Mas y Mas February 2010

mรกs ymรกs

monthly newsletter of NISI MASA

feb10 TALENT CAMPUS Europe and

Latin America

alumni

report:

ESP 2010

portrait:

Jason Schwartzman in 'Rushmore' by Wes Anderson

Valentina Oresic

agenda

13 - 18 feb.

Berlinale Talent Campus

editorial

photo: Filmini International Short Film Festival – Animation Workshop with Phill Mulloy

They are the times of informal education. Contrary to the previous generations, youth of the world is more and more learning from each other by doing. Although the notion of borders are still a topic of discussion in a big part of the world; in most parts, they are dissolving. Even more, the idea of borders in young people’s minds now has lost its importance compared to olden days.

Besides the formal education we have in our countries, now we are meeting, getting to know each other and produce together. In our field, cinema, the projects bringing young cinema people together and connect them with professionals are promising. In the tight schedule of these gatherings, we are sharing our views, making films together or discussing them. Talent Campuses are very significant platforms for this.

Although the ‘Talent Campus’ is a brand of Berlinale that has been hosting a campus for young people for 8 years now, there are unique campuses parallel to film festivals in other regions; in Europe, Latin America etc. as discussed by Mary Carmen’s and Damla’s articles

professional lives. This is also what NISI MASA is doing with dozens of projects each year. Eftihia is mentioning just this in her text which is about talent campus alumnis from NISI MASA. Yes, intense courses for youth in parallel to film festivals are our focus this month. So, you could read about a producers workshop in Russia in the interview by Adrien; and see various news and deadlines about them on “News” page.

Another important project, a script development workshop organized last month by our network, European Short Pitch is reported as well.

A filmmaker educated in a country, shooting a film in another one with a crew from four different places... This is the spirit of new generation. Valentina, our guest for the “Portrait” page is doing that too.

Soon, we will watch feature films by filmmakers grown with informal education in campuses who have a large vision of the world. This is what I call “exciting”!

Very special thanks to everybody contributed to this issue!

The campuses are opening the doors for young people to network, create future collaborations: a big step for their

by Esra Demirkıran

Mas y Mas is a monthly newsletter published by the association NISI MASA. EDITORIAL STAFF Coordination Esra Demirkıran Dora di Nunno Design Maartje Alders

Contributors to this issue: Esra Demirkıran, Mary Carmen Molina Ergueta, Joanna Gallardo, Adrien Lenoir, Damla Okay, Eftihia Stefanidi.

NISI MASA (European Office) 99 Rue du Faubourg Saint Denis 75010, Paris, France Tel/Fax: +33 (0)9 60 39 63 38 + 33 (0)6 32 61 70 26 Email europe@nisimasa.com Website www.nisimasa.com

credits.

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Talent Campus

dossier

TALENT CAMPUS

From Buenos Aires to Guadalajara

In the dossier this month a focus on talent campuses, in which you read firstly on this page, about different opportunities in Europe and Latin America. On page 4 you can find small interviews with Nisimasians who have been to a campus. Page 5 is reserved for an interview with Anna Gudkova, program director of the Russian International education Program "Generation Campus".

Two Latin American Talent Campus experiences

For a direct links, click on the names of the campuses in the article.For a comprehensive list of all campuses discussed and their specific deadlines for application, check the news page!

Unique European Talent Campuses

O

ne of the many virtues of cinema is that it enables sharing - opinions, ideas, opportunities. Film festivals across Europe seem quite engaged with such means to unite young talents and aficionados of cinema.

The Festival on Wheels, for example, has been taking Turkish and international participants to small northern towns of Turkey and holding the “Let’s Talk Cinema” event for years; an extensive series of seminars, talks and workshops on filmmaking, acting, film analysis and film journalism (as in the cases of Nisimazine Kars and Artvin) with the professionals for the young amateurs from Turkey and Europe.

Meanwhile, the Sarajevo Film Festival is hosting the ‘Sarajevo Talent Campus” for 4th time in 2010, which provides young filmmakers and film students from Balkan countries in their senior years with chances to meet each other and famous professionals such as Michael Moore, Charlie Kaufman and Juliette Binoche. The participants, hailing from neighboring European countries, join panels, lectures and tutorials, and the festival considers this to be a great platform both for inspiration and for future European co-productions.

Other opportunities are more area-specific: The International Film Festival Rotterdam, with “Rotterdam Lab”, encourages young, inexperienced producers to meet senior producers and learn about the business. And the “Trainee Project Young Film Critics”, organized in parallel to Rotterdam Festival, each year invites young journalists for a special course on film criticism.

The Filmini International Short Film Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria has organized a workshop exclusive to animation besides other panels and projects for young film people. The Edinburgh Film Festival offers workshops on horror make-up, slapstick and film music. And soon, the Next Film Festival in Romania will allow young scriptwriters and winners of NISI MASA Script Contest to pitch their scripts to professional producers.

Shortly, in all corners of Europe, there’s room for amateurs and young professionals to learn about filmmaking and develop their work of all sorts!

by Damla Okay

W

hen Denisse Arancibia (photo) applied for this year Belinale Talent Campus, she thought it could be her first opportunity to express her point of view outside Bolivia. The day Denisse knew her short film project Pis have been selected for the first round of the Berlinale Today Award 2011 competition, she knew the opportunity had become a reality.

The question: Do Latin American young filmmakers always have to take a transatlantic flight to jump into a Talent Campus? The answer was a strong negative in 2005, when the Berlinale Talent Campus Abroad initiative extended for the first time to a Latin American Film Festival. Organized by widely recognized “Universidad del Cine”, Buenos Aires Talent Campus takes place during one of the largest and most prestigious film events in the continent: Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival (BAFICI). This Talent Campus welcomes 25 argentine and 25 South American young filmmakers each year, and is reaching its fifth version next April.

The initiative to create Talent Campus platforms of participation and communication among young Latin American filmmakers was the only one until 2009, when another film festival of the continent managed to develop this experience. This March, Guadalajara International Film Festival, in cooperation with Berlinale Talent Campus, organizes for the second time a Talent Campus focusing on learning and perfection of skills and knowledge in making a good script.

“I want to learn”, affirms Denisse before leaving for the Berlinale Talent Campus. Now, she is one of the upand-coming filmmakers representing the diverse cinematic perspectives of more than 120 countries in a Talent Campus. As we want Buenos Aires and Guadalajara experiences to continue, we hope these platforms trigger more initiatives and boost Latin American young people work in different and new contexts.

by Mary Carmen Molina Ergueta

dossier

Iulia, Julia & Iris

F

To celebrate this year’s 8th Berlinale Talent Campus, and all other ‘campuses’ alike that have flourished, we ask three Nisimasians who are ex-participants to fill in a questionnaire about their experience at the vibrant gatherings of the creative.

IULIA RUGINA

(27, Romania), Editor

Festival. In its premier last summer in Sarajevo, 3000 attended... This is huge for a young director, and it has helped me significantly. So I guess the first step is in networking, the next is in shooting films.

. The Berlinale Talent Campus was my first big interaction with young professionals from all over. As it invites people from different fields of work (cinematographers, editors, sound designers, actors, and producers), the chances to meet and set up a team with a diverse group of people increases considerably. As a matter of fact, with my participation in the Sarajevo Talent Campus in 2008, I met a lot of wonderful people. We set up a team and shot a film last spring, funded by the Sarajevo Film

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meet the talent: 3 QUESTIONS 2

or us young film enthusiasts, February is undeniably the month in which talent is poised to be nurtured on German soil. Due to the Berlinale Talent Campus, a resourceful academy that begun in 2002 - and since then brings together more than 350 participants every year - aspiring filmmakers, writers, editors, and so on, get the chance to meet and learn from the experts.

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Talent Campus

The Questionnaire: 1.

What has your participation in the talent campuses contributed to your self-development as a professional?

(We want evidence!)

2.

In your opinion, what could be the role of the talent platforms in the contemporary film industry and future cinema?

3.

If for one day you were the organiser of a talent campus, what seminar would you chose to offer and who would you invite to host it?

by Eftihia Stefanidi (with special thanks to Adrien and Esra)

JULIA SABINA (28, Spain), Scriptwriter

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. The same important role – networking. It’s always easy to find and contact people that share the same interest, on the sole common ground of having been part of the same community.

It’s, after all, what’s happening with NISI MASA: networking! . I was lucky to attend some great seminars in both Campuses. I had the chance to listen to Michael Moore, Jeremy Irons, Alexander Payne, Steve Buscemi, Juliette Binoche and Gael Garcia Bernal. I would have loved to attend a lecture held by Mike Leigh, Charlie Kaufman, Wes Anderson, David Lynch, Angelo Badalamenti, Richard Curtis or the Coen Brothers!

. Selected for the Script Station at the Berlinale Talent Campus, I had the opportunity to pitch my script for a feature film in front of producers and professionals. The exciting thing was that those people were interested in my project! Thanks to the platform, I made important contacts and met very interesting film professionals and film enthusiasts from all over the world! . The same role they have right now: open the door to the professional world of cinema, and give the chance to meet like-minded people from other countries.

. I would probably choose the screenwriter Jorge Guerricaechevarría…I'm interested in seminars on scriptwriting, as this is my work of field, but I am also inspired by talent working in different sections, such as music composers, art directors, editors…

. I met a lot of new people who I hope to work with in the future, and I’ve decided to apply again soon to a more specific programme for a new project. . To help out beginners to understand the business side of filmmaking; to share and compare opinions from all over the world; to enhance trust in visions.

. I like concrete stuff. I would either make the attendants to work on some exercises or I would have a filmmaker go through the process of his film, from the very beginning. Directing people in fiction or documentary, observations and intuition, are all good themes.

IRIS OLSSON

(28, Finland), Documentary filmmaker

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Talent Campus

interview.

dossier

Anna Gudkova

T

alent campuses do not only exist in Berlin or Sarajevo. The phenomenon is strong enough to inspire new projects, new platforms for future filmmakers and film lovers. The role these platforms can take is all the more important in places like Russia where expressing yourself in total independence and freedom may not be as easy as in the rest of Europe. This urge and this desire are beautifully expressed

by Anna Gudkova, who is the program director of the Russian International education Program "Generation Campus".

What made you create the Russian talent Campus? Did you already have an experience of such platforms?

After visiting (even not participating!) the Berlin Talent Campus I was so inspired and impressed that I decided to make the first Campus for young film professionals in my native country - Russia. Up to this date it was held twice already: first in the frame of IFF at Vladivostok ( during which Cinetrain was presented) and the second time in Moscow in the frame of IFF "Tomorrow". Well I think it's the best evidence ever...

What do you see in the initiative of Talent Campuses? As for you, what is their point in today’s film industry?

I suppose that all kinds of campuses can unite people from extremely different countries and ways of living. It can connect various kinds of realities and create a fresh, brand new one. I can't imagine future film industry without such kinds of initiatives. And even more so - I don't want to live my personal life without them.

What is your ambition regarding the Russian Talent Campus? How do you envision its future?

My dream is to create a generation of filmmakers in Russia who will consider themselves as a part of the global cinema industry, free from any frontier whatsoever. They shouldn’t be imprisoned in the small, provincial life of modern Russian filmmaking whose future strongly depends from politicians and bureaucrats of all kinds. I want to help them in opening their horizons, in feeling free at anytime and anyplace - in their dreams, in their creations, in their films and lives. And I believe that this platform of international education programme where they can find friends and partners, financiers or even film lovers from all over the world is the best place to be in their youths. It’s full of ideas and strong enough to turn the planet in any direction that they want.

by Adrien Lenoir

news Rita wins prize in Angers!

Rita, the short film by Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza that was developed in ESP and selected for the 2010 edition of the Premier Plan Festival in Angers has won the ARTE prize for European short films!

Congratulations to the makers!

Competition 'Picturing Europe'

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The European Commission is inviting audiovisual professionals and individuals to produce a video clip of maximum three minutes duration on the theme 'Picturing Europe', which should present an original vision of Europe based on EU archive material mixed with new or edited images. The clip should combine online archive material with user-generated content and express a personal vision of Europe.

The audiovisual service of the European Commission has the largest collection of audiovisual archive material relating to the founding of the European Union. The number of digitised items accessible on its website totals over 1,300 videos, 30,000 photos and 11,000 historical audio files.

Submitted clips must include at least 50% archive material.

The winner will receive a sum of 10.000 euro.

Deadline for entries: 15 March 2010.

Competition rules: http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/content360/rules.cfm

New Nisimazine BLOG!

Stuck on Christmas ESP 2009 finished Stuck on Christmas, a film by Ana Agopian, Oana Rasuceanu and Iulia Rugina whose script was discussed and repaired in the European Short Pitch last year, was shot this month. It is produced by the National Film School of Romania.

Photos from the shoot can be found under the following link (the texts are only in Romanian): http://captivi-de-craciun.blogspot.com

Selected for Berlinale At the upcoming Berlinale Talent Campus some Nisimasians have been selected to participate!

They are: Iana Mosholova (Bulgaria) Kuba Kosma (Poland) Marton Vizkelety (Hungary) Maria Saakyan (Armenia) Anna Ciennik (France) Also, Maximilien van Aertryck (France/Germany), ex-EO and current member of NISI MASA Sweden, is selected as a member of the Jury “Dialogue en perspective� at Berlinale and will be blogging about his experience on the new blog on the Nisimazine website www.nisimazine.eu.

Congratulations to all of those selected!!

Nisimazines website www.nisimazine.eu now has it's own Blog! This blog can be used by all contributors of Nisimazine to continue to discuss cinema outside of the workshops!

Besides being a free space for everyone to post articles, the blog will also feature reports from contributors of several festivals that are not covered by Nisimazine.

For example, Juan Daniel from the Lima workshop has just been at the Rotterdam Film Festival and has posted some videos he made there, like an interview with director Harmony Korine. Also, at the upcoming Berlinale, Maximilien van Aertryck and Eftihia Stefanidi from the Cannes 2009 team, will be blogging about their experiences!

So check this new feature regularly, new stories will pop up from everywhere! http://www.nisimazine.eu/-Blog-.html

EMERGEANDSEE Festival Call for entries EMERGEANDSEE Festival in Berlin has opened it's call for entries. Topic for 2010 is "Hybrid Metropolis: In between spaces". The festival is looking for audiovisual in-betweens, that deal with otherness, construction of identity and different meanings of space. Entries should be: - films from 1 to 20 minutes for the screening - images, installations, screens, loops and audio for the exhibition The submission form can be downloaded on emergeandsee.org Deadline: April 15, 2010

screenings

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GERMANY

16.02/19.02/21.02.10

The just finished short film Whispering in a Friend's Mouth by Hannaleena Hauru has been selected for the Berlinale in the sections Short Films 14plus 2 and Generatoin Mix! Developed during European Short Pitch 2009, the script tells us the story of two teenagers making graffiti and have ended up kissing. The short film is subtly examining the borderline between platonic and romantic love through two linking time levels. The films was supported by the Finnish Film Foundation.

Feb 16 14:30 Babylon (Mitte) (E) Feb 19 11:30 Babylon (Mitte) (E) Feb 21 11:00 Babylon (Mitte) (E)

TALENT CAMPUS CALENDAR 2010 February 13 – 18, 2010

Berlinale Talent Campus #8 www.berlinale-talentcampus.de

March 15, 2010

Application deadline Talent Campus Durban (July 23 – 27, 2010)

February 16, 2010

http://www.cca.ukzn.ac.za/talentdiff2010. htm

http://www.ucine.edu.ar/talent_campus

Talent Campus Buenos Aires

March 11 – 15, 2010

July 23 – 27, 2010

http://www.talentcampusguadalajara.com. mx/web/index.php

July 25 – 31, 2010

Application deadline Talent Campus Buenos Aires

Talent Campus Guadalajara

March 12 – May 21, 2010

Application period Sarajevo Talent Campus (July 25 – 31, 2010)

April 10 – 13, 2010

Talent Campus Durban Sarajevo Talent Campus

http://www.sff.ba/content.php/en/sarajevo_ talent_campus

European Short Pitch 2010

spotlight “How to catch the perfect pitch?” it’s the question that the participants of the fourth edtion of European Short Pitch asked themself during the week of the rewriting session at the Moulin d’Andé (Normandy – France). From 18th to 22nd of January, 24 scriptwriters, among them 15 finalists of the Script Contest 2009, debated, brainstormed and rewrote their short film script with five professionnals tutors selected for their thorough knowledge of short film dramaturgy and their european experience. Two new tutors attented this year : Razvan Radulescu, a famous Romanian scriptwriter (Boogie; 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days) and Marie Dubas, executive producer at “Les Films du Requin” in Paris (France) and script-editor at the Script&Pitch 2009 session.

by Joanna Gallardo

T

he passion of cinema was there every minute and all the participants were commited to support their colleagues to improve their script - neverending discuss until late in the evening (the night?).

This working atmosphere was balanced by the quiet and beautiful location of the Moulin d’Andé: a 12th century mill on the Seine riverside surrounded by a big parc. This place is defintly inspiring every creator. So inspiring that Leonie De Rudder, one of the French participants, wrote this piece inspired by the 24 projects developed in the 1st session of European Short Pitch.

“This is the story of a girl born on the day the Berlin Wall fell. Her mother suffers from post-partum depression. 13 years later, she makes her daughter fall from a swing, hides the x-rays of the broken hand, and imprisons her in a cellar until she has her very first period. The little girl suffers from insomnias, has hallucinations, but luckily she finds a magical object that makes wishes come true, and she escapes from this deadly place. She doesn’t know what to do, so she throws cherries on old-fashioned wall rugs, then on bunnies, then on a kangaroo which dies, saying she’s a fucking koala. After a while spent meditating in a sauna with a werewolf, she hesitates between two destinies: becoming a prostitute for disabled people or becoming the Pope.

What a dilemma…

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But she meets a boy who wears a war helmet and together they drink and decide to steal a corpse for fun. They realize it’s a woman whose husband didn’t call the undertakers early enough to prevent her from rotting. They jump in a boat but the boy suffers from aquaphobia because of his robotic genitals. There is a crack in it and water filters in, but they make it to the other side where a party of big-eared interpreters is taking place. As they’re not really invited, everybody pretends that the party is over to get rid of them.

Suddenly, the reactor of a nuclear power plant melts down and everybody disappears in a cloud of butterflies.”

We hope that European producers will love this crazy film idea during the pitching session in April in Bucharest (Romania)! But before that the participants have to write, rewrite and rewrite again on the new version of their story.

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portrait

Dancing away...

Valentina Oresic

I

t is always good to come across some friends during a festival. In August 2009 in Sarajevo, in the opening cocktail of Sarajevo Talent Campus, we were talking about this with Valentina.

Besides our lives in our home countries, we have friends we meet in festivals around Europe and the world and share our recent news shortly and intensely there. The hurry for catching films, commenting on them after the screenings, attending the Q & A’s and partying in the nights to relax are our common daily lives when we meet our festival friends here and there.

On that same night in Sarajevo, we were talking with Valentina about borders in Balkans. She said; “It’s the same geography with the same history. But with each next step, you reach a border”. To tell the truth, this discussion and the films I saw in Sarajevo inspired me to write an article about Balkans and its cinema for a magazine -called Altyazı- in Turkey. The article was discussing the problem of communication and the notion of borders in Balkan geography, very parallel to our discussion with her.

The first time I met Valentina was in 2007 in Istanbul, during the NISI MASA project Visions of Istanbul. The first impression I had from this potential partygirl was her helpful and cheerful personality. In the rush of a

project while arranging everyday details, her nice reactions as a participant were notable.

She was so young, 20 then, and already had the ability for production.

Valentina is studying Film and Events Production in her city, Zagreb. As a very young representative of Kinoklub Zagreb, a 82 year-old non-profit organization in Croatia, her motivation for NISI MASA is always exceptional. When she and her Croation crew (with the help of the European Office) organized script contest jury meeting in Autumn 2008 in Zagreb, all the participants were satisfied with their good work.

As this issue of Mas y Mas is dedicated to Talent Campuses, I would like to mention her Sarajevo Talent Campus experience. She attended the campus as a producer. She had good meetings and networking with young people from neighboring countries and she was invited to attend the Production Workshop of the Sarajevo City of Film 2010. All these examples signify that, in the future, she will be a successful producer and organizer from Croatia.

After the intense meetings we had during the General Assembly (GA) of NISI MASA in Alba, Italy in 2008, the parties we had with music from the tape recorder of her car proved to me that this woman can always find a possibility for fun.

Even though the weather was so cold and there was lack of drinks. After intense meetings, It is almost impossible to wake up fresh the next day without a nice party the night before. So, she played her nice play-list for the representatives of the GA. And yes, she had come all the way from Zagreb to Alba by car in this cold March of 2008.

She is interested in different fields in cinema besides production and event coordination. For instance she has attended the Kinokabaret organized by Kino 5 in Vienna last spring and she has even acted in a film (see picture on the right)! So it makes me feel that she is not only discussing the borders in her region; but also trying to dissolve the borders between different fields of audiovisual arts.

With her colorful clothes, especially socks, and her significant voice, she stays in people’s mind. She likes travelling and -not surprisingly- dancing.

Travelling means both work and fun for her. Through the projects and campuses she has attended and places and festivals she has visited, she is an example of the young generation who knows how to work and have fun at the same time. And dancing also means having big dreams for the future.

by Esra Demirkıran