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Docu Rough Cut Boutique 2015 Mentors
The selected participants will have the special privilege to work with film/story editors and film professionals who have wide experience in documentary film, have won a number of awards as well as gaining tremendous attention on the side of the audience. They will have long and elaborate sessions with each of projects’ teams.
We are happy to introduce to you our special story editors for Docu RCB 2015!
Thomas Ernst (Hungary) is a freelance film editor and author. His work covers a wide range of genres. Through joining each project at a very early stage he co-creates the workflow and concept of the production together with the director and DOP - from the development of the story to the screening of the finished film. At the Budapest Film Academy he also heads the faculty “Film Editing”. HBO Europe documentaries like “Invisible Strings”, “Overdose” and “Stream Of Love” are on his long credit list. The film “Drifter” won the “First Appearance Award” at IDFA 2014 and is at 2015 Sarajevo FF Documentary Competition. For the editing of the film “The Queen of Silence” he was awarded with the German Kamerapreis for Best Editing 2015.
Ivo Trajkov (Macedonia/ Czeck Republic) is a director, scriptwriter and film editor, who worked in a wide range of genres: comedy, docu-drama, experimental films, and historical drama. As a producer, Ivo Trajkov has been involved in more than 60 episodes of the critically acclaimed documentary series Unexplained Deaths (2001-2007). His films won numerous awards. His film The Great Water (2004), a big international co-production, is the official Macedonian entry for the OSCAR in the foreign language category. Ivo is also professor at the FAMU in Prague and a mentor at various documentary workshops around the world.
Next to our two special story editors Tom Ernst and Ivo Trajkov, we are excited to announce the rest of the amazing mentors that will meet our Docu RCB participants this year!
We are proud to welcome for a third time renowned sales-agent Catherine Le Clef from the French company CAT&Docs, which focuses on the worldwide all media rights distribution of high-profile international feature-length documentaries, TV hours and series, defined by rigor, respect, curiosity, diversity and innovation. Docs that keep us from closing our eyes. Some recent titles from the catalogue of the company: Citizenfour, Of Men and War, Tea Time, The Shelter, My Love don’t cross that River, The Circus Dynasty, Twilight of Life, 5 Broken Cameras, Planet of Snail, Last Train Home, just to name a few. We are very glad Catherine Le Clef kindly gives an award for the best internationally promising project among Docu RCB selected films.
Hanka Kastelicová, the Executive Producer of Documentaries for HBO Europe, has been a passionate advocate for high-quality and uncompromising documentaries for more than 25 years – both as director/producer and as commissioning editor. Based in the Budapest office, and working closely with HBO Europe's production centers in Warsaw, Prague and Bucharest, she oversees all aspects of HBO Europe's documentary output. She earned a Master of Arts degree from the Faculty of Film and TV Documentary Department at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. She came to HBO Europe from Slovenian public broadcaster RTV SLO, where she directed and produced many documentaries; she is an experienced and dedicated documentary film-maker.
We are happy to also welcome Irena Taskovski (UK, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina). Originally from Bosnia, Irena studied at Prague Film Academy (FAMU) and at the Sam Spiegel Film Scool in Jerusalem and obtained a Master degree from National Film & TV School, London. Irena is founder & CEO of Taskovski Films Ltd., London & Berlin based world sales and production company for independent documentary and fiction films. Since 2013 Irena has been working as external consultant / expert on marketing, sales and festivals for many film institutions. Taskovski films welcomes innovative, playful and risky forms of filmmaking capable of engaging and surprising audiences around the globe.
Last but not least, we are thrilled to welcome Kirsten Johnson (USA). Kirsten Johnson is a cinematographer and director. Her most recent camerawork appears in Oscar-winning "Citizen Four", "Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs Gravity", "The Wound and the Gift" and “Very Semi-Serious”. Her credits include Academy Award-nominated, "The Invisible War" and Tribeca Documentary winner, “Pray the Devil Back to Hell”. She and Laura Poitras shared the 2010 Sundance Cinematography Award for "The Oath". Her shooting is featured in “Farenheit 9/11”, Academy Award-nominated “Asylum”, Emmy-winning “Ladies First”, and Sundance premieres: "A Place at the Table", "This Film is Not Yet Rated", and "Derrida”. "Deadline", (co-directed with Katy Chevigny), premiered at Sundance and won the Thurgood Marshall Award. She teaches “Visual Thinking” at the Graduate Journalism Department at NYU and cinematography in the Masters in Film program at SVA. She is currently editing "A Blind Eye", a documentary that investigates her relationship as a cinematographer to those she films.
We want to herewith specially thank the supporters, who generously made the participation of these amazing mentors possible: The USA Embassy to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgarian State Institute for Culture, Macedonian Film Agency and Hungarian Film Fund.
The leaders of Docu Rough Cut Boutique and moderators of all sessions are Rada Sesic and Martichka Bozhilova.
Martichka Bozhilova is a producer of AGITPROP since 1999. She co-produced with Germany, Finland, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy, USA, Greece, Cyprus, Croatia, Romania. Her films have been selected and awarded at Cannes, Berlin, IDFA, Toronto, Sundance, Tribeca, Pusan and many others, and broadcast all over the world. Among them are: Georgi and the Butterflies (Silver Wolf, IDFA 2004), The Mosquito Problem and other stories (Cannes 2007), Corridor #8 (Berlinale 2008), The Boy Who Was a King (Toronto IFF 2011), The Last Black Sea Pirates (Visions du Reel, HotDocs 2013), Love and Engineering (Tribeca 2014). Founder and director of Balkan Documentary Center www.bdcwebsite.com. Member of EDN Executive Committee. Jury member at DokLeipzig 2014 and IDFA 2014. Lecturer in the field of documentary cinema. Martichka received the International Trailblazer Award at MIPDOC in Cannes for creativity, innovation, originality and breakthrough in the field of documentary cinema. www.agitprop.bg
Rada Sesic is a filmmaker, critic, lecturer and curator. Born in Bjelovar (Croatia), lived in Sarajevo (B&H), lives in Utrecht. Collaborates on selection of films at two biggest film festivals in The Netherlands: IFFR Rotterdam and IDFA in Amsterdam, was on a selection of IDFA’s Jan Vrijman Fund for 8 years. Currently, on selection of the Hubert Bals Fund. Heads the Documentary Competition at Sarajevo FF. For seven years was teaching at University of Amsterdam and at the Master of the Dutch Film Academy Amsterdam where she is currently active as an examiner. Has been extensively mentoring at documentary workshops in Europe and Asia. In the Netherlands directed: Room Without a View (1997), Soske (2001), In Whitest Solitude (2001), The Way to School (2007). Her films were awarded at international festivals, screened and bought by MoMa New York. Specialized in cinema of India. Collaborated on several books on cinema.