FOCUS ON ITALY CONFERENCE AT 52nd KRAKOW FILM FESTIVAL
Krakow Film Festival,Instituto Italiano di Cultura in Krakow and Doc/IT have a pleasure of inviting you to Focus on Italy Conference during 52nd Krakow Film Festival.
This year Italy is a special guest country of 52nd Krakow Film Festival. The event promoting Italian documentary cinematography is a highlight of the „Focus on Italy” programme introducing different aspects of Italian documentary production to the Polish audience and professionals. The main theme that the conference will develop is the presentation on how the Italian cinematography deals with certain questions and tasks within production, distribution and promotion sector. The invited guests are professionals working in the field of production, distribution and institutions financing film projects as well as film festivals. Together we would also like to spotlight the future coproduction opportunities between Poland and Italy. Due to the fact that majority of the participants are going to stay in Krakow only for a short period of time, the Thursday’s conference might be the only opportunity of meeting them.The meeting will take place in Międzynarodowe Centrum Kultury, “Pod Kruki” Hall, Rynek Główny 25
on Thursday, 31st May, between 1:00 pm and 4:00 pm
Moderator: Zofia Ścisłowska (Krakow Film Foundation)
There is a lunch scheduled after the conference.
Due to a limited number of seats we kindly ask you to confirm your participation until 28th May the latest by sending an e-mail to industry.pawel@kff.com.pl. The list of contacts will be handed over to the Italian guests.
MARIA BONSANTI is a co-director of Dei Popoli International Documentary Film Festival. She graduated from History of Cinema with a thesis about Franco Piavoli. Between 2000 and 2008, she collaborated with Locarno Film Festival: among many tasks, she worked as a coordinator for the section called Play Forward featuring experimental films and video art. In 2006 she also collaborated with Cinéma du Réel in Paris. Since 2000 she works for the Festival dei Popoli where she curated several thematic sections. Furthermore, between 2004 and 2010 she was part of the Selection Committee and Management of this festival. One year later, in 2011, she has been appointed co-director of the same festival, together with Alberto Lastrucci.
MARIANGELA BARBANENTE is a president of Doc/it - the national association of the Italian documentarists. She was born in Mola di Bari and lives in Rome where she graduated in Italian Literature and then studied screenwriting at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. She works mainly as a screenwriter for cinema and TV series. She started to work as production assistant and assistant director for Les Films d’Ici (France). In 2000 she completed her first documentary, Sole, that among several prizes received a special mention at the Turin Festival the same year and was broadcasted at TV in 15. Her latest film is called Ferrhotel.
ALESSANDRO SIGNETTO is responsible for the international promotion of Italian documentaries at DOC/IT. He was born in 1947 in Italian Mazzè. He made a PhD in Modern Letters (humanities) at the University of Torino. His gained a vast experience working in the field of film distribution and production between seventies and nineties. He then worked as an independent documentary producer. Between 1996 and 2007 he was a head of Antenna MEDIA Torino - an official representative of the MEDIA Programme of the EU in Italy. Between 2003 and 2008 he was a president of DOC/IT. After resigning he is currently in charge of international promotion of the Italian documentaries. In 1993 he founded and since then is a member of the Board of Directors, of Associazione F.E.R.T./Filming with a European Regard in Turin. ln 2003 he founded “ECAD – European Cinema and Audiovisual Days”, a professional meeting for the independent European Producers and Directors taking place annually in Torino.
SERGIO FANT is an Italian film programmer, working now with Locarno Film Festival. He was born in 1971.. After graduating from Film Studies and gaining some experience as a film archivist and researcher at the Bologna Cinematheque, he went on conceiving, organizing and curating programs for several Italian venues and festivals. Following a few years as advisor and selection committee member, since 2010 became the head
of programming of the Trento Film Festival. In 2010 and 2011 he collaborated with the Venice Film Festival, curating the shorts and medium-length films selection of the Orizzonti. He holds a weekly column
on documentary films on the Italian news-magazine Internazionale, and is the co-founder of the innovative film distribution platform CineAgenzia. At the beginning of May 2012 he has joined the Locarno Film Festival's team as program advisor on Italian cinema and experimental and artists' films, and selection committee member for the “Leopards of Tomorrow” short film competition.
GEORG ZELLER is an executive producer at ZeLIG – a school for documentary, television and new media.
He graduated from the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin and from ZeLIG-School for documentary, television and new media. He has worked in cinema and television and since 2002 has been a staff member for ZeLIG’s three-year training course and the executive producer of ZeLIG's documentary productions. Since 2011 he is the assistant to the director of the Italian based documentary school.
PAOLO BENZI lives and works in Italy. He’s the co-founder and the general manager of the independent film company Faber Film srl which proposes to bring about films able to fuse research, invention, and engagement. He produced Rumore Bianco by Alberto Fasulo (2008), Sotto tregua Gaza by Maria Nadotti (2009), Valentina Postika in attesa di partire by Caterina Carone (Best Italian Documentary – Torino Film Festival 2009), L’estate di Giacomo by Alessandro Comodin (Pardo d’oro Cineasti del Presente – Premio George Foundation, Festival del Film Locarno 2011; Grand Prix du Jury and Prix Documentaire sur Grand Ecran – Festival Int’l de Belfort 2011; Woosuk Award/Grand Prize – Jeonju Int’l Film Festival 2012), No Peace Without War by Lorenzo Castore and Adam Cohen (2012), and Uomini soli by Paolo Santolini (2012). He’s currently co-developing Notes to the Fifth Impossibility (faber film/joon film), a documentary film by René Frölke with Romanian writer Norman Manea. He is 2009 Eurodoc Graduate.