Klara Trencsenyi is a freelance director and cinematographer committed to creative and social documentaries. She graduated from the Hungarian Film Academy in Budapest as Director of Photography in 2005. She directed three mid-length documentaries (Corvin Variations, 2011, Birds Way, 2009, and A Chance, 2007), and a short documentary (3Weddings– Elena&Leo, 2009), and has worked in various international productions as cinematographer, with Dutch, American and Hungarian directors (e.g. the IDFA awarded The Angelmakers, dir. Astrid Bussink, 2005). As trainer, she organized myDEER a creative documentary development workshop in Budapest in 2010 (supported by IDF and the Visegrad Fund) and led courses of documentary filmmaking at the Central European University (2012) and DocuArt Film Center Budapest (2010, 2012). She has done extensive social and voluntary work with Roma, Irish travelers and a photography course for Romanian children in state care. She participated in IDF Inspiration Forum 2012, Verzio DocLab 2012, A Sunday in the Country in 2008, Berlinale Talent Campus 2008 and EsoDoc 2006. Currently she is working on a feature documentary.
www.Birds Way
Vlad Naumescu teaches social anthropology at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. Trained as a psychologist and anthropologist, he received his PhD in 2006 from the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and Martin-Luther University (Germany). He has conducted extensive fieldwork in Ukraine and Romania and more recently in Kerala, South India. His work focuses on religious transmission, learning and imagination in Eastern Christianity, on which he published two books and several articles in various journals and edited volumes. He teaches visual anthropology and anthropological filmmaking at CEU since 2007, and participated as tutor and consultant in international documentary film workshops and projects. His directing debut, Birds’ Way (2009) co-authored with Klara Trencsenyi, is an award-winning documentary on Old Believers in the Romanian Danube Delta.
www.ceu.academia.edu
Šimon Špidla graduated from Film School in Zlín and Film and TV School of Academy if Performing Arts in Prague. He produced i.a. a series of contemplation films Na náplavce (2003), Posun (2004), Josef Božek (2005) and a short series about the vz. 58 assault rifle Jen pro vnitřní potřebu (For inner use only, 2006). In 2011 he introduced his film Mrtvá trať (Dead railway) which was nominated for the Pavel Koutecký Award and gained the Czech Radio award for the best sound at the One World IFF in 2012. He has collaborated with many renowned Czech filmmakers, i.a. Věra Chytilová, Jan Němec, Erika Hníková, Lucie Králová and Jan Šikl. He has collaborated with Pavel Abrhám and Tomáš Bojar in the production of films Česká RAPublika (Czech RAPublic, 2008) and Dva nula (Two Nil, 2012). He has also edited film Marta (Martha) by Marta Nováková awarded as the best film debut at the Cottbus festival in 2006 or film Bába (Old Bat, 2008) by Zuzana Špidlová awarded with the prestigeous Cinéfondation award at the Cannes festival in 2009.
www.Into Oblivion
Peter Kerekes (born in 1973 in Košice, Slovakia) studied film directing at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava in 1991 – 1998. There he continued to lecture on the given subject. Together with director Dušan Hanák, he participated in founding the atelier of fiction and documentary film. Although he wanted to direct fiction films, which he also studied, since his first documentary about the Slovak poet Erik Groch, his interest in this form of film expression prevailed. Made in the production of Austrian director and producer Georg Misch, his latest feature-length documentary Ako sa varia dejiny/ Cooking History was awarded at numerous international festivals (e.g. Hot Docs, Leipzig) and nominated for the prestigious European Award Arte 2009.
www.velvetterrorists.com
www.cookinghistory.net
Tomáš Hirt is a lecturer and researcher at the Department of Anthropology of the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. His scholar activities are aimed at nationalism, ethnicity and multicutluralism, however, his key specialization at present is the area of applied anthropology and visual anthropology. Tomas Hirt co-founded and leads Center for Applied Anthropology and Fieldwork and also Studio of Visual Ethnography (at the University of West Bohemia), which started to produce ethnographic films focusing mainly on the social and cultural diversity of modern societies within the East and Central European context. He is an editor of five anthologies, and author (or co-author) of number of articles, research reports, and particular chapters in various monograhs.
Adam Oľha was born in July 1984 in the Czech Republic. He studied Documentary Film Making at FAMU and his graduate film The Sanctity Growers(2005) was screened at Czech and international festivals. Adam was also involved in documentaries by directors Lucie Králová, Jan Sacher and Pavel Abrahám, and he has worked for Czech Television. Apart from film direction, he is also a cameraman, film editor and artistic photographer.
www.New Life
Jana Cisar was born in 1963 in Marianske Lazne (Marienbad), Czechoslovakia, Jana Cisar has lived in Germany since 1969. After studying graphic design, she started work as a theatre production manager (working, amongst others, with David Byrne, Robert Wilson, Lev Dodin, Arie Singer, Anatoli Vassilev, Alexander Lang). She went on as co-founder of the Salzburg film festival FilmSzene and worked for Dctp with Alexander Kluge on broadcasts about Richard Leacock, Les Blank, David Byrne, Brothers Quay and Thomas Brasch. Since 1995 she has been living and working as a freelance producer in Berlin.
www.cisarfilm.de
Peter Zach was born in Graz, Austria where he first graduated in media studies and then studied sociology and ethnology. He founded a film magazine, BLIMP, in 1984 and was the Chief Editor until 1988. Since 1990 he has been living and working in Berlin as a freelance director, screenwriter, author and cinematographer. His last direction work (2012) was the documentary Czech villages (Česká vesnice, Böhmische Dörfer), which describes the individuality and different mentality of Czechs and Germans and illustrates it with stories from everyday life and in a historical context.
www.Boehmische Doerfer