12 filmmakers from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia were selected from a high number of applicants. All of them will work on their projects that are at different production stages: from development to editing / post-production.
Funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the summer school will be organized yearly and aims building capacities of documentary film professionals from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. In addition, the summer school is part of a regional platform that enhances cross-border dialogue and cooperation between film-makers and supports the documentary film culture in the South Caucasus.
To tell a story through images may not always be the easiest or most obvious way to get information across. But through images filmmakers can convey much more than plain information. That is where the craft of documentary film differs from reporting: making a documentary implies to not only informing people, but also getting your vision on a subject across.
CinéDOC Summer School 2018 focuses on visual storytelling: We will be looking at director‘s visions, and defining the style of your film, but also pose practical questions such as: What is the role of angle and framing? The use of color and light? And how to work with imagery in editing a sequence?
Next to the specific needs of own projects we will focus on these subjects in presentations, exercises, group discussions and individual meetings.
CinéDOC’s tutors are Justyna Mielnikiewicz, Srdjan Fink and Ineke Smits. Having distinctive fields of expertise, they are offering different but complementary approaches to the core theme of the curriculum.
Justyna Mielnikiewicz is an Award-winning photographer from Poland, based in Georgia since 2003. She started in 1999 as a reporter for the daily Gazeta Wyborcza. Specialized on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, she published in The New York Times, Monocle, Newsweek International, Marie Claire, GEO France, National Geographic, Le Monde, Stern, German Yearbook of Reporters without Borders.
Since 2001 she works as a freelance documentary photographer on personal, long term projects. Her first book Woman with a Monkey- Caucasus in Short Notes and Photographs was published in 2014.
She completed her long term project A Ukraine Runs Through it, about modern Ukraine in turmoil, featuring the Dniepr river as a metaphor of contradicting influences which shape the country and the region. Supported by a grant from the E. Smith Memorial Fund she currently explores the role of ethnicity in identity formation for Russians and Russian speakers in former Soviet republics, 25 years after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Justyna teaches photography and lectures regularly on the topic she specializes at: transformations of the societies in the so called Post Soviet Union Space. She is a member of MAPS images.
www.justmiel.com, www.mapsimages.com
Srdjan Fink is a Serbian born freelance editor, based in Amsterdam. He graduated as a film editor for both fiction and documentary at the Netherlands Film Academy, Amsterdam School of the Arts. With over 20 years of experience in the post-production industry, Srdjan has successfully worked on numerous film, television and video productions and has screen credits on many award-winning documentary films. He worked with directors such as George Sluizer, Jan van den Berg, Saskia van den Heuvel, Vuk Janic, Sergej Kreso, Masha Novikova, Jiska Rickels, Marc Schmidt and many others.
He speaks Dutch, English, Russian and Serbo-Croatian (mother tongue) and is proficient in Avid, Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro X editing software. Srdjan is a dependable, flexible team player who offers creative input and has ensured successful post-production of many projects.
https://sites.google.com/site/srdjanfink/
Ineke Smits graduated as a photographer and video artist at the Rotterdam Art Academy. In 1994 she completed her Masters Degree in writing and directing at the National Film and Television School in England.
In 2001 her first feature, Magonia, premiered at Toronto International Film Festival. In 2002/03 she was granted a Nipkow Fellowship to work in Berlin on her second feature, The Aviatrix of Kazbek, which closed the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2010.
Since 2003 she made several documentaries: Poetins Mama and Black Gold under Notecka Forest (Silver Wolf Competition IDFA), Transit Dubai (IDFA, Audience Award IFF Gdansk) and Stand By Your President (IDFA). She is currently working on a new film in Abkhazia.
As a producer she was co-founder and head of development of Volya Films between 2004 and 2009. In 2010 she founded Stout&Smits with radiomaker Jeroen Stout. Next to her own work she coaches (international) film projects of young makers, gives workshops and advises funds and organizations. She lives and works in The Netherlands and Georgia.
