Ex Oriente Film 2010 in Warsaw

17.08.2010

The Ex Oriente Film workshops took place in Warsaw from 28 June to 4 July. They were aimed at documentary film makers from Central-Eastern Europe. Taking part were directors and producers whose projects are at the development stage or in production and others who are looking for financial support or are planning international distribution. They are currently organised by the Institute of Documentary Film and this year one of the sessions took place in Poland for the first time.

For each edition of Ex Oriente the organisers select 14 film projects by means of a competition, and then invite the director and producer of each of them to take part in the workshops. Each session consists of a theoretical and a practical part and focuses on a different issue, which is discussed during joint sessions and during individual consultations. The first stage of the work is dedicated to discussing submitted screenplays, establishing what further work is necessary, and also predicting the projects’ market potential. During the meetings of the second session, participants present their tutors with progress they have made, consult with them about possible changes, and also discuss general aspects of documentary film production, planning the market strategy for their projects at the same time. The third session of each edition takes place during the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival and is focussed on the issue of marketing. The participants present their projects at the market running parallel to the festival.

In the seven-year history of the Ex Oriente workshops, several projects were completed which are now well respected and have won numerous awards. They include Bartek Konopka’s RABBIT Ŕ LA BERLIN: winner of a Golden Hobby- Horse at Krakow Film Festival, an award-winner at Toronto’s Hot Docs and nominated for an Oscar in 2010; Beata Dzianowicz’s KITES, winner of the Critics Week Award at Locarno; and Juraj Lehotsky’s BLIND LOVES, winner of the Prize of the International Confederation of Arthouse Cinemas at Cannes.

The Czechs’ Polish partner during the organisation of the Polish session was the production company Eureka Media, owned by Krzysztof Kopczyński. It was the second meeting of participants of this year’s Ex Oriente and focussed on film production. Among the thirteen tutors and experts invited were: Marijke Rawie – Expert and consultant, the Netherlands; Helge Albers – Producer at Flying Moon Filmproduktion, Germany; Stefan Rüll – Advisor and legal expert, Germany; Rada Šešić – Expert, consultant and festival programmer, the Netherlands/Croatia; Filip Remunda – Director and producer, the Czech Republic; Jesper Osmund – Film editor, Denmark; Leena Passanen – Editor, Finland; Adam Gee – Commissioning editor for Channel 4, United Kingdom; Georg Tschurtschenthaler – Executive producer at Gebreuder Beetz Filmproduktion, Germany.

Lectures and seminars were mainly organised in two parallel blocks: for producers and directors. Stefan Rüll opened the production session with a lecture on the legal aspects of international co-productions. Other topics from that block dealt with budgeting and included: the issue of co-productions with broadcasters, planning the budget of a co-production between production companies, and the functioning of a film budget with regard to the financial plan. It is extremely important to note that the meetings were not only theoretical overviews but also took the form of individual consultations, where actual projects were worked on. A great deal of interest was shown in the lecture “Festival Selector” presented to the directors’ group by Rada Šešić, who talked about festival policy, about how a selector’s taste influences their choices, annual film festivals, competition and non-competition programmes and the changing fields of interest among festival programmers. The participating directors also took part in a writing session entitled “I am my character!”, as well as one about editing trailers which was preceded by a lecture by Jesper Osmund. Apart from the main blocks of sessions, individual consultations took place in parallel, where participants presented their tutors with new material, discussing the direction in which their own projects should develop.

31 permanent participants took part in this year’s Ex Oriente, from 11 countries, namely Bosnia, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Germany, Russia and Romania. Among that group there were also 3 productions from Poland and 2 Polish co-productions with the United Kingdom and Russia. The workshops’ organiser, Andrea Prenghyová and programme director Ivana Milošević, in an interview given to the Polish Film Institute, stressed the fact that every year one third of all qualifying projects come from Poland. A 13-person group of Polish filmmakers, specially selected by the organizers, also took part in the Warsaw meeting. They took part in some of the lectures and seminars and during individual consultations discussed projects they had earlier submitted.

In addition to the workshops, there were evening screenings in Rejs Cinema, including the Polish premiere of Jan Tenhaven’s AUTUMN GOLD, winner of Hot Docs 2010, and the first open screening of Vit Klusák and Filip Remunda’s CZECH PEACE. Also invited to the meetings were filmmakers who had taken part in previous editions of Ex Oriente: Anna Wydra and Bartek Konopka, who – after a screening of their project RABBIT Ŕ LA BERLIN – discussed the various stages of work on the film, from the first ideas developed during the workshops to a 2010 Oscar nomination. Then Sławomir Sikora of Warsaw University gave an introduction before a screening of Beata Dzianowicz’s KITES, which finished with a meeting with Dzianowicz and the producer, Krzysztof Kopczyński. There was also a special screening of one more film developed during an earlier edition of Ex Oriente, namely PLANET KIRSAN by Magdalena Pięta. It is the last film in the project “Russia-Poland. A Fresh Look” organised by Eureka Media and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. Its star is Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, president of the Republic of Kalmykia. Ilyumzhinov, who is also the president of the World Chess Federation, FIDE, has introduced chess as a compulsory school subject. For this reason the film is also the story of the Kalmykia’s children, whose lives have changed significantly as a result of their president’s decree. There was a discussion with Magdalena Pięta and producer Krzysztof Kopczyński after the screening.

The next session of this year’s Ex Oriente edition will take place in October, during the International Documentary Film Festival in Jihlava. It will be dedicated to developing the marketing strategy of specific projects, which will be presented to TV commissioning editors, distributors, representatives of institutions that finance documentary films and the viewing public, during pitching sessions. The workshops’ organisers stress that the main aim is to support the initiatives of young filmmakers from Eastern Europe, and in particular encouraging producers to be active at every stage of the work on a documentary, making precise plans, being prepared to take decisions and also creating a market strategy early in the process.

Unfortunately, sessions of this type are still a rare occurrence in the Polish Film Industry. For that reason the prestigious workshops of the Warsaw session have undoubtedly strengthened the position of Polish documentaries on the international market. Also, the screenings and accompanying discussions in English created an excellent opportunity for an exchange of perspectives between European documentary makers.

                               The Warsaw session of Ex Oriente Film 2010 was organised by the Institute of Documentary Films, Prague (www.dokweb.net) and Eureka Media (www.eurekamedia.info), with the help of Media Desk Polska, the Polish Filmmakers Association and the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw. The project was co-financed by the Polish Film Institute.

                               The complete interview with Andrea Prenghyová and Ivana Milošević conducted by Marta Sikorska can be found on the Polish Film Institute’s website at www.pisf.pl.