Kevin Feng Ke

BA BAI BANG

China, 2008, HD, 93 min

LETTERS FROM DEATH ROW

A small time crook inside China’s maximum security prison is assigned the dubious job of recording last wills for the death row inmates scheduled for execution. Surrounded by men who cannot escape despair, desperation and mayhem, his close encounters with many condemned criminals take him to the abyss of humanity. Under the constant watchful eyes of the wardens, a romance manages to develop between himself and the beautiful female prisoner who co-hosts the prison radio station even though her execution is looming.

Kevin Feng Ke

In addition to being a renowned sculptor, he studied Journalism, Asian Studies and Political Science and enrolled at the NYU Tisch School of Arts where he was a recipient of the Ang Lee Scholarship and Directors’ Guild of America Award for Best Asian Filmmaker. His film works include the documentaries Song and Cry (1991) and When East Meets East (1997), the shorts The Official Account (1999) and True Love (2000). Letters from Death Row is his first feature.

Philippe Grandrieux

UN LAC

France, 2008, 35mm, 90 min

A LAKE

The story takes place in a country about which we know nothing: a country of snow and dense forests, somewhere in the North. A family lives in an isolated house near a lake. Alexi, the brother, is a young man with a pure heart. A woodcutter. An ecstatic, prey to epileptic fits, he is entirely opened to the nature that surrounds him. Alexi is terribly close to his younger sister, Hege. Their blind mother, their father, and their little brother are the silent witnesses to their overwhelming love. A stranger arrives, a young man barely older than Alexi. Hege becomes fascinated by the stranger, who is equally drawn towards her. Feeling hurt and betrayed, Alexi leaves his home and disappears into the forest.

Philippe Grandrieux
He has made numerous documentaries, experimental television programmes and video installations, and is the director of three feature films:
“Sombre” (1998)
“La Vie nouvelle” aka “A New Life” (2002)
“Un Lac” (2008)

Sergei Loznitsa

PREDSTAVLENYE

Germany-Russia-Ukraine, 2008, 35mm, 85 min

REVUE

Based on archive propaganda newsreels produced in the USSR in the 50-s and 60-s. The film shows the almost forgotten side of the Soviet times and the way of thinking at that period. It explores the life of people all across the vast expanse of the Soviet Motherland, though full of hardship, deprivation and absurd rituals, but at the same time illuminated by the glorious shining of the communist illusion.

Sergei Loznitsa

1964 Born in Baranowitshi, White Russia
1986 Graduated from the Kiev Polytechnic University (faculty of applied mathematics)
1987 – 1991 Work at the University of Cybernetics (involved in specialist systems and artificial intelligence)
1991 – 1996 Studied at the State University of Cinematography (VGIK)
2000 Scholarship holder of the European Nipkov-Programme
2001 Moved to Germany, but still works in Russia

Filmography
“Today We Are Going to Build a House” (“Сегодня мы построем дом”), 1996, together with Marat Magambetow
“Life, Autumn” (“Жизнь, осень“), 1998, together with Marat Magambetow
“The Train Stop” (“Полустанок”), 2000
„The Settlement“ („Поселение“), 2001
„Portrait“ („Портрет“), 2002
„Landscape“ („Пейзаж“), 2003
„Factory“ („Фабрика“), 2004
„Blockade“ („Блокада”), 2005
“Artel” (“Артель”), 2006
“Revue” (“Представление”), 2008

Avi Mograbi

Z32

Israel – France, 2008, 35mm / Beta SP, 81 min

A young Israeli, while serving in the army, participates in a revenge operation following the ambush and murder of six Israeli soldiers. His elite unit is dispatched and two innocent Palestinian policemen are murdered. The film works as a confessional for the young man, who faces the camera to speak to his girlfriend about his guilt. By partially concealing their faces with digitized masks, the anonymous confessor reveals the contradictions between a soldier’s adrenaline-driven experience of real combat and a civilian’s need for forgiveness. The girlfriend, a thoughtful listener, raises the moral issues while assimilating the unbearable thought that her lover is a murderer. Mograbi effectively inserts himself in the narrative like a Greek chorus, singing a libretto of his own self-doubt as an artist and political activist. His ironic commentary underlines his ambivalence toward his subject. His protagonist is so genuinely likeable that you forget what he has done. Mograbi’s ingenious film, a self described “musical documentary tragedy,” leads us through a maze of national duty, admissions of guilt, desire for forgiveness and a soldier’s reality that is rarely discussed. A challenging film, the title Z32 is taken from the case number assigned the testimony by Breaking the Silence, an organization of Israeli veterans dedicated to collecting testimonies from soldiers who have served in the Israeli Defense Forces.

Avi Mograbi

An internationally celebrated and controversial filmmaker, Mograbi employs innovative techniques and seriocomic musings to tell stories that he hopes can change the political reality that he lives in. Mograbi works as a political filmmaker in Israel and is actively involved in Breaking the Silence, an organization of ex-soldiers dedicated to collecting testimonies about their service. His short film, Deportation, launched his career as a filmmaker of note in 1989. He followed this with How I Learned to Overcome My Fear and Love Arik Sharon (1997) and Happy Birthday Mr. Mograbi (1999), among others.

Sally Potter

RAGE

UK – USA, 2008, digital / 35mm, 99 min

Seven days, fourteen characters, a schoolboy and his website. An accident, a murder and a crisis in New York’s fashion industry. Broken dreams, bitter conflict and secret confessions: Sally Potter’s film is a tragicomedy about the effects of globalisation in the age of information.
Over seven days, Michelangelo, a young blogger, shoots behind-the-scenes interviews on his cell-phone at a New York fashion house while Merlin, a designer of Middle-Eastern origin, prepares to show his latest collection. Interviews with a group of people including Minx (a celebrity supermodel), Tiny Diamonds (the financial backer), Anita de Los Angeles (a seamstress), Vijay (who delivers pizzas), Frank (a war photographer) and Mona Carvell (a critic), build a bitterly funny exposé of an industry in crisis as the effects of globalization and a faltering economy polarize working conditions and produce an ever-increasing gap between appearance and reality.
Meanwhile Michelangelo becomes the person everyone turns to: when the death of a model on the runway becomes a murder investigation, the interviews become confessionals. A world which fetishises appearance over humanity turns upside down under the quiet gaze of a child armed only with the tools of his generation: the internet and the cell-phone.

Sally Potter

Born in London on 19.9.1949.
Her work has, from the early 1970’s, embraced dance, performance, theatre,
music and film. Since her first cult hit with THRILLER (1979), Potter has concentrated
on film and directed her first feature, THE GOLD DIGGERS, starring Julie Christie, in
1983. Potter then made a short, THE LONDON STORY, and several documentaries
before the internationally acclaimed and multi-award winning ORLANDO, starring
Tilda Swinton. This was followed by THE TANGO LESSON (1996) and THE MAN WHO CRIED (2000), starring Christina Ricci, Johnny Depp, Cate Blanchett and John Turturro. In 2004 Potter made YES, starring Joan Allen, Simon Abkarian, and Sam Neill. Potter then directed CARMEN for English National Opera in Autumn 2007. Potter’s new film, RAGE, starring Judi Dench, Jude Law, Steve Buscemi, Simon Abkarian and Dianne Wiest is released in 2009. You can find out more at www.sallypotter.com, where Sally keeps a blog and an interactive message board.
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TATARAK

Poland, 2009, 35 mm, 85 min

SWEET RUSH

A middle-aged woman Marta (Krystyna Janda), wife of a small town doctor, doesn’t know about her terminal illness. One day Marta meets a much younger man Bogus (Paweł Szajda) and is fascinated by his youth and simplicity. Their innocent “dates” at the shores of the river, marked by mutual fascination, are put to an end by a sudden and cruel twist of fate: it is Boguś who dies first, drowning, entangled in the roots of the sweet rush he was carrying for Marta. But this is just a first layer of this multi-dimensional tale: Sweet Rush is also a film on making a film and Andrzej Wajda is intertwining the story with real-life monologues of Krystyna Janda dealing with the premature death of her husband, the acclaimed cinematographer Edward Kłosiński. Sweet Rush is a subtle and touching story of impossible love and, at the same time, the director’s personal account of things eternal: love coming too late and death coming always too early.

Andrzej Wajda

Film and theatre director. Born on March 6th in 1926 in Suwałki, Poland. Graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow and the Film School in Łódź. Senator of the Republic of Poland 1989-91.
Received numerous awards and prizes, including:
BAFTA Fellowship 1982; Onassis Prize, Greece 1982; Oficier de la Légion d’Honneur 1982 France; Cesar Award, France 1983; Pirandello Artistic Award, Italy 1986; Kyoto Prize, Japan 1987; “Felix” European Film Awards- Lifetime Achievement Award 1990; Order of Rising Sun, Japan 1995; Premium Imperiale, Japan 1997; Golden Lion Life Achievement Award, Venice,1998; OSCAR Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences – Lifetime Achievement Award 2000; Commandeur de la Légion d`honneur France 2001; Golden Bear Life Achievement Award, IFF Berlin 2006.

Kim Gok

GOGAL

South Korea, 2008, 128 min

EXHAUSTED

Uncompromising and shocking portrayal of the life of a French pimp and his wife exploited by him as a prostitute, who stay together in an almost post-apocalyptic post-industrial landscape. Shot on grungy Super-8.
The first hour focuses on the everyday activities of the man and woman. They consume cheap food, watch TV and nasty porno, they receive customers and combat each other with psychological power games.
Despite emotional numbness, the woman tries to escape. She makes friends with another woman, but then decides that returning to the man is the easiest option. The return of the other woman heralds the very shocking finale. Not for the squeamish.

Kim Gok

Born 1978 in South Korea. He has made many short and several feature length films. Besides Exhausted, there is another film of Kim Gok in Rotterdam in 2009, Suicidal Variations, which he co-directed with his brother Sun. Anti-Dialectic (2001, short), Time Consciousness (2002, short), Capitalist Manifesto: Working Men of All Countries, Accumulate! (2003), Principle of Party Politics (2003, short), Light and Class (2003, short), Geolobotomy (2006), Party Politics Strikes Back (2006, short), Bomb, Bomb, Bomb (2006, short), Critical Density (2007), Suicidal Variations (2007, short, co-dir), Self-Referential Traverse (2008, short), Digression/Degression (2008, short), Gogal/Exhausted (2008).
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XIN
Malezija / Malaysia, 2009, Mini DV, 13min

LOVE SUICIDES
Inspired by a Yasunari Kawabata short story. At an isolated fishing village of Malaysia, a woman’s relationship with her young daughter descends into a path of self-destruction and abuse when she begins to receive a series of strange and mysterious letters from her long-absent husband.

Edmund Yeo
Born on the 6th of March, 1984 in Singapore, Edmund Yeo did a one-year postgraduate course in film production at Murdoch University, Perth in 2006. He joined Woo Ming Jin’s Greenlight Pictures in 2007 and became involved in numerous productions as producer and editor. Notable productions include telemovie Days of the Turquoise Sky (2008) and the short film, Blue Roof (2007). He was also the associate producer of the award-winning feature film THE ELEPHANT AND THE SEA (2007). His latest collaboration with Woo Ming Jin as producer/editor is WOMAN ON FIRE LOOKS FOR WATER (2009).
He started writing and directing his own short films in 2008, the first one being CHICKEN RICE MYSTERY (2008), premiered at the 6th Dubai International Film Festival and winner of two awards at the BMW Shorties competition in Malaysia. Another short film of his, LOVE SUICIDES (2009), was selected for international competition at the 7th edition of the Paris Cinema International Film Festival. He’s also an alumnus of the Berlinale Talent Campus 2009. He currently lives in Tokyo.

HEI SE ZHOU YU
Kina / China, 2008, Beta SP, 7min 56sec

COAL SPELL
Inspired by this old five Yuan RMB note, is an account of the rise and fall of Fuxin, an old industrial coal city located in northeastern China. As a result of the experiences and nostalgia of his upbringing, the artist began to question both History and Power: In a mysterious dark city, yellow sand storms wreak havoc. Several huge smokestacks located in the middle of the city pierce the sky, emitting black fumes, which blanket the sun. The sound of doctrine rings out daily in order to banish various curiosities about this world. The city is a tremendous prison where history is boxed up like a monster – a brutal, fierce monster. One particular day, people were forcing the screaming Soviet Union excavator to clumsily open the skin of the land, gradually closing the heart of the city…even the changes of history can be closely watched.
People’s money, pattern is just the illustration…

Sun Xun
Born in 1980 in Fuxin, Laioning Province, China, and lives in Hangzhou, where he studied at the China Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou, China. In 2006 he founded Pi, his animation studio. His films have been screened at numerous festivals, including, in 2007 alone, the 25th Torino Film Festival, Torino, Italy; the 8th Seoul International Film Festival; the 53rd International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany, and the MECAL International Short Film Festival, Barcelona, Spain. Sun Xun’s work was recently included in China Power Station: Part II at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway, and his work has also been exhibited at the ShanghART and the Duolun Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai, among many other institutions throughout China. To create his meticulous animations, Sun Xun produces a multitude of drawings that incorporate text within the image. His subjects range from elements found in world history and politics, to natural organisms. He then films the drawings, sequentially one at a time, to create a sense of movement and suggest the passing of time, the machinations of history, and the beauty inherent in simple forms. For over a week, Sun Xun inhabited the Vault Gallery to develop a new animated, site-related video and drawing installation.

A LETTER TO UNCLE BOONMEE
TH, 2009, digital / Beta SP, 17min 40sec

A slowly moving camera captures the interiors of various houses in a village. They are all deserted except one house with a group of young soldiers. They are digging the up the ground. It is unclear whether they are exhuming or burying something. The voices of three young men are heard. They repeat, rehearse, memorise a letter to a man named Boonmee. They tell him about a small community called Nabua where the inhabitants have abandoned their homes. The wind blows fiercely through the doors, and the windows, bringing with it a swarm of bugs. As evening approaches, the sky turns dark. The bugs scatter and the men are silent.
A LETTER TO UNCLE BOONMEE is part of the multi-platform PRIMITIVE project which focuses on a concept of remembrance and extinction set in the northeast of Thailand. Boonmee is the main character of the feature film of the project.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Born in Bangkok and grew up in Khon Kaen in north-eastern Thailand. He holds a degree in Architecture from Khon Kaen University and a Master of Fine Arts in Film-making from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He began
making film and video shorts in 1994, and completed his first feature in 2000. He has also mounted exhibitions and installations in many countries since 1998. Often non-linear, with a strong sense of dislocation, his works deal with memory, subtly addressed personal politics and social issues. Working independently of the Thai commercial film industry, he is active in promoting experimental and independent film making through his company Kick the Machine, founded in 1999.
His art projects and feature films have won him widespread international recognition and numerous festival prizes, including two prizes from the Cannes Film Festival. In 2005 he was presented with one of Thailand’s most prestigious awards for visual artists, Silpatorn, by the Thai Ministry of Culture. In 2008, he has become the first artist to receive the Fine Prize from the 55th Carnegie International, USA. Also in 2008, the French Minister of Culture and Communications bestowed on him the medal of Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des letter (Knight of the Order of Arts and Literature).
His latest film, Syndromes and a Century, completed in late 2006, was the first Thai film to be selected for competition at the Venice Film Festival

BLINDFIELD
UK, 2009, HD, 11min,

BLINDFIELD
A woman who was institutionalised in the 1950s relives her experiences of Electric Compulsive Therapy and becomes increasingly dislocated. She is the victim of the ECT but takes a position of power behind a seated woman whose hair she combs, alternating between menacing and tender.

Christine Webster

Coming from a background of lens-based media, Webster developed an exhibiting career as a practicing artist. Fascination with role-play and the different personae people reveal, Webster began a study of desire, vulnerability, intimacy and power; all the work stemming from a need to question the status quo.
By exposing or subverting the norm Webster explores work that is anti-hierarchical. Recent work involves a film work, „Blindfield“ 2008 which explores the role of the individual in relation to structures of power, in this case, the asylum.
Webster sees her role as that of catalyst. She draws from her own vulnerabilities and seeks subjects who are willing to be directed, so that together they can portray aspects of human psychology that will find empathy or offer intimacy to the viewer.

Gabriel Watson / Frank Acshberg
NU HÄNDER DET IGEN
Sweden, 2008, HD / DVD, 4min 35sec

NU HÄNDER DET IGEN
A close up study of human behavior.

Gabriel Watson
Gabriel Watson, born 1972. Director and Editor/Animator. Gabriel Watson makes documentary, shortfilm and animation together with Director and film/stillphotographer Frank Aschberg under the name of They Will Never Catch Us.

Frank Acshberg
Director and Film/Stillphotographer. Frank Aschberg makes documentary, shortfilm and animation together with Gabriel Watson.

Hatuey Viveros
MAREA
Mexico, 2008, 35mm,14min

TIDE
Chico, a man aged 60, lost his wife in a fishing accident. Since then he walks on the beach searching for some trace of her, accumulating individual objects that the sea yields. In his daily walks finds a crab that he adopts as a pet and that is, in some way, a metaphor for himself. One day the crab dies in its cage and with it Chico’s hope to continue living.

Hatuey Vivero
A mexican filmmaker. He first started as a cinematographer (Elefante rosa, (2009) Canción de los niños muertos (2008), Luna en la tierra (2005)). Tide is his first film as a director.

Denis Villeneuve
NEXT FLOOR
Canada, 2008, 35mm, 11min 34sec

During an opulent and luxurious banquet, complete with cavalier servers and valets, eleven pampered guests participate in what appears to be a ritualistic gastronomic carnage. In this absurd and grotesque universe, an unexpected sequence of events undermines the endless symphony of abundance.

Denis Villeneuve
has rapidly achieved both public and critical attention for films showcasing his powerful and distinctive cinematic voice. His first two feature films, Un 32 août sur terre and Maelström, were screened to critical acclaim at many international festivals.

Karl Tebbe
MILBE
Germany, 2008, 35mm, 6min

MITE
It’s a short animation film about my grandmother, Oma Grete, and gigantic house dust mites that threaten to destroy the world.

Karl Tebbe
Born in 1970 in Dortmund, Germany. He obtained an MA in Applied Theatre Science at Giessen University, Germany in 1996 and has acted in various performance theatre pieces. He attended the International Film School in Cuba in 2002 and recently completed cinematography studies at the University of Applied Sciences in Dortmund. „Milbe“ is his graduation film.

Aleksandar Spasoski
VOYEUR
Macedonia, 2008, Mini DV / DVD, 5min

The quintessence of Aleksandar Spasoski’s work „VOYEUR“ is not a mere reporting, but the intuitive experience of a voyeur.
His installation – a harmonic interplay of production and postproduction,emphasized by acoustic elements and original compositions, enables the viewer to assume the role of a voyeur. We receive impressions of unfamiliar scenes, unhurriedly changing, almost strolling, at the steady pace of a pedestrian, whose echo of steps becomes our own.
Spasoski makes use of existent film material and increases its effect by adding his own sequences and re-composing them anew. Out of his personal experience, he thereby shows scenes of someone wandering the nightly streets of alien cities and gazing into stranger’s windows, into stranger’s lives. The phenomenal quiet and solitude recalls the ambiance as created by works of Doug Aitken. Both Aitken and Spasosky deal with homelessness, the alien and transitory, and neither of them offers a solution, there’s no beginning, no end. Art succeeds in portraying the visible as well as the invisible – in this sense, VOYEUR succeeds.

Aleksandar Spasoski
A representative of the young generation of visual and multimedia artists, who graduated in Fine Arts from the Skopje Art Academy, after which he obtained a Masters Degree from the Media Art Academy in Munich, Germany.
His artistic work includes painting and involvement in various projects such as installations, videos, music production movie directing, as he posses a profound knowledge and professional experience. In this way he has acquired a wide range of artistic expressions often interwoven into a unique work of art in the direction of creating a harmonious mixture of media.
From year 2000 as a resident artist in Germany, Spasoski specializes in Media Art at ADBK Munich Art Academy and attended several courses at ZTK Kalsruhe Istitute for Media Art in Germany.
During his eight years residence in Germany he develops mix-media projects from audio-visual nature and creates the art group “Apple ypsilon” that performs at Kunstverein in Ingolstadt, Germany, he collaborates on performances with Felix Ruckert, famous German choreograph, and creates an art video for German Architecture, that was projected trough the whole 2008 at the city museum in Köln, Germany.
As Spasoski’s biggest hit, the movie “Voyeur” it is awarded on the Munich Art Academy as the best video for 2008, from where it followed its nomination on the very well reputed Film Festival Cassel in Germany, and at the same time took participation at Eastern Neighbors Festival in Utrecht, Holland as a representative from Macedonia.

Shih-Ting Hung
VIOLA: THE TRAVELLING ROOMS OF A LITTLE GIANT
USA, 2009, HD / , 8min

On a stumble on slippery moss at the 4 o’clock bus stop, Seven-year-old Viola, trying to discover the world, puts solitude in her suitcase and begins her dreamy journey.

Shih-Ting Hung
As a Student Academy Award winner, Shih-Ting hung got her MFA from university of Southern California, Animation & Digital Arts in December 2007 and is known as a music video director with her distinguishable visual arts.Born and raise on a fisherman’s island, Pescadores. Hung went on her fine art study at National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei. Aside from her 2008 student Academy winning film “Viola : the Traveling Rooms of a Little Giant’ and several music video awards in Taiwan, she has also been broadly involved in numerous film productions as a production design and an art director.(July 2008) Hung’s most recent work is the music video “Imitation” for the Orange county based band Melee’s 2nd single in the album “Devils and Angles’ 2008. Warner Brothers Record.

Semiconductor
MATTER IN MOTION
Italy – UK, 2008, HD/DVD installation / Beta SP, 5min 36sec

The Universe is at once in a constant state of integration and disintegration. In searching for an understanding of the material world around us, Semiconductor have restructured the city of Milan. Displaying attributes more familiar to the molecular world its cityscapes have started to take on natural properties that reveal a city in pieces and where generative forms are in perpetual transformation.
Matter in Motion is a series of vignettes which originated as photographic panoramas taken around Milan. In each setting field recordings have been made and used to directly reconstruct the fabric of the city, introducing a temporal and spatial allusion. Give me matter and motion and I will construct the universe – Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

Semiconductor: Ruth Jarman / Joe Gerhardt
Semiconductor make moving image works which reveal our physical world in flux; cities in motion, shifting landscapes and systems in chaos. Since 1999 UK artists Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt have worked with digital animation to transcend the constraints of time, scale and natural forces, they explore the world beyond human experience questioning our very existence. Central to these works is the role of sound, which becomes synonymous with the image, as it creates, controls and deciphers it; exploring resonance, through the natural order of things.
Interested in the possibilities of the computer as an artistic tool they have brought a sculptural approach to each work, exploring both the physicality of the medium and the data as material to reflect on the physical world around us. More recently they have combined these approaches with ideas of natural philosophy to reflect on contemporary art practice and find a place where science and art meet.
Their award winning work has been exhibited, screened and performed extensively.

Harald Schleicher
CELLUILOIDIVA
Germany, 2008, digital / Beta SP,11min 15sec

What does it take to become a woman, to be a woman, to stay a woman? Difficult questions – not only women do know that. But help is at hand: Divas of the silver screen show us the way. Icons of the movies speak out on longings and fear, love and hate, and the search for female identity. They let us participate in their passion, their happiness and their tears, and their assertiveness. A movie without men? Almost without men. CELLULOIDIVA is the female pendant of A MAN’S GOT TO DO WHAT A MAN’S GOT TO DO.

Harald Schleicher
1951. – born in Backnang, Germany.
1973.-1979. – studies in Fine Arts
1983.-1990. – studies in Cinematic Art, Promotion
1993 – professor in the Johannes Gutenberg University for Ciematic Arts, Mainz

Edouard Salier
4
France, 2009, HD / Beta SP, 16min 40sec

Four letters. 400 000 possibilities. Only one is real.

Edouard Salier
He has created over the past ten years a wide range of graphic works, including short films, promos, tv idents and installations.
In 2005, his short films Empire and Flesh started touring around the world (Venice, Sundance, Paris, London, New York, Toronto, Séoul), and winning several awards in festivals. His new film 4 premiered in Clermont-Ferrand 2009 and has already been selected in more than 20 festivals.
Edouard Salier is now preparing his first feature film.

Grzegorz Rogala
KINO MARJAN
Poland, 2009, ,3min 40sec

A short story about time and film creation.

Grzegorz Rogala
Born in 1956. Studied Cinematography at PWSF Tv i T in Lodz, Poland.
Member of Polish Filmmakers Society, Polish Society of Fine Arts.
From 1988 owner of „Studio Rogala“, film production and postproduction company in Warsaw. Produced or took part in production of over 800 commercials and feature films.
Several works in collection of National Museum, Warsaw, private collection in France, Germany, USA, England, Poland, Holland, New Zeland.
From 2007 leads , with Jozek Piwkowski, gallery 2b+r in Warsaw

Schloss Reynold Reynolds,
SECRET LIFE
Germany, 2009, 16mm, 9min2009, 16mm, 9min

The first from a three-part cycle exploring the imperceptible conditions that frame life. In Secret Life, a woman is trapped in an apartment that experiences a collapse of time. While time is perceived as linear, the space is a clock machine that runs circular and repetitive. New durations come into the normal rhythm of life and the apartment suffers an explosion of activity. Without the certainty of time, the occupant of the apartment is unable to keep her location, and her mind neglects the organization of the experience, leaving her only with sensations. The thoughts escape from her and grow like plants out into the space around her, living, searching, overtaking her apartment, wild threatening her; then dying and decaying like animals.

Reynold Reynolds
Born in 1966 in Central Alaska. During his undergraduate schooling at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Reynolds initially studied physics receiving a bachelor’s degree under the professorship of Carl Wieman (Physics Nobel Laureate 2001). Changing his focus to studio art he remained two more years in Boulder to study under experimental film maker Stan Brakhage. Reynolds then finished an M.F.A. in New York City at the School of Visual Arts.
Influenced early on by philosophy and working primarily with 16mm and Super 8mm film as an art medium he has developed a common film grammar based on transformation, consumption and decay. Reynolds’ depictions frequent disturbed psychological and physical themes, increasingly provoking the viewer’s participation and dismay.
In 2003 Reynold Reynolds was awarded the John Simone Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and in 2004 he was invited to The American Academy in Berlin with a studio at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien for one year. In 2007 he received the German Kunstfonds support to develop two projects in Berlin in 2008. In 2010 he will have a eight month residency at Akademie Solitude (Germany).

THE COUNTERPART
Hungary, 2008, 35mm,14min

In difficult times and in an awkward place, separated by the world, two old friends meet again.

Laszlo Nemes
Born in 1977 in Budapest, Hungary and grew up in Paris. After studying History, International Relations and Screenwriting, he started working as an assistant director in France and Hungary on short and feature films. For two years, he worked as Béla Tarr’s assistant, and subsequently studied film directing at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. After directing his first 35-mm short film, With a Little Patience, he shot his second short The Counterpart in 2008 and is currently developing his first feature film.

Amir Mehran
MASIRE SARDE KHON
Ireland, 2008, MiniDV / DVD, 7min

COLD BLOOD
The real war victims cannot truly be shown in films, but still frames can just simply be more realistic.

Amir Mehran
Birth Place: 1981,Sabzevar,Iran – B.A from IRIB (Iran TV Faculty as Animation Director). – Member of ASIFA . – Member of Iranian Young Cinema Society. – The beginning of work in Cinema with making the short film „Silence of Shadows“ in 1998. – The beginning of work in the field of Animation with making the short Animation „The Bird“ in 1998.

Mara Mattuschka / Chris Haring
RUNNING SUSHI
Austria, 2008, Beta SP, 28min

A film made up of a dialog between two people. Steffi and Johnny are in a running sushi restaurant. The first conversation soon explodes into a performative parallel world of unspoken thoughts and emotions. Every coming sushi evokes a story from the unconscious repertoire of the chaos of human relationships. Wish-machines are cranked up, creating grotesque parallel worlds and extreme situations.

Mara Mattuschka
Born:1959 in Bulgaria. 1975 “Golden Circle for Advanced Mathematics.” Since 1976 lives in Vienna. 1977 “General Certificate for Education of the University of London.” 1977-83 studied ethnology and linguistics at the University of Vienna. 1990 completion of her degree at the College of Applied Arts (painting and animated film in the master class for Experimental Design under Maria Lassnig). Numerous exhibitions of oil paintings as well as performances and song recitals. 1990 birth of son Max Victor. 1991 received a scholarshipto work in Prague from the Austrian Ministry of Education and Art. 1994 professor of “free art” at the College of Fine Arts in Braunschweig. Member of the Austria Filmmakers Coop and committee member of ASIFA Austria.

Chris Haring
Austrian Chris Haring has been working since 2004 with various artists (musicians, playwrights, dancers, visual artists, etc.) His performances have been staged in various venues and at various events in Europe.

Johan Lurf
12 EXPLOSIONEN
Austria, 2009, DV / Beta SP, 6min

12 EXPLOSIONS
In the sound-chapter of his Theory of Film, Siegfried Kracauer writes: Supposing shrill screams or the blasts of an explosion are synchronized with images of their source and/or its environment: much as they will leave their imprint on the spectator’s mind, it is unlikely that they will prevent him from taking in the images….
Johann Lurf has made a film that refutes this assumption in six minutes.
12 Explosionen shows a series of tableaus filmed in Vienna at night. Before the big bangs occur, the locations selected for them resemble crime scenes: There are shots of dimly lit footpaths, deserted parking lots, a pedestrian bridge made of steel, all with a central perspective. These places are virtually waiting for something to happen. And because of the film’s title we know that something will.
After a brief period of quiet, something blows up at each one, and the sound is accompanied by a simultaneous cut to the same scene from a different angle.
But these cuts escape our attention: We are far too distracted by the light and, more importantly, sound of the explosion in a public space.
12 Explosionen is a fine little study of perception by a filmmaker with a sense of humor who simply wanted to try out what interests him about cinema.

Johan Lurf
Born in Vienna in 1982. Since 2002 he has studied painting at Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts.

Wolfgang Lehman
LEK
Sweden – Germany, 2008, 16mm to Mini DV, 1min 44sec

PLAY
A post-romantic summer dream.

Wolfgang Lehman
Born in Freiburg/Breisgau, Germany in 1967. Active in the film club there, Wolfgang Lehmann wrote film critiques and began working for the municipal cinema Freiburg, a post he held till until 2005. As member of the municipal cinema Freiburg, he developed and organised several retrospectives and programmes. He focused on presenting works of the film- and video avant-garde from its beginnings until today. His main contributions have been to unearth little known or forgotten films, as well as explore areas such as “expanded cinema” and multi media works.Wolfgang Lehmann has also displayed interest in the notion of live film performance in terms of a type of staged activity. Concluding his work in Freiburg was the organisation of the Festival Film Forum Freiburg: Expanded Cinema & avant-garde in 2004. His first cinematic efforts were made in 1989. Since 1994 Wolfgang Lehmann has realised and produced his own films, many of which were invited for showings at festivals and museums in Europe, Japan, Korea, China, Canada, USA and South America. Since the beginning of his artistic activity, he has not only been fascinated by film, but music as well. The ECLAT Festival commission, Meer (Sea) (2004), conceived with Telemach Wiesinger as well as with composer Misato Mochizuki, was a further development toward the connection of image and sound.

Adam Leech
SPEECH BUBBLE
Belgium, 2008, DV / DVD, 5min

The main concerns of Adam Leech’s work are the semantics of voice versus speech and the political engineering of public space and community. This ranges from his portrait of gated communities in Florida to a sociological analysis of the immigrant population of Brussels, Illinois. Leech’s project for Manifesta 7, Speech Bubble, began as an investigation into the bankruptcy of the Belgian high-tech speech recognition company, Lernout & Hauspie. Like other multinational corporations, Lernout & Hauspie was a visionary company where money, techno-utopias and the cult of the entrepreneurial personality helped to create a now ubiquitous “marked bubble”. In 2001, it burst. Speech Bubble is a short dialogue between an unemployed salesman and his lover, Magdalena, who seems to be the futuristic product of artificial intelligence.

Adam Leech
An American-born painter and video artist. In painting, his major reference is Pointilism and, in particular, Seurat. Given its pixelled nature, video is another, contemporary example of pointillist technique and, as with Seurat’s paintings, the colour effect is obtained not by mixing, but by juxtaposing points – or pixels – to make them optically blend into one another. It was almost natural that Leech would take up creating videos and installations.
Situating his work within the context of a global economy, Leech is particularly interested in economic failure within institutions and business companies and the psychological dynamics this entails. In Leech’s work, such ‘aesthetics of failure’ stands in sharp contrast with America’s pathological optimism. On a purely descriptive level, without adding any personal comment or critique – both in the video work and on canvas – Leech depicts contemporary American way(s) of life.

Vuk Jevremović / Xabier Erkizia
BERBAOC
Spain, 2008, digital / 35mm, 5min

Animated short- film directed by the artists José Belmonte, Izibene Onederra, Mercedes Sánchez-Agustino, Gustavo Díez and Irati Fernández, based on a music piece by Xabier Erkizia, created from an interview given by the musician Santiago Irigoyen.

Vuk Jevremović
Frankfurt on Main, 1959. His first animation, The Wind Subsides (1996), was based on a cheetah in motion. That film was shown all over the world and won two Grand Prix and seventeen awards. His next film, Panther (1998), inspired by a Rilke’s poem, won fifteen international awards and was nominated for the Oscar of the Best Animated Short Film. Since then, his life has been linked to animation and he continued to create short films.

Xabier Erkizia
Lesaka, 1975. Musician, producer and reporter. His work is based on research among different people, sounds and formats, such as acoustic, individual and group installations and collective improvisation. He has performed his work in several countries in Europe and America and has published several records. He runs the Ertz Other Music Festival www.ertza.net and acts as a coordinator in the Audiolab sound department at Arteleku.

Ger Ger
WHAT THE FUCK
Germany, 2008, Mini DV / DVD, 6min

Native Americans are living in fenced Indian reservations in times when signs of the brutal history completely disappeared.
Monuments remembering the loss are rare and voids remain. For two hours an empty billboard in Utah converted into an ephemeral interactive memorial. An investigation of history and memory, meaning and interrelations. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. Technology: In covering up sensors hanging off the billboard with the palm of the hand, single syllables are unveiled.

Ger Ger
Media artist, born in Vienna/A 1981, currently lives and works in Berlin/D. He feels drawn to art and digital media early on in life, receives his first honors and awards aged fourteen. M.A. in Digital Arts and Visual Media Design. Study with Karel
Dudesek, Peter Weibel and Tom Fürstner at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. Scholarship in Visual Communication with Joachim Sauter at the University of Arts in Berlin. His work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions at Ars Electronica (Linz), Electrohype (Malmo), Open (London), FILE (Sao Paulo/Curitiba City), Kunsthalle (Vienna), and many other venues. His awards include the Prix Ars Electronica, CYNETart, Rheingold Award and Prix MultimediaArt.

Jon Garano / Raul Lopez
ASÄMARA
Spain, 2008, HD / 35mm, 9min

sent to work, sent to earn a living. This is the reality millions of children must face in Africa nowadays, in spite of their extreme youth. Either in the city or in rural areas, their fight is the same: surviving.

Jon Garano
San Sebastian, 1974. He studied Journalism and Advertising at the University of the Basque Country and Cinema in Sarobe (Basque Country) and in San Diego (USA). In 2001 he founded a production company called Moriarti with other four colleagues, and he has worked as film director and/or screenwriter for many audiovisual projects. He has also been the executive producer of the documentary film Lucio.

Raul Lopez
San Sebastian, 1971. Videogame graphic designer. He completed his audiovisual learning with cinema and video courses in the Cultural Centre of Larrotxene. Since then, he has worked in many productions as editor and graphic designer and as director in Asämara, Autorretrato and Tras los visillos.

Erik Fusco
BERRIES FROM BROD
Netherlands, 2009, MiniDV / Beta SP, 14min

A short story about the fate of the Goran minority in Kosovo. Erden must look for work abroad because his village has nothing to offer anymore. Before leaving he makes one last hike into the mountains where he grew up.

Erik Fusco
A Dutch/Italian documentary maker who currently lives in Utrecht, the Netherlands. After finishing several film courses in Amsterdam and studying Theatre-, Film and Television studies at Utrecht University, Erik started to make documentaries. Berries from Brod is his third work.

Sigfried A. Fruhauf
GROUND CONTROL
Austria, 2008, Beta SP, 2min

A rough video miniature. It begins with the simplest and most fundamental thing the electronic moving-image machine has to offer: the uncontrolled beam of electrons directed across a photoelectric layer of cesium oxide lining a Braun tube, or snow.
Recording this chaos involves a fascination that existed during the early days of film: the repeatability of a unique event. A visual sequence which has never before existed and will never happen again becomes reproducible, thereby losing the status of the chaotic. This idea, a result of the desire to control an uncontrollable world, is the beginning of the chain of associations in this video, which randomly acting ants push their way into. The image of them crawling is manipulated in the reproduced images, distortion of their movement is forced upon them. The insects become monsters when, after being locked into the frame, they suddenly burst into the (snow)storm as a sequence of individuals. This echoes the atmosphere of terror in the so-called bug movies of the fifties (Them!,Tarantula,etc.) Nature goes wild as a result of scientific experiments, taking its revenge on humankind in the form of giant insects. The snow is carried over to a satellite antenna, a fuzzy outline of which appears in the picture:

Sigfried A. Fruhauf
Born 1976 in Grieskirchen (Upper Austria). Lives and works in Linz and Heiligenberg. 1991 – 1994 Training as commercial manager. Since 1993 experiments with video an later also with film. Since 2001 has organized film and art events with the artist group „wunderkinder“. Studied experimental visual desgin at the Art University Linz. Participation in numerous international film festivals

Steve Claydon
THE ANCIENT SET
UK, 2008, video / BetaSP, 9min

‘A staccato collision of monadic pixels, antique statuary, modern-day men and women in woeful nylon togas and a soundtrack that feeds the score of a composition designed to be played on replica Roman instruments through a slightly outmoded synthesizer, the work is a deliberately unsuccessful, even grotesque, appropriation of Classical culture, which nevertheless points not only to other such appropriations in Western history and to the power structures they supported but also to the wild side of the ancient world that they so often suppressed or denied. Every replay of the past is fated to be flawed (even in the most scrupulous historical re-enactment group there’s always a roundhead in bifocals or a Cicero in socks) and perhaps says more about the time in which it occurs than the time it seeks to evoke. Claydon’s work may do much business with history, but in truth it is about now – a moment built on fictions, and one that will be fictionalized in the years to come.’

Steve Claydon
He’s drawn to the often-overlooked moments in history where art interfaces with politics. His paintings include references to Vorticism, with his sculptures and posters referring to monuments and memorials from the turn of the last century. His work has a faux-antiquated feel, often with the artist deliberately attempting to distress the works, imbuing them with their own sense of history. Recent exhibitions include a solo statement at Art Basel, a solo show at White Columns, New York and ‘Rings of Saturn’ at Tate Modern, all 2006. Claydon lives and works in London and is represented by Hotel, London.

Stefano Cattini
IVAN E LORIANA
Italy, 2008, DV / MiniDV, 10min 40sec

Three- or four-year old children master well-formed words as they can hear and utter them properly, even if they do not get the real meaning out of them. Unfortunately this is not true for everybody. Deaf children start attending nursery schools, lacking such sounds and such words. Ivan and Loriana communicate with each other by means of “child signs”, a very simple sign language. Their tounges are not “happy-go-lucky” and are so untrained as to seem strange outsiders inside their own young mouths. While bestowing threatening looks and heartening smiles, the nuns – their resolute teachers – always have to conjure up new strategies. And all of a sudden, it’s magic: hard work turns into a game!

Stefano Cattini
Born on January 18th 1966 in Carpi (Italy), where still lives and works. After some experience as photographer, since year 2000 works as Documentary filmmaker.

Dietmar Brehm
PRAXIS – 3
Austria, 2008, Beta SP, 23min

Dietmar Brehm’s Praxis series comprises a number of films under construction: At present there are three parts which can be differentiated into 21 scenes; a fourth, according to Brehm, is currently in production, and a number of other sequels are planned. Some of the series’ segments, ranging from artificial ecstasy to cool contemplation, are video works, while others are radical transfers of 16mm film to digital film stock, which has enhanced the graphic, painterly aspects of Brehmesque cinema considerably. The idea of recycling is not foreign to artists like Brehm, who tend to get caught up in certain images. Accordingly, Praxis 1-3 is characterized by discolorations and revolutions, extensions and condensations, visual trails and jumps in time: a work of advanced visual rhythm.

Dietmar Brehm
Born in 1947 in Linz. 1967-72 studied painting at the University of Fine Arts/Linz. Professor at the University of Fine Arts/Linz. Drawing + painting, experimental films and photography. Numerous filmscreenings and exhibitions at home and abroad.

Martijn Van Boven
A THOUSAND SCAPES
The Netherlands, 2009, HD, 10min

Constituted in an imaginary black and white landscape, ’A Thousand Scapes’ is a search to describe the basic elements of cinema: the experience of time, the relationship between sound and image, editing. In three parts the film unfolds, in a programmed audio visual landscape, into a complex realm of abstract forms and lines complemented within an immersive sound landscape.
The last part of the film shows a disturbing disruption of the previous scenes. Via a complex algorithm the audio visual elements are scattered around creating a unique visual dialect and intense rhythm, leaving the spectator engaged for orientation into a newly defined space.

Martijn Van Boven
The work of Martijn van Boven (1977, the Netherlands) lies in the field of experimental film and computer art. Combing the techniques and possibilities of modern image processing and creation within the context of the experimental film and early computer generated films. Martijn van Boven studied at the Royal Art Academy in The Hague ( Holland), at the Image and Sound department. His work comes in a wide variety of video-installations, films, collaborations with composers and Live Cinema performances.His work has been shown at numerous festivals world-wide. Since 2000 He works as a free-lance film and video curator. Focusing on the avant-garde film and abstract cinema. Martijn van Boven teaches audio-visual Design at the Art Academyof Arnhem (the Netherlands). In 2003 he co-founded the new media art center TAG (the Hague, Holland).

Martijn Van Boven
A THOUSAND SCAPES
The Netherlands, 2009, HD, 10min

Constituted in an imaginary black and white landscape, ’A Thousand Scapes’ is a search to describe the basic elements of cinema: the experience of time, the relationship between sound and image, editing. In three parts the film unfolds, in a programmed audio visual landscape, into a complex realm of abstract forms and lines complemented within an immersive sound landscape.
The last part of the film shows a disturbing disruption of the previous scenes. Via a complex algorithm the audio visual elements are scattered around creating a unique visual dialect and intense rhythm, leaving the spectator engaged for orientation into a newly defined space.

Martijn Van Boven
The work of Martijn van Boven (1977, the Netherlands) lies in the field of experimental film and computer art. Combing the techniques and possibilities of modern image processing and creation within the context of the experimental film and early computer generated films. Martijn van Boven studied at the Royal Art Academy in The Hague ( Holland), at the Image and Sound department. His work comes in a wide variety of video-installations, films, collaborations with composers and Live Cinema performances.His work has been shown at numerous festivals world-wide. Since 2000 He works as a free-lance film and video curator. Focusing on the avant-garde film and abstract cinema. Martijn van Boven teaches audio-visual Design at the Art Academyof Arnhem (the Netherlands). In 2003 he co-founded the new media art center TAG (the Hague, Holland).

Blu
MUTO
Italy, 2008, ,7min,

An ambiguous surrealistic animation painted on public walls: in-door in Baden, out-door in Buenos Aires

Blu
Started out his artistic career following his passion for drawing, public art, particularly unauthorized, illegal art. Coming from the graffiti culture he started developing his art based on a very personal figurative style. His work lives in two stages and two different spaces.
It originates from sketches jotted down in sketchbook, which represent a diary as well as an image database to be used in the second stage: the mural. The actual project starts in front of the building, with size and load bearing elements of the wall, in effort to identify an impossible combination between painting and surrounding architecture. He sometimes made animation short films.

Bif
DIX
France – UK , 2008, HD / Beta SP, 7 min

Marc needs the paving stones on which he walks to move, for fear of stepping on the lines. He starts a treatment to overcome his phobia.
The film is an illustration of Marc’s psychological state, progressively focusing on the graphic and aesthetic representation of his introspection, while he confronts his inner fears which lie hidden behind his obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Bif
A directing collective incubated within the studios of The Mill in London. It comprises Fabrice Le Nezet, Francois Roisin and Jules Janaud, all having graduated top of their class from world renowned French animation school Supinfocom. Before the partnership began, this trio of animators had already independently directed award winning graduate films. Raymond, their first short film together as Bif, was selected in more than 70 international festivals (Clermont, Brooklyn, Annecy, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico) and won several awards. DIX is their second short film.

Patrick Bergeron
LOOPLOOP
Canada, 2008, MiniDV / DVD, 5 min

Using animation, sounds warping amd time shifts this video runs forwards and backwards looking for forgotten details, mimicking the way memories are replayed in the mind. LOOPLOOP is made from a sequence I captured in a train going to Hanoi in Vietnam. I filmed the houses boarding the railroad. The 1000 images of this sequence have been stitched into one long panoramic image. Into this long still image, I integrated other moving elements and builted smooth transitions over it. LoopLoop is a video loop.

Patrick Bergeron
Video artist and researcher, I modify and manipulate the image and its details. I’m interested about the concepts of speed, memories and the image components. My work is a mix of animation, abstract film and documentary.
For the last 15and the image components. My work is a mix of animation, abstract film and documentary.
For the last 15 years, I’m working in special effect for the film industry. I’m a digital compositor. I worked on some of the most challenging shoots on films like „The Lord of the Rings“ and „The Matrix“.

Melika Bass
SONGS FROM THE SHED
USA, 2008, 16mm / Beta SP, 23 min

A fractured, makeshift family seeks out a meditative existence, their lives mysteriously intertwined through ritual and habit. Part musical, part melodrama. An enigmatic tale of eternal return, a decayed slice of American Gothic.

Melika Bass
She grew up in the American South, and studied filmmaking at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her films have screened in Los Angeles, New York, Iceland, Cuba, Finland, and other locales. In 2008, she received a Media Arts Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council, and an Artadia Award. She currently lives in Chicago, working on her first feature, a prairie grotesque set on an abandoned dairy farm.

George Barber
WELCOME
UK, 2008, Mini DV / DVD, 5 min 50 sec

This movie recycles and re-cuts appropriated footage from British dramas, adverts and documentaries. Essentially, the work attempts to corrupt and mingle meanings which ostensibly have nothing to do with each other. There are three areas of meanings involved; each enticed to overlap with the other like an unstable Venn Diagram. The first area is to do with the end of the world; CO2 emissions, mindless consumerist energy use and a sense of all of us needing to act soon if we are to save the planet. The next area is linked to a voice over lifted from ‘Desperate Housewives’; ‘The word welcome always carries a certain amount of risk, because to let people into your home is to let them into your life – and some may never want to leave.’
The third area is derived from reality shows. Here some of the UK’s poorest individuals tell of beating each other up for fun.

George Barber
His recent found footage work, ‘Following Your Heart”, “Welcome” and “Autumn” use off-air adverts and tv films, mostly American. The central conceit is to take found footage and manipulate it into a new artistic experience. The adverts and dramas all essentially present clichéd dialogue but by the use of repetition, music, the work rises away from being humdrum television into something more disturbing and effecting. He has been part of numerous programmes at Tate Modern and had retrospectives at the ICA, New York Film & Video Festival and recently at La Rochelle Festival, France. He has been written about by Paul Morley and Gareth Evans, the Time Out & Vertigo magazine critic and in March Art Forum by Ed Halter and in Art Monthly by Martin Herbert. His “Automotive Action Painting” won First Prize at the 24th Hamburg International Short Film Festival in June 2008.

Adoor Gopalakrishnan
ORU PENNUM RANDAANUM
India, 2008, 35 mm, 115 min

A CLIMATE FOR CRIME

In this four-part collection of modern-day stories, director Adoor Gopalakrishnan presents situations in which protagonists face human predicaments. In ‘The Thief’, a schoolboy rebuffs slurs on his father being a thief and a jailbird. But the boy is crushed when his desperate belief that his father will reform is proved wrong. ‘The Police’ is a story of a couple of corrupt policemen who frame a poor unskilled worker to cover their own tracks. In ‘Two Men and a Woman’, a student under the patronage of a rich family, thinks he has made a servant girl pregnant which initially unleashes his shame – and subsequent strength. Finally, ‘One Woman, Two Men’ sees two rivals, vying for the affection of a beautiful woman, who pay a heavy price to win her commitment while she remains enigmatic in her choices.

Adoor Gopalakrishnan

Born in 1941 in Kerala, India. He studied at the Gandhigram Rural University and at the Film and Television Institute of Pune. His first feature, ‘One’s Own Choice’ (1972), brought him global acclaim. Subsequent films include ‘Face To Face’ (1984), ‘Monologue’ (1987), ‘The Walls’ (1990), ‘The Servile’ (1994), ‘Man Of The Story’ (1996) and ‘Shadow Kill’ (2002) – each of which have won prestigious FIPRESCI awards.
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Ramtin Lavafipour
ARAM BASH VA TA HAFT BESHMAR
Iran, 2008, 89 min

BE CALM & COUNT TO 7
Set in little-known but spectacularly beautiful islands in the Persian Gulf, the story revolves around Motu, who belongs to a gang of reckless youth. After receiving contraband goods brought in by smugglers in boats, the gang has to forward the shipments to distant inland destinations. Motu’s father has gone missing while transporting illegal human cargo, leaving his pregnant wife and daughter in the boy’s care. Motu is fearless, and dreams of becoming as rich and famous as his football hero, the Brazilian player Ronaldinho. He befriends the leader of the smugglers, eventually proposing a serious business arrangement. when it finally dawns on Motu that his father is not coming back. Naturally the police are always one step behind and a constant menace. Director Ramtin Lavafipour shot the film in a pure, ultra-realistic style redolent of earlier Iranian films, such as Amir Naderi’s The Runner, and has skillfully fashioned a portrait of a society that is edging toward today’s fast-moving consumer society, leaving behind the ancient traditions of an isolated fishing village.

Ramtin Lavafipour

Born 1973 in Iran. started his artistic career with an interest in photography during high school. Afterwards he studied film making at the IRIB University in Tehran. He has made several documentaries and short films. Be Calm and Count to Seven is his feature début.
Wind Does Not Blow Only in the Sky (2001), Road (2002), One, Two, Three, Four (2003), Hederse (2003), Wind in the Silence of Dust (2005), Behind That Snowy Hill (2007), Be Calm and Count to Seven (2008).
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Raya Martin
INDEPENDENCIA
Philippines – France, 2009, 35mm, 77 min

Early 20th century Philippines. The sounds of war signal the arrival of the Americans. A mother and son flee to the mountains, hoping for a quiet life. One day, the son discovers a wounded woman in the middle of the forest, and decides to bring her home. Years pass. The man, the rescued woman and their child live in isolation from
the growing chaos all over the country. But a coming storm soon threatens their existence, and American troops draw nearer.

Raya Martin

Born in 1984 in Manila, Philippines. Graduated from the University of the Philippines Film Institute in 2005. Worked as writer and researcher in local television, newspaper, radio and online magazines. His short film “Bakasyon” won the Ishmael
Bernal Award for Young Cinema at the 2004 Cinemanila International Film Festival, and his documentary “The Island at the End of the World” won Best Documentary at the 2005.mov International Digital Film Festival.“A Short Film about the Indio Nacional (Or The Prolonged Sorrow of the Filipinos)”, his first feature film, won Best Film at the 2006 Pesaro Film Festival. His second feature “Autohystoria” was awarded Best Film and Best Director (Digital Lokal) at the 2007 Cinemanila International Film Festival. It also received a Special Mention at the Festival
International du Documentaire de Marseille. He is the first Filipino filmmaker to be accepted in the Cinéfondation Résidence of the Cannes Film Festival. A retrospective of his works have been featured in Paris, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Las Palmas de Gran Canarias. His previous work, “Now Showing”, is part of
the 40th Directors’ Fortnight of the Cannes Film Festival 2008. Martin is also a recipient of the 13 Artists Awards of the Cultural Center of the Philippines.Two of his films, namely Independencia and Manila are selected in the Cannes Film Festival, Official Selection 2009.
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Toshifumi Matsushita
EL REGALO DE PACHAMAMA
Bolivija-Japan / Bolivia- Japan, 2008, 16mm, 104 min

PACHAMAMA
A spiritual docudrama set in Bolivia, where a 13-year-old boy lives a traditional life with his family near Uyuni, a salt lake.
One spring, he goes with this father on his first caravan. With blocks of salt strapped to their herd of llamas, they travel “The Salt Trail” for several months, exchanging salt for other products of the Andes. He begins to learn who he is as a young man and a Quecha from their many experiences and encounters.
As the trip comes to its close, he meets a beautiful girl at a festival in a sacred place of his people. The two young people feel a stirring in their hearts as they share a simple but profound dream: to ride a bicycle together across the salt lake.
By the end, he discovers what his grandfather means by “The Gift of Pachamama.”

Toshifumi Matsushita

Born in Japan.
After graduating from Doshisha University ( Law),
worked at Shouchiku Kyoto Film Studio as assistant director .
In 1979, came to the United States to study filmmaking at New York
University.
In 1981, started as a producer at Entel Communication, Inc., a Japanese television company based in NYC.
In 1987, founded Dolphin Productions to make documentaries and TV programs.
Director & producer of the following:
BIG CHIEF 20min. 1992　　
Mardi Gras Indian story set in New Orleans
Official screening at New Orleans Film Festival
Special award at Tokyo Video Festival
CUBA AMOR 40min. 1995
Music Video
VOODOO KINGDOM 45min./ 15min. 1998
Documentary about Voodoo in Republic of Benin, Africa
Bronze award at Tokyo Video Festival
Best Documentary Production at Black International Cinema
Official screenings:
* Ethno Film Festival
* Parnu Int’l Documentary and Anthropology Film Festival
PACHAMAMA ( 104min. 2008 ) 102 min , 2009 ( new version )
First full-length feature film, shot on location in Bolivia from 2002-07.

Simon el Habre
SEMAAN BIL DAY’IA
Lebanon, 2008, HDCam, 86 min

THE ONE MAN VILLAGE
Semaan El Habre, the filmmaker’s uncle, is the sole inhabitant of the village of Ain El-Halazoun. In 1982, the civil war in Lebanon forced the villagers to leave; their houses were destroyed in the conflict. Only Semaan has returned for good. For the past five years he has been living in a house surrounded by ruins, with only his animals and his memories for company. The scars left by the war are not immediately obvious. At first sight, life in the deserted ghost village seems rather idyllic: a snow-covered mountain panorama, a small farm, a content man who loves his cows and who always has a humorous remark on the tip of his tongue. Only gradually do the scars inflicted by the war come to the surface: in the scenery, the history of the El Habre family and in Semaan’s personal life. Each story in the film provides a glimpse of the history of Lebanon and the situation of a country half-way between forgetting and remembering. A film in which horror and beauty, pain and poetry are side by side. An unobtrusive reflection on origins, ties forged with places and people, the consequences of war and the attempt to accept painful memories as part of one’s life.

Simon El Habre

Born in Beirut. In 1998 he obtained his Diploma in Audiovisual Directing from Academie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA) and graduated from Femis (Paris) in Film and Video Editing in 2000. Since 2001 he is teaching Video and Visual Expression as well as Film and Video Editing in ALBA.
He directed a large number of commercials and TV-reportages, mainly for Arab satellite channels MBC, al-Arabia, and al-Jazeera and edited award winning short and documentary films. Simon El Habre is an acclaimed editor in Lebanon and worked, among others, with Ghassan Salhab on his video POSTHUMUS (2007) and his feature film “1958 (SELF PORTRAIT OF YESTERDAY)” (2009).
Simon El Habre is member in the cultural association for the development of cinema, Beirut DC.
Filmography
THE ONE MAN VILLAGE / Semann Bil Day’ia, full length documentary 2008
CHAMBRE 220, (Short) 2000
INSA, (Short) Award for Best Directing – Beirut Film Festival, 1999

Heddy Honigmann
EL OLVIDO
The Netherlands, 2008, 93 min

OBLIVION
A film about poverty and poetry in a country plundered by the powerful.
But also a film where the powerless resist being consigned to oblivion ( Awarded Silver Dove/ Fipresci Prize and Oecumenical Award at Leipzig 2008
EURODO K2009 distribution prize in Oslo,
Best Director, DOCNZ 2009
International Film Festival New Zealand)

Heddy Honigmann

She’s considered one of world’s best documentary filmmakers. Her films
(short & long fictions, short & long documentaries) have traveled all around the world
receiving major awards and important retrospectives as in Toronto, the Museum of
Modern Art in NY, Paris, Berlin, Minneapolis, Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Ontario,
Utrecht, Grasz, Chicago and Berkeley between others.
She has also received many important awards for her entire work, as the Hot Docs
Outstanding Achievement Award (2007), the San Francisco Films Society’s Golden
Gate Persistence of Vision Award (2007), the J. Van Praag Award from the Humanist
Association (2005) Netherlands, the Jan Cassies award for her whole oeuvre from the Dutch National Fund for Cultural Films for Television (2003) Netherlands.
Born in Lima, Peru in 1951, Heddy trained as a filmmaker in Rome and has lived and
worked in the Netherlands since 1978. It is said that love brought her to Amsterdam, and love has been the engine of her art—especially if one considers art a form of love. Heddy isn’t particularly interested in railing against social inequities, despite the sense of political dissatisfaction one hears rumbling under her movies like a dyspeptic subway train. Rather, she is obsessed with the way people of often limited means deal with those inequities—through art, through love, through sex. Through memory. Through dance and through music.
Heddy’s films are elegantly composed, rich in precisely poetic imagery, fluid transitions and narrative flow. Ultimately, though, what one comes away feeling is the humanity, the empathy, the pouring out of hearts. Ask any theologian: What separates man from other animals? The same thing that distinguishes the work of Heddy Honigmann: Soul.

Rajesh S. Jala
CHILDREN OF THE PYRE
India, 2008, 74min

CHILDREN OF THE PYRE
Seven small children work day and night at the biggest crematorium on the planet, located on the banks of the Ganges in the holy city of Varanasi. The children earn their living by keeping the 40 funeral pyres burning 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Hundreds of children and adults, all belonging to the caste of untouchables, work to burn the bodies every day, some 150 deceased Hindus are brought to Varanasi by their families. The children’s job is to stoke the fire, pluck human limbs off the ground, perform the cremation rites and do other dirty jobs. Director Rajesh Jala reveals their horrible working and living conditions in a captivating cinema-vérité style. Shot over the course of 18 months, CHILDREN OF THE PYRE captures the children’s misery in a visually superb manner. Searching for the most intriguing moments in the children’s life, including their refuge in smoking marijuana, Jala has succeeded in making a powerful and memorable film. There are many documentaries about Varanasi, but it’s not often that we get to see a child’s vision of hell on earth.

Rajesh S. Jala

Born in Kashmir, India in 1969, Rajesh S. Jala has shot, directed and produced documentaries since 1997. His work has been shown in international festivals and broadcast on Indian and foreign television. In 2006, he made his debut documentary feature, FLOATING LAMP OF THE SHADOW VALLEY, which was selected for the Amsterdam Documentary Film Festival, Palm Springs Film Festival and the Raindance Film Festival in London. His second documentary feature, CHILDREN OF THE PYRE (2008), is another critically acclaimed film which won numerous awards including the Best Documentary Award at Montreal World Film Festival and the Best Documentary Award at the Sao Paulo International Film Festival. The film was also in competition at the Pusan and the Munich International Film Festivals.

José Padilha
GARAPA
Brasil, 2009, 35mm, 110 min

A portrait of hunger by the point of view of its victims. The documentary shows the universe of three families from Ceará, Brazil, and their day-to-day struggle against hunger. It’s shot in black and white film, in a direct cinema style.

José Padilha

Born in Rio de Janiero on 1.8.1967. He studied business studies, politics and economics in his birthplase, followed by English literature and international politics in Oxford. Since 1999 he has produced several documentaries on socially relevant topics, and his own directorial debut, the multi-award-winning documentary ÔNIBUS 174, received international acclaim. TROPA DE ELITE, which won the Golden bear at the 2008 Berlinale, marked his debut as a feature film director.

Julio Bressane
A ERVA DO RATO
Brasil, 2008, 35mm, 80 min

THE RAT HERB
He and She walk around a cemetery nearby the seashore. The pronouns are their names. They both don’t know each other and are the only alive beings in that place.
At a certain moment, though, stepping on a rock loose on the ground, She trips and falls, and in this very moment is helped by He. She, a teacher, whose father has died three days ago, having nobody else in the world. Facing that situation, He offers himself to look after She during his lifetime. This is the beginning of an uncanny relationship. At his home, they both are emerged into a job: He serves her one of many cups of herbal tea which She is going to drink, and tells her a story. She hears and copies. It is going to last much time. But nobody knows where He wants to reach. Meanwhile, She copies everything in piles and piles of notebooks, which grow and grow, until create high walls. Slowly She begins to feel tired. A weariness that
induces her to a weak breathing and a pale body.The dictations, though, don’t cease. She copies while He dictates. He proceeds about the ambiguity of the geographical forms of the city, about the poisons prepared by ancient indigenous tribes and about the “Erva do Rato”(Tangaracá). The dictations end when He moves from the writings
to the images, using a photographic camera. She will be the unique focus of the shots. Showing photos of the 19th century, of Mexican native women and European naked women, He convinces her to allow him to take photos of herself naked. Later, manipulating her photos, He realizes that parts of them are gnawed by a rat. The achieving makes him furious, overturned and determined to react against the intruder. The rat though, is not a dweller completely undesirable in the house. Besides her complicity, the rat acts more than a mere photo gnawer. Coldly, He plans a way to get rid of the relationship between She and the rat.

Julio Bressane

He is recognized as one of the most personal and experimental of brasilian filmmakers. His formative cinema years took place during the time of the cinema
Novo. He directed his first feature film, Cara a Cara, in 1967. He became known as a central figure in the Cinema Marginal Movement , which was characterized by free interpretations, caustic social commentary. One of his main traits is an exhaustive approach to historical and literary characters.

Antoine D’Agata
AKA ANA
France, 2008, 60 min

AKA ANA
The film borrows the form of the diary. He tells four months when Antoine d’ Agata passed to Japan of September at the end of December, 2006. The film is divided into chapters.
Each is dedicated to a met woman. They are night women: Actresses porno, prostitutes, dancers They speak about loneliness, of night, of sex, black hole and death.

Antoine D’Agata

Born in Marseille (1961), Antoine d’Agata left France in 1983 and remained overseas for the next ten years. Finding himself in New York in 1990, he pursued an interest in photography by taking courses at the International Center of Photography, where his teachers included Larry Clark and Nan Goldin.
During his time in New York , in 1991-92, D’Agata worked as an intern in the editorial department of Magnum, but despite his experiences and training in the US, after his return to France in 1993 he took a four-year break from photography. His first books of photographs, De Mala Muerte and Mala Noche, were published in 1998, and the following year Galerie Vu began distributing his work.
In 2001 he published Hometown, and won the Niépce Prize for young photographers. He continued to publish regularly:
Vortex and Insomnia appeared in 2003, accompanying his exhibition 1001 Nuits, which opened in Paris in September; Stigma was published in 2004, and Manifeste in 2005.
In 2004 D’Agata joined Magnum Photos and in the same year, shot his first short film, El Cielo Del Muerto; this experiment led to his long feature film Aka Ana, shot in 2006/07 in Tokyo.
Since 2005 Antoine d’Agata has had no settled place of residence but has worked around the world.

Thijs Gloger
HOLLAND
The Netherlands, 2008, HD / Beta SP, 80 min

HOLLAND
Olga is 25 years old. She lives in a delapidated apartment, in an anonymous city in Holland. By day she works in her dad’s luxurious clothes boutique, by night she mostly passes her time in the clubhouse of her soccer team. Apart from smoking cigarettes and drinking beer there’s not much to do, but it’s a better option than being at home alone. In a bid to escape the loneliness, Olga regularly takes one of her teammates to her apartment. The routine is predictable. After she’s had sex and a cigarette, Olga goes out to get some french fries. And at night, even the small diner proves to be a good place to pick up people for a one night stand. Having sex, smoking and eating seem to be the only things that make sense in life. Olga’s father and his new girlfriend are pursuing some form of happiness in their enormous mansion, but seem to have blocked out most of their emotions. The work that Olga does in her fathers store doesn’t bring her any joy. Whether she’s staying at home or
at her dad’s mansion, Olga’s nights are sleepless. And the days keep passing. Everyone seems to find comfort in their daily lives. Without really giving resistance to the blandness of her existance, Olga keeps observing her fellow earthlings, wondering where all this eating, fucking and smoking will end. And it will end, though not in a way anyone could expect.

Thijs Gloger

Born in december 29th, 1985. Spent most of his youth in Groningen, a relatively small city in the north of the Netherlands. Having watched almost fifteen hundred films by the age of sixteen, he started writing film reviews. Two years passed, writing for several websites and a magazine. It was not until he became a bit unhappy about writing reviews that his interest in filmmaking awoke. The writing of reviews left him little room for the personal expression that he needed. Most of the problems that he encountered in life were pretty common, but he felt the urge to express himself about it nonetheless. After three years of making short films that were mainly inspired by his personal life, he finished his first feature length film in 2008, titled Zwaartekracht (which translates to Gravity), at the age of twenty-one. This film led to a collaboration with Rene Houwen, a starting film producer. Holland is their first work. Houwen and Gloger agreed to bond for at least three y
ears, to be able to establish a fairly constant flow in making small independent films. As of 2009, they are finishing their second film and are gearing up to shoot their third.

Jon Jost
PARABLE
USA, 2009, 72 min

PARABLE
A parable of the Bush era; swiftly jumping genres, a cowboy surrogate/Bush is thrown out of his house, is picked up by a man who needs a driver, buddy-bonds with him, they sing a Christian camp song, do a robbery and killing, and then cowboy rapes and shoots his new buddy. We arrive in a bucolic farm where a woman is kept on a rope, a man attempts to untie a knotted rope; and after a long and weird interlude including some heavy breathing, the cowboy arrives, seduces and is screwing the woman, and is killed and dumped with other bodies from Abu Ghraib.

PARABLE is a tone-poem of The Time of Bush, a quantum warp in Americana, steeped in the tonal reality of the era, but harking back to earlier times, with painterly references to Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, and Wyeth, and embracing cinematic touch points from neo-realism to cartoons to documentary to magic realism. If you let it, this film will mess your head. Just like the last 8 years.

Jon Jost

Born in Chicago on May 16, 1943, of a military family, Jon Jost grew up in Georgia, Kansas, Japan, Italy, Germany and Virginia. Expelled from college in 1962, he began making 16mm films in January, 1963. He is self-taught. He has made some 20 shorts and 14 feature length films (celluloid, 16 and 35mm), all of which he has conceived, written, photographed, directed and edited; most of these he also produced. Since 1996 he has worked primarily in Digital Video (DV), completing 15 full-length works and many shorts, as well as one large-scale 7 screen installation work, TRINITY, presented at the ZKM, Karlsruhe Germany, in this medium as of 2007.
After 10 years of making short works, Jost made his first feature-length film in 1974, and has since devoted himself to the making of a wide-ranging series of films, largely focused on specifically American topics, in forms ranging from essays (Speaking Directly, Stagefright, and fictions. His work has shown widely in museums, film archives, and festivals since 1975. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, presented a complete retrospective of Jost’s work in January 1991. This show subsequently traveled to the J.F.Kennedy Center, Washington DC, the Harvard Film Archive, the UCLA Film Archive, The Film Arts Foundation of San Francisco, as well as to the Bergamo Film Meeting 1993, the Viennale festival 1993, the Bologna and Torino Film Archives in Italy (1995). Most recently his films were accorded full retrospectives at the Cinemateca Portuguese (1996) and the Filmoteca Español (1997), and in 2006 the Buenos Aires Independent Festival accorded his work a partial retrospective.
Mr. Jost presently is living in Seoul, Korea, teaching as full-professor at Yonsei University, and working on numerous projects with his wife Marcella.

Yves Montmayeur
YAKUZA EIGA: UNE HISTOIRE DU CINÉMA YAKUZA
France, 2008, 72 min

YAKUZA EIGA: A SECRET STORY OF JAPANESE CINEMA
An astonishing journey into Japan’s cinematic underworld, from the end of the Second World War to current times. Emblematic figures of the new Japanese cinema such as Takeshi Kitano and Miike Takashi have recently pushed the genre towards new boundaries. But over a period of 4 decades before, actors and directors met real yakuza and real yakuza and gang leaders became top actors! It was the time the Toei cinema studio, the biggest in Japan, became the ‘Yakuza film Factory’! The filmmaking style of this documentary, ‘Yakuza Eiga’, is a cross between ‘cinéma vérité’ and an historical approach to a popular yet controversial genre: the Yakuza Cinema.’

Yves Montmayeur
Born in France in 1963. Lives and works in Paris.
Film critic for French cinema magazines and TV programs for several years (Canal+, Arte TV Tracks program).
Former film programmer for L’Etrange Festival in Paris.
Moderator of public and press conferences in many festivals including Cannes Film Festival.
He has directed many documentaries about ‘eccentric’ directors such like Michael Haneke, Asia Argento, Miike Takashi, Hayao Miyazaki, Johnnie To, Christopher Doyle…
His previous film documentaries are :
– Filming Haneke. 2000. 26 minutes.
A portrait of controversial director Michael Haneke.
– Electric Yakuza : Go to Hell ! 2004. 52 minutes
A portrait of Japanese cult director Miike Takashi.
– Nice to meet you, Please don’t love me ! 2004. 68 minutes
A portrait of controversial Italian director/actress Asia Argento
– Milkyway Images :The cine-factory of Johnnie To. 2005. 26’
On HK action film director Johnnie To.
– Ghibli et le Mystère Miyazaki. 2005. 52 minutes.
A shamanic journey into the world of Miyazaki’s movies.
– Face-Caché. 2006. 32 minutes
The making of Michael Haneke film, Caché (Hidden).
– Les Enragés du cinema coréen (The Angry Men of Korean cinema). 2006. 55 minutes
New Korean directors making genre movies and politics
– In the Mood for Doyle. 2006. 54 minutes.
A portrait of acclaimed cinematographer Christopher Doyle.
– Hong Kong Film Noir. 2007. 28 minutes.
The new action movies in HK.
– Yakuza Eiga.2008. 75 minutes
A secret story of Japanese cinema
– Viva La Muerte! : Autopsy of the new Spanish fantastic cinema. 2009
60 minutes.
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Marc Peranson
WAITING FOR SANCHO
Canada, 2008, HD / DVD, 105 min

WAITING FOR SANCHO
An ontological investigation into a place where cinema becomes something more than cinema. Filmed in high-definition colour over five days in the Canary Islands of Fuerteventura and Tenerife, WAITING FOR SANCHO is a kind of experimental “making of” the critically acclaimed EL CANT DELS OCELLS (BIRDSONG/ LE CHANT DES OISEAUX). A particular take on the Biblical story of The Three Kings en route to the baby Jesus, EL CANT DELS OCELLS premiered at the Quinzaine des Realisateurs at Cannes 2008.

Marc Peranson
Mark Peranson is the editor and publisher of CINEMA SCOPE magazine, one of the most respected film publications in the English language. He is also a programmer for the Vancouver International Film Festival, and the programming coordinator of the Vancity Theatre in Vancouver. His writing on film has been published in numerous magazines, journals, and newspapers. He also makes his feature film debut in the role of Joseph in Albert Serra’s EL CANT DELS OCELLS. WAITING FOR SANCHO is his first film.