March 19 - 23, 2019 / Bratislava
Visegrad Film Forum 2019 – World famous filmmakers close enough to touch!
An international event at the Film and TV Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava will launch on Tuesday, March 19th. It offers way more than just film screenings. For five days, viewers can look forward to a rich program, consisting of lectures and screenings with seven renowned guests. Evening parties are also an inseparable part of the program, attracting participants with a wide range of music genres and performers.
“This year, the Visegrad Film Forum brings a balanced program from the world of film production. Not only for filmmakers, but for all people who want to look behind the scenes of filmmaking. The program will feature guests who have worked on major films in the positions of directors, cinematographers, editors and production designers,” says managing director Jakub Viktorín. This is also reflected by the names that received the invitation for this year´s festival. Haneke's editor Monika Willi, the favourite of the A-list festivals Sergei Loznitsa, production designer of Cuaron's Roma Eugenio Caballero, Oscar nominated cinematographer Phedon Papamichael and cinematographer of the documentary film Citizenfour Kirsten Johnson and others.
PROGRAM
https://www.visegradfilmforum.com/2019/programme/
Monika Willi - editor
This Austrian filmmaker, anchored herself in the editing room after years of switching out roles in the cinematographic industry. Although she never studied film, she worked as the favourite editor of director Michael Haneke. Her first film on which she worked with him, was the drama The Piano Teacher. From their later years of collaboration, films such as White Ribbon, Amour, and the most recent Happy End came out. In her career, however, she also worked with another director, the documentarist Michael Glawogger. At the Visegrad Film Forum 2019, she will present her film Untitled, which she finished after the director's unfortunate death.
Sergei Loznitsa - director
In 2018, the ambitious Ukrainian director presented three films at festivals in Berlin, Cannes and Venice. He drew attention to himself after he published the film Maidan (2004), which captures a turbulent civil protest against President Viktor Yanukovich in Ukraine. In addition to documentary films, he also made feature films My Joy (2010) and the war story In the Fog (2012), premiered at Cannes. He will present the film The Trial at the Visegrad Film Forum for the first time in Slovakia. The film presents unique archival footage of one of the first constructed political trials conceived by Stalin.
Eugenio Caballero – production designer
This film architect from Mexico is an Oscar winner for the Best Production Design for Pan´s Labyrinth directed by Guillermo del Toro. In addition, Caballero participated in the third sequel to Resident Evil: Extinction (2007), Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control (2009). He was also nominated for an Oscar for his contribution of Alfonso Cuarón's Roma. The director's personal black-and-white statement will be presented at the Visegrad Film Forum 2019.
Phedon Papamichael - cineatographer
The Greek cinematographer collaborated with prominent German director Wim Wenders on the Million Dollar Hotel (2000), that starred stars like Mila Jovovich and Mel Gibson. He also cooperated with director James Mangold on Walk The Line (2005), which portrays the life and death of guitarist and country singer Johnny Cash. One of the most important films he worked on is Nebraska. This black-and-white road-movie about a senior who believes he has won millions of dollars in a lottery has won up to 6 Oscar nominations. Nebraska will be screened as a closing film of Visegrad Film Forum.
Kirsten Johnson - documentarist
This New York City director, producer and cinematographer has made over 40 documentaries. As a cinematographer, she worked on the Oscar-winning film Citizenfour (2014), about a former US security analyst. She also worked as a cinematographer with director Michael Moore on a documentary about America after the twin tower attacks - Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004). Her own documentary film, Cameraperson, premiered at the Sundance festival in 2016 will be screened during Visegrad Film Forum. It combines radical footage from the Middle East war and personal material from her childhood and the last days of her dying mother..
Hakim Belabbes – director, lecturer
Morocco-based director Hakim Belabbes, who is currently teaching film at Columbia University, has founded a Sahara Lab project with two of his filmmaker colleagues Don Smith and Hammad Gueroum, that provides young Moroccan filmmakers with learning and personal growth opportunities that public institutions and schools do not offer. His film Sweat Rain (2016) premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.
Marcin Luczaj - sales agent
Marcin Łuczaj, former Warsaw Film Festival and ZUBROFFKA International Short Film Festival programmer, works for New Europe Film Sales, a Warsaw-based sales agency for both features and shorts - a company which represented films premiered at Berlinale, Venice or Cannes.
Film students from around the world
The school representatives and the filmmakers themselves will introduce the student projects.
In a discussions student will talk about the films themselves, as well as the conditions in which the films were made. The friendly meetings of future filmmakers can be seen in the following blocks: Czech TBU Zlín and the Moroccan Sahara Lab, Polish WRiTV Katowice and Romanian UNATC Bucharest, Hungarian SZFE Budapest and Ukrainian KNUTCT Kiev, Slovak FTF VŠMU Bratislava and Estonian BFM Tallinn.
Visegrad Film Forum 2019
Date: 19th – 23rd of March 2019
Place: Bratislava, Slovakia
Venues: Film and TV Faculty VŠMU, Cinema Lumière
web: http://www.visegradfilmforum.com
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VisegradFilmForum
instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vffbratislava/
youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mpj2r4K88c
Organized by: Boiler NGO
Co-organized by: Film and TV Faculty VŠMU
Financial support: International Visegrad Fund, Audiovisual Fund, Nadácia SPP
Partner schools: The Academy of Performing Arts, Film and TV Faculty in Bratislava, The University of Silesia in Katowice, The Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest, KNUTCT Kiev, BFM Tallinn, Sahara Lab and UNATC Bucharest
