broken. It is stuck on red. An intercity bus stops at the crossing, and its conscientious driver refuses to continue until the light turns green. is provokes a series of misunderstandings with the nervous passengers and local law enforcement, in a world where following the rules is a misunderstanding in itself.
Documentary-animation
Blue PeliCAn 1
Contact: miklos.kazmer@umbrella.tv
Hungary WOSH 61
Drama
BROKe 2
Contact: bjorn.erik@pihlmann.com
Norway WOSH 62
2D animated apocalypse satire
THe FAll OF ROMe 3
Contact: balturai@gmail.com
France/Hungary WOSH 63
PeOPle, AniMAlS AnD THingS
Creative documentary
4
Contact: giedrei.burokaitei@gmail.com WOSH 64
Lithuania
Animated documentary
OnCe THeRe WAS A SeA... 5
Contact: eva@bfilm.sk
Slovakia WOSH 65
THe TROlleyBuS-MAn
Superhero comedy
Contact: jurga@dansu.eu
Lithuania/Estonia
6
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Comedy / Drama
ReD ligHT 7
Contact: anna.s.stoeva@gmail.com
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4PeOPle, AniMAlS AnD THingS
produCtion
FACTSHEET
1
Blue PeliCAn
Director: László Csáki Producer: Miklós Kázmér, Zoltán Hidvégi, László Csáki Country: Hungary Contact: miklos.kazmer@umbrella.tv, csaki@mome.hu
Production company: Umbrella.tv Estimated budget: €52,000 Covered: €24,000 Needed: €28,000 Estimated length: 15 minutes Genre: documentary-animation
2 BROKe Director: Bjørn Erik Pihlmann Sørensen Producer: Bjørn Erik Pihlmann Sørensen Country: Norway Contact: bjorn.erik@pihlmann.com Production company: Pihlmann Films Estimated budget: €150,000 Covered: €10,000 Needed: €140,000 Estimated length: 20 minutes Genre: drama
3 THe FAll OF ROMe
Director: Aiste Zegulyte Producer: Giedre Burokaite Country: Lithuania Contact: giedrei.burokaitei@gmail.com Production company: TV ir kino projektai Estimated budget: €90,000 Covered: €5,000 Needed: €85,000 Estimated length: 40 minutes Genre: creative documentary
5OnCe THeRe WAS A SeA... Director: Joanna Kozuch Producer: Eva Pa Country: Slovakia Contact: eva@bfilm.sk Production company: plackartnyj Ltd. Estimated budget: €90,000 Covered: €3,500 Needed: €86,500 Estimated length: 15 minutes Genre: animated documentary
6THe TROlleyBuS-MAn Director: Jonas Trukanas Producer: Gabija Siurbytė, Monika Sakalauskaitė, Justinas Pocius, Jurga Jutaitė, Esko Rips Country: Lithuania, Estonia Contact: jurga@dansu.eu Production company: DANSU films (LT), NAFTA FILMS (EE) Estimated budget: €64,000 Covered: €25,000 Needed: €39,000 Estimated length: 15 minutes Genre: superhero comedy
7ReD ligHT Director: Balázs Turai Producer: Christian Pfohl, József Fülöp, Stefan Michel Director: Toma Waszarow Country: France, Hungary Producer: Anna Stoeva Contact: balturai@gmail.com Country: Bulgaria Production company: Lardux Films, Contact: anna.s.stoeva@gmail.com MOME Animation Production company: Revo Films Estimated budget: €16,000 Estimated budget: €45,000 Covered: €6,000 Covered: €25,000 Needed: €10,000 Needed: €20,000 Estimated length: 6 minutes Estimated length: 20 minutes Genre: 2d animated apocalypse satire Genre: comedy/drama
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BEAR IS JUSTTHE BEGINNING THE
in the offline world, festivals offer the main platform for short films. This is why World of Shorts, besides covering the world famous events of the year like the Berlinale, always offers a year-round festival panorama as well as personal reports from the small but all the more wonderful festivals we have visited. on the next pages, we take you from Poland to the foot of Mount etna, with a detour in germany – enjoy this filmic trip!
The home of the bison, and much more – daazo’s Janka Pozsonyi talks about her Zubroffka experience, page 72 A Week of Short films in Dresden – a look back and ahead, page 74 Magma memories – the participants of the Sicilian festival recount their best moments, page 76 festival Panorama – brought to you by daazo’s Festival Strategy Service, page 78
words by Janka Pozsonyi
The home oF The bison, and muCh more In the beginning of December 2014, I got the chance to travel all the way up to the North-Eastern part of Poland, to the lovely but freezing city of Białystok (home of the world famous bison), . which hosted the Zubroffka International Short Film Festival for the 9th time. Fortunately, the cold was successfully defeated by the warm welcome and the incredibly nice people at the festival, not to mention the colourful and diverse short film programme.
From the first day, until the very last minute of saying goodbye, every screening, workshop, networking or just sharing a nicely chilled pivo at the end of the day (which is basically networking) – everything was incredibly laidback, and just as cool as the weather outside. But this laid-back attitude did not have any effect on the quality of the presented films: a total of 108 short films were competing in six categories, filled with really interesting pieces. Here are the different sections: • Whole Wide World Competition – short films from all around the world • Eastward Window Competition – short films from the Eastern-European section • Students Competition – from different film and art schools in Poland • Amateurs Competition – short films by amateur artists, who did not attend any film school • Independent Competition – from independent filmmakers and artists • Kids Competition – films made by youngsters, in 3 sub-categories (5+, 7+, 13+)
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e scale of genres of the featured shorts in the competitions was incredibly large. From experimental animations and hilariously real documentaries, to touching dramas of the real and the fictitious life – it was truly diverse. Besides the competitive films, there were a lot of other programmes, such as a screening and Q&A on women directors, a special collection of Norwegian and Russian shorts, Japanese and Belarusian animation, a 3-day long collection of the finest trashfilms, and so on. Special workshops were held on making post-it animation and film journalism, as were different panel discussions for the industry, about selecting films for a festival and distributing them. It was an intense 5 days, but a great event, from the audience’s and the industry’s perspective as well. See you next year . Białystok, I’ll drink my Zubrowka to you!
FilMFeST DReSDen international Short Film Festival a Week oF Short FilmS in dreSden:
A lOOK BACK – AnD AHeAD words by Katrin Küchler photos by Oliver Killig
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in << flashback
It's Friday night, the 18th of April, 2014, in a small office in a back courtyard in the heart of Dresden Neustadt: the headquarters of FILMFEST DRESDEN — and a hive of activity. e International Short Film Festival is in full swing and going strong. e final preparations for the “Grand Finale” are underway — the perfect time to take a momentary break and reflect upon the week that has passed: the filled auditoriums of festival cinemas and satellite venues (special screenings at special places, like in the architectural ruins of Dresden's oldest high-rise); the masterclasses with the “Old Master” of the French Nouvelle Vague, Luc Moullet, or with the British animator Phil Mulloy; a workshop on vinyl animation held in cooperation with the German Institute for Animated Film (DIAF); and the “small talks” with “big names” from the international world of short film. ey all come to mind as highlights of the festival week. But the present calls: the awards presentation is tomorrow, when twelve of the prestigious Golden Horsemen are to be received. (For the festival team, the most beautiful and excit-
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ing moments are those when, as the decisions of the jury are under lock and key, the team can rejoice in secret for the unsuspecting winners.) One person who is really going to be happy is Susann Maria Hempel, a young filmmaker from Thuringia. Her short film Seven Times a Day We Bemoan Our Lot and at Night We Get Up to Avoid Our Dreams is not only going to get the Golden Horseman of the Youth Jury, but the Minister of Fine Arts Promotion Prize with its €20,000 endowment as well. A sign of what is to come: 2014 is going to be a storybook year for her, completed by the German Short Film Award.
filmmakers and professionals) from all over the world are drawn to this city by the festival and the short films it screens. Moreover, FILMFEST DRESDEN’s international outreach will be a much needed counter-signal regarding the recent goings-on in Dresden and the consequential damage to the city´s image: namely the demonstrations of tens of thousands of people sharing their fears of a supposed mutation of the so-called “Occidental World”.
about FILMFEST DRESDEN was founded in 1989. Since then it has established itself as one of the leading addresses for short film in Germany and across Europe. e festival's competitions focus on short fiction and animated films with a length of up to 30 minutes. FILMFEST DRESDEN, sporting a total of more than €65,000 in prize money, now counts as one of the best-endowed short film festivals in Europe. The festival section “etc. – events, trainings, connections” provides industry professionals with an extensive range of options for exchanging information and knowledge, learning, and networking. ere are 16,500 visitors and 300 short films from over 40 countries. During the summer, the festival goes on tour with a “Best of ” programme.
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e kick-off of the 27th edition of FILMFEST DRESDEN is now less than two months away. From the 14th to 19th of April, 2015, the most colourful district of the capital city of Saxony becomes, once again, a mecca for short film. Every year, more than 16,500 cinemagoers (including around 500 accredited guests,
is year there is a special focus on the film production of the Visegrád Group countries. Under the heading “Visegrád in Short(s)”, the Krakow Film Foundation, the Czech Film Centre / National Archive, the Slovak Film Institute and the Jameson CineFest - Miskolci Nemzetközi Filmfesztivál are presenting film work from Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. As part of FILMFEST DRESDEN's industry section “etc. – events, trainings, connections”, “Visegrád in Short(s)” gives talented filmmakers from these countries the opportunity to present their short films to the public, connect with other industry professionals, and take part in lectures, panel discussions and masterclasses. (For example, the iconic actor and director Jiří Menzel is holding a master class on his short and feature-length film productions.) Applications to attend the Visegrád forum will be accepted up until the end of February. e forum is aimed at young professionals (directors, producers, screenwriters, cinematographers, film students, distributors as well as film agents) from the Visegrád countries as well as Germany. For more information on the application and the FILMFEST DRESDEN podcast channel, please visit the website: www.filmfest-dresden.de or www.facebook.com/dresden.filmfest
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words by Zsuzsanna Deák
magmaMEMORIES The thirteenth edition of Magma Short film festival took place from 20 to 22
in contrast to major film festivals in italy, Magma
november 2014 in the pretty town of has always focused exclusively Acireale, Sicily, in front of an enthusiastic and massive audience and a number of international guests, including jury members, partner festival representa-
on short film, considering it as a format allowing for the experimentation of new styles and the creation of new trends.
tives, producers and directors of the shorts in competition. 33 short films were selected from among over 900 submissions. The Lorenzo Vecchio Award (the festival grand Prix in
WORlD OF SHORTS ASKeD THRee MAgMA PARTiCiPAnTS
honour of the first creator of Magma)
ABOuT THeiR exPeRienCeS.
went to a french documentary, Daphné or the Lovely Specimen.
Who are you? What brought you to Magma? Why is this festival special? What is your best Magma memory?
How would you describe the selection in 3 words? Why should filmmakers submit their films to Magma?
n from Bérangère Petitjea in France. Les Films Sauvages
My name is Jordane Oudin and I am a film producer, working for Hippocampe Prod uctions, a company I founded together with my associate Christophe Battarel. We have recently produced a short film titled Le Plongeon (e Dive in English) directed by Delphine Le Courtois, which was selected for the 2014 Magma Film Fest. Although she is French, Delphine lives in Canada, very far from Sicily, and so it's me who went to Acireale to represent the film. It's been a while that I’d wanted to go to Sicily, known for being a beautiful place and the invitation of the festival was the best excuse! e fact is that I was getting married a week later so I prop osed to my wife-to-be to come with me to a “prehoneymoon”! And it was fantastic. g fest iva l Magma is a ver y interestin s only in ion because it provides project to stroll the evening. So we had all day utiful seascapes. and discover absolutely bea eral surprises, e organization planned sev a. Many cool including a tour of Mount Etn sent, making pre e directors and producers wer ndly. e jury frie user the atmosphere even more e to the point that members were extremely nic list living in Paris, one of them, an Italian journa tinue to see regularly. has become a friend that I con e generally very good e films in competition wer enings were full and and varied in style. All scre curious and friendly, the audience was extremely long overdue! showing that the festival is ir films, if only for All directors should send the e the delicious a chance to be invited and tast breakfast! Sicilian ice cream you eat for
r movie Daphné e selection of ou n. or the Lovely Specime in and ming, a real interest A wonderful welco selection, tic lec ch movie, an ec consideration for ea e public. a great and receptiv hio award, of course! Our Lorenzo Vecc d demanding. eviously, poetic an Eclectic, as I said pr the selection agma team creates First because the M ong cinematic coherence and a str very precisely, with , they will e If they are selected vision, and becaus ! couple of days there spend an amazing
Nour Wazzi producer and director My short film Up on the Roof starring Maisi Williams (Gam e e of rones), M ichael Matias (e Bodyguar d) and Earl Cam eron (Inception) . e festival real ly champions sh or t films and encourages film s that try to br eak the mould and do somethi ng different. Pl us the festival staff was incred ibly hospitable an d even took us on a lovely lunch excursio n to Mount Et na. Winning the Ju ry Special men tion award! Bold, diverse an d entertaining . Because it’s a lo vely festival, yo u’ll be treated well, you’ll mee t some great fil m makers and the cinemas ar e always fully pa cked so your film will alway s get an audien ce!
WOSH by Daazo.com 77
FESTIVAL PANORAMA
- brought to you by Daazo’s Festival Strategy Service The grand halls of the Berlinale are always a great way to a start a year of festivai-going.
They represent everything we love about film festivals: the anticipation of new film releases, the allure of a foreign country, the occasional glimpses of the red carpet and the excitement of meeting like-minded film enthusiasts. But submitting your own film always comes at a price – keeping track of when the festivals are happening, ensuring that the myriad of complex paperwork is just right, knowing when and where to submit it all. But don’t worry. Daazo’s festival Strategy Service takes care of this in one go. Below we have collected a selection of the important events that will take place this spring, so all you have to do is pick the festival and let us do all the work! Talent campus w.shop
festival camp
Submission deadline
Date
entry fee
London independent film festival
March 13, 2015
April 16-27, 2015
£55
cannes international film festival
March 3, 2015
May 13-24, 2015
free
Plymouth film festival
March 1, 2015
May 16-17, 2015
£20
hamburg international Short film festival
April 1, 2015 for the 3 minutes quickie section
June 2-8, 2015
free
yes
Shanghai international film festival
April 15, 2015
June 13-21, 2015
free
yes
Annecy international Animated film festival
February 15, 2015
June 15-20, 2014
free
edinburgh international film festival
February 11, 2015
June 17-28, 2015
£35
karlovy Vary international film festival
March 6, 2015
July 3-11, 2015
€30
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Market
yes
oscar efA BAfTA qualifying
Talent campus w.shop
festival camp
Submission deadline
Date
entry fee
curtas Vila do conde international film festival
April 10, 2015
July 4-12, 2015
€10
Tenerife international film festival
May 7, 2015
July 7-10, 2015
$80
Melbourne international film festival
February 26, 2015
July 30August 16, 2015
AUD$70
festival del film Locarno
to be announced in February, 2015
August 5-15, 2015
CHF30
yes
August 7-11, 2015
€10
yes
Market
La guarimba international film festival
March 31, 2015
hollyShorts film festival
June 5, 2015
August 13-22, 2015
$80
Sarajevo film festival
n/a
August 14-22, 2015
free
yes
Venice international film festival
n/a
September 2 - 12, 2015
free
yes
Dc Shorts film festival and Screenplay competition
April 30, 2015
September 10-20, 2015
$40
Message to Man international film festival
May 31, 2015
October 31November 6, 2015
€7
interfilm international Short film festival Berlin
June 26, 2015
November 10-15, 2015
free
Miami Short film festival
May 15, 2015
November 11-15, 2015
$55
cork film festival
June 27, 2015
November 2015
€20
yes
yes
oscar efA BAfTA qualifying
WORLD OF SHORTS editor in chief: Dániel Deák – danieldeak@daazo.com editor: Zsuzsanna Deák – zsuzsanna.deak@daazo.com art director and graphic design: Péter Flanek Daazo graphic design: Krisztina Jávorszki founding designer of WOSH: Cristina Grosan head of sales: Genovéva Petrovits – genoveva.petrovits@daazo.com World of Shorts authors: Dániel Deák, Zsuzsanna Deák, Diana Nagy, Genovéva Petrovits, Janka Pozsonyi contributors: Nele Fritzsche, Katrin Küchler, Joonas Makkonen, Matija Radeljak, Wim Vanacker, Anita Voorham thanks: Clive Allnutt, Maia Christie, Maike Mia Höhne, Bogi Kalasz, Anita Libor, Katharina Neumann, Joe Newson, Christine Tröstrum, Florian Weghorn cover photo: Milica Mrvic´ and Péter Flanek – www.milicamrvic.com studio for the cover photo: flashback Budapest – www.flashbackphoto.eu illustrations by: Péter Flanek, Manja Lekic ´ photographs: Péter Flanek, Peter Himsel, Oliver Killig, Milica Mrvic ´, Niko Tavernise, Janka Pozsonyi, Simone Scardovelli, Donata Wenders you can also find this magazine online at: http://issuu.com/daazo/docs/berlin2015 World of Shorts magazine is published by Daazo Film and Media Ltd. Published in Hungary February 2015. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part is forbidden save with the written permission of the publishers. www.daazo.com | info@daazo.com ISSN 2064-2105 (Online) - ISSN 2064-2113 (Print)
Daazo.com - the European Shortfilm Centre is supported by the MEDIA programme of the EU. is material does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the EU. is magazine was printed on recycled paper.
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In the mood for love? Contact us at promotion@havc.hr Croatian short film at Berlinale Piknik by Jure PavloviÄ&#x2021; @ Berlinale Generation
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G.s. Go short. 19. Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, The short film festival of Switzerland 3.-8. November 2015, Entry Deadline: 12.7.2015 www.kurzfilmtage.ch
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