Visions of Europe

Fatih Akin was born in 1973 in Hamburg of Turkish parentage. He began studying Visual Communications at Hamburg’s College of Fine Arts in 1994. His collaboration with Wüste Film also dates from this time. In 1995, he wrote and directed his first short feature, Sensin – You’re The One! (Sensin – Du Bist Es!), which received the Audience Award at the Hamburg International Short Film Festival. His second short film, Weed (Getuerkt, 1996), received several national and international festival prizes. His first full length feature film, Short Sharp Shock (Kurz Und Schmerzlos, 1998) won the Bronze Leopard at Locarno and the Bavarian Film Award (Best Young Director) in 1998. His other films include: In July (Im Juli, 2000), Wir Haben Vergessen Zurueckzukehren (2001), Solino (2002), the Berlinale Golden Bear-winner and winner of the German and European Film Awards Head-On (Gegen Die Wand, 2003), and Crossing the Bridge – The Sound of Istanbul (2005). —World Cinema Foundation

Šarūnas BARTAS (1964-) – Lithuanian film director, one of the most outstanding representatives of cinematographers. His contacts with cinema began in 1985 with the TV serial “Sixteen-years-olds” (dir. Raimondas Banionis), where Bartas played one of the main roles. He is a graduate of the Moscow Film School (VGIK). He made his directorial debut with his diploma film, the short documentary “Tofolaria” and mediocre-length film (which called spectators’ attention) “For the Remembrance of Last Day” (1989), where the real personages are “acting themselves” according to the principles of feature film. The author further “purified” the specific cinema language in the full-length film “Three Days” (1991), which was awarded the prize of oicumene committee at Berlin Film Festival (for the problems, the importance of the theme, the profundity) in 1992, and FIPRESCI Prize for the originality of the style, the significance of the theme, the beauty of pictures. This is a story (almost without plot) about three young Lithuanians visiting Kaliningrad-Karaliautchus-Kionigsberg – a moribund, outraged town. The traditional dramaturgy is ignored in later Bartas’ films, as well: “The Corridor” (1994, it was shown at Berlin Film Festival), “Few of Us " (1995, shown in Cannes, in the program "Other Point”), “Home” (1997, shown in the same program in Cannes). All of them are works of free structure, minimalistic form, philosophical associations. The works of Bartas are not well-known and analysed in Lithuania, but they have a small, faithful round of admirers in the West.

Christoffer Boe (born 1974) is a Danish film director and screenwriter. He is an established and well-known not only in Denmark, but all through the world. Among his international awards there are FIPRESCI Director of the Year at San Sebastián International Film Festival and Golden Camera at Cannes Film Festival in 2003. He is also co-founder and director of the film production company AlphaVille Pictures Copenhagen.

Boe was born in Rungsted just north of Copenhagen, Denmark. After school in Denmark, he went to study the history of cinematography in Indiana University in Bloomington, USA. Then, he continued his studies in Copenhagen University. In 1997 he decided to go deep into movie making and was accepted at the National Film School of Denmark director’s course.

During that time he directed a trilogy of short films: “Obsession” (1999), “Virginity” (2000) and “Anxiety” (2001). They were 20 to 30 minutes long and starred Maria Bonnevie and Nikolaj Lie Kaas. They’re all basically about a young male being obsessed by a beautiful woman and then being trapped in his own logic of what love is… “Anxiety” received the Prix Decouverte de la Critique Francais and was screened in Critic’s Week in 2002. At that point he developed a style of movie making and playing with narrative structure. He graduated from the National Film School of Denmark in 2001.

After the graduation he is the head of so called “Hr. Boe & Co.” team. In spite of the fact that their debut was even during studying (Anxiety in 2001), their first feature film Reconstruction released in 2003 has become their the first actual collaborative work. He was so satisfied with Maria Bonnevie and Nikolaj Lie Kaas playing in his students shorts – so he wrote Reconstruction specifically with them in mind. This real debut was well-received by critics on international film festivals.

In 2001 he made 6 episodes (each 10 minutes) of TV series Kissmeyer Basics.

In 2004 he shot a short film Europe Does Not Exist as part of Visions of Europe with Cecilie Thomsen and Henning Moritzen representing Demark in this Europe Union media project.

His fourth feature film – thriller Everything will be Fine was selected for Quinzaine des Réalisateurs (Directors’ Fortnight), marking the third Danish film to be selected for 2010 Cannes International Film Festival. —Wikipedia

Stijn Coninx fell into the magic potion pot when he was a kid …
This standard expression is not from yesterday and it is being used very often, whether it is relevant or not. However, it is totally relevant when it comes to describing the life and career of an artist of great stature, and Stijn Coninx undoubtedly can be considered as such in our Belgian audiovisual landscape.

His Lordship Stijn Coninx, the maker of the mythical movie Daens, was born on February 21,1957, in Neerpelt and grew up since childhood in the world of pictures. Being the son of a photographer who was a great fan of Chaplin and Keaton, Stijn Coninx quickly came to like “lively images” and so he started – and completed – studies as a film director at the RITS school in Brussels. In the eighties, the artist fulfilled three great projects of his. The first one, his end of studies film Servais , is a documentary in which the director is making the spectator acquainted in an adult and successful way with Raoul Servais, the unchallenged master of animation film in Belgium. In 1982, he directed a short film called Surfing and he became “first assistant” of several well-known filmmakers. He also shot a lot of commercials in the eighties and in 1987 he directed Hector, a comedy film with Urbanus and Sylvia Millecam as leading actor and actress.

The nineties made Stijn Coninx even more widely known. At the beginning of the new decennium, he released a movie that became a huge blockbuster and in which Urbanus was once again brilliant in the leading role: Koko Flanel. Two years later, Daens was a decisive turning point in his career as well as a sudden change of style. Besides, Daens was nominated for the Oscars, enjoyed a special mention of the International Jury of the Catholic Film at the Film Festival of Venice and finally won the Gulden Spoor Award at the Festival of Ghent. In 1998, he directed Licht, a film about themes as isolation, forced living together and the development of a relationship between two totally different beings in extremely harsh living conditions. In 2003, Stijn Coninx directed the feature film Verder dan de maan.

In the course of his career, Stijn Coninx – who can boast about a particularly interesting filmography – has won several awards and honours. In the years 2000, projects followed one another in a tearing rush. He directed drama series for television (a.o. De Kavijaks – VTM) as well as the TV-series Het Peulengaleis (VRT) with Bart Peeters and Hugo Matthysen. Recently, Stijn Coninx has been in the spotlight with the release of his documentary about triathlete Marc Herremans, To Walk Again. In 2008, he will shoot Soeur Sourire with Cécile de France as leading actress. For the near future, a musical based on his movie Daens is also in the pipeline. It will be performed in 2008 and Stijn Coninx will be responsible for the artistic supervision thereof.

Stijn Coninx, who has been a member of the board of managers of the Belgian Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers since June 3, 2002, is moreover Professor at the Institut National Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle et Techniques de Diffusion (INSAS) as well as at the RITS-Instituut (Erasmus Hogeschool) in Brussels. —sabam.be

Tony Gatlif (born as Michel Dahmani on September 10, 1948 in Algiers, Algeria) is a French film director of Romani ethnicity who also works as a screenwriter, composer, actor, and producer.

After a childhood in Algiers, Gatlif arrived in France in 1960 following the Algerian War of Independence. Gatlif struggled for years to break into the film industry, playing in several theatrical productions until directing his first film, La Tête en ruine, in 1975. He followed it with the 1979 La Terre au ventre, a story of the Algerian War of Independence.

Since the 1981 Corre, gitano, Gatlif’s work has been focused on the Roma people of Europe, from whom he partially traces his descent.

After making Gaspard et Robinson in 1990, Gatlif spent 1992 and 1993 shooting Latcho Drom, which was awarded numerous prizes. This feature-length musical film, often mislabelled as a documentary, deals with gypsy culture throughout the world around the theme of their music and dance. For Vincent Ostria, then journalist at the Cahiers du Cinéma, it was “the most genuine film of the year (1993 editor’s note).” A year later, Gatlif brought the world of the author J. M. G. Le Clézio (pen-name) to the screen in Mondo (1994).

His 2004 film Exils, won the Best Director Award at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. His film Transylvania also premiered at Cannes in May 2006. —Wikipedia

Few Europeans have deliberately riled up as much virulent and explosive controversy during their lifetimes as the muckraking Dutch director (and politically incendiary journalist) Theo van Gogh did during his all-too-brief 47 years; in the end, it led to van Gogh’s murder on an Amsterdam street at the hands of a Muslim extremist.

The great-grandson of an earlier Theo Van Gogh (the art-dealer brother of Vincent), the younger Theo was born in The Hague in 1957. He cultivated a raw passion for filmmaking during his youth — to such a degree that although he initially enrolled as a law student during the late ‘70s, the desire to direct motion pictures provoked his decision to drop completely out of law school and start shooting films. Van Gogh’s directorial tendencies were not limited to ambition; they extended equally into the realm of talent. This ability first became evident with van Gogh’s debut, the 1981 film noir variation Luger, which stars Thom Hoffman and the filmmaker himself. A Day at the Beach followed in 1984; it constitutes a series of heart-rending vignettes on the relationship between an alcoholic and his young daughter. 1986’s Charley, 1987’s Return to Oegstgeest, 1992’s Vals Licht, and 1996’s Blind Date followed, for which van Gogh won a Golden Calf, the Dutch equivalent of a Best Picture Oscar. Recalling the earlier Day at the Beach, the latter episodically recounts several drinking sessions in the Amsterdam Hilton between two former entertainers: a mother, recently bereft of her young daughter, and a middle-aged gentleman. These represent only a few van Gogh titles; he claims well over 25 directorial credits, but his work has (for better or worse) received scant worldwide critical attention, despite widespread raves in many Dutch quarters.

A heavy-set connoisseur of world-class cuisine and wine, a chain smoker, and a notorious lover of cocaine, van Gogh by all accounts loved life but carried around a great deal of aggression, which he vented through his cinematic and extra-cinematic work. As for the latter arena, van Gogh became notorious on the international scene for his inflammatory and divisive political columns, for which he was fired by scores of magazines and newspapers, one after another. He demonstrated tremendous hostility to organized religion, both to Christianity and to Islam (one of the director’s later volumes is entitled Allah Knows Best). Unsurprisingly, this didn’t sit well with Holland’s rapidly expanding Muslim community. The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center only doubled van Gogh’s aggression, and he became a fervent supporter of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Van Gogh’s ten-minute short Submission, shot and released in 2004, became the proverbial straw. The film displays four Muslim females, with Qur’an verses that van Gogh viewed as misogynistic tattooed over their bodies, kneeling in prayer to Allah and describing the abuse they have endured. It was purportedly this work — above all others — that led terrorist Mohammed Bouyeri to intercept van Gogh on an Amsterdam street, where he killed the director and pinned a message to van Gogh’s chest that threatened Western governments. Bouyeri was later sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Of the director, one Dutch journalist remarked that he was a maverick and an innovator, constantly shooting films, searching for new ways to rework his films, and new channels through which films could be shown. In fact, Van Gogh’s final work, the short 06/05: The Sixth of May, premiered posthumously on the Internet, a month after his death. —allmovie guide

An avant-gardist who earned surprising access to the mainstream, Peter Greenaway is among the most ambitious and controversial filmmakers of his era. Trained as a painter and heavily influenced by theories of structural linguistics, ethnography, and philosophy, Greenaway’s films traversed often unprecedented ground, consistently exploring the boundaries of the medium by rejecting formal narrative structures in favor of awe-striking imagery, shifting meanings, and mercurial emotional tension; fascinated by formal symmetries and parallels, his material displayed an almost obsessive interest in list-making and cataloguing, earning equal notoriety for its provocative eroticism as well as its almost self-conscious pretentiousness. Born April 5, 1942, in Newport, Wales, Greenaway was raised primarily in nearby Chingford. After deciding at the age of 12 to become a painter, he entered the Walthamstow College of Art. By 1965, Greenaway had begun working as a film editor for the Central Office of Information, where within a year he started making his own experimental short features. The first of Greenaway’s experimental short films to gain widespread distribution was 1969’s seven-minute Intervals. He continued releasing work sporadically throughout the first half of the 1970s, ranging in length from 1974’s four-minute Windows to 1976’s 40-minute Goole by Numbers. With 1978’s A Walk Through H and Vertical Features Remake, Greenaway first garnered festival notice, and with 1980’s The Falls, a “documentary” set in the future, he made his long-awaited feature debut. The 1982 17th century drama The Draughtsman’s Contract was his critical breakthrough, and the film launched him to the forefront of the global experimental film community.

In 1983, Greenaway helmed documentaries on the American composers Robert Ashley, John Cage, Philip Glass, and Meredith Monk for Britain’s Channel Four television network. Over the next two years he produced only short films and did not return to feature filmmaking prior to 1985’s superb A Zed and Two Noughts. Two years later he released The Belly of an Architect, its focus on themes of obsession clearly mirroring Greenaway’s own persona. Even more detailed was 1988’s Drowning by Numbers, which stuffed its blackly comic tale of a murderous family with numerological references ranging in tone from broad visual puns to nods to Dante’s Divine Comedy. With 1989’s more accessible The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, Greenaway made his American breakthrough. A corrosive allegory of life in contemporary England, the film became the subject of much controversy in the U.S. when it fell subject to the MPAA’s new “NC-17” rating, consequently winning the biggest audiences of the director’s career. The follow-up, 1991’s Prospero’s Books, was his most experimental feature yet. A radical reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, it employed a revolutionary new device called an electronic paintbox which allowed Greenaway to fill the screen with an intricate series of intertextual double exposures and transparent overlays, eliciting some of his most extreme viewer response yet. Greenaway then returned to television for the next two years, helming 1991’s M Is for Man, Music, Mozart and the 1993 revisionist biopic Darwin. Also in 1993 he returned to feature films with the highly controversial The Baby of Macon, a grim, violent satire of life in the 17th century which failed to find an American distributor. Two years later Greenaway directed Stairs 1 Geneva, a documentary commissioned for Swiss television, as well as The Pillow Book, an erotic fable again utilizing the electronic paintbox first seen on Prospero’s Books. In 1997 the film was finally picked up for American release, where it garnered some of Greenaway’s most favorable response to date. In 1999, he released 8 1/2 Women, a black comedy about the roots and consequences of male sexual fantasy.

(From http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=2:92456)

Damjan Kozole (born in 1964 in Brezice, Slovenia, then Yugoslavia) is one of the most recognized Slovenian filmmakers. He is a self made man who never attended film school. In his films, “some of the most raffish, funky and even sordid characters discover their own humanity” (Alissa Simon, Variety). Sight & Sound ranked his Spare Parts among ten most important films of the New Europe. In 2005, a Damjan Kozole film retrospective took place in the United States and Canada, hosted by the American Film Institute.

Spare Parts (Rezervni deli)

His 2003 feature film Spare Parts tells a story of two human traffickers from a small town in Slovenia who transport illegal migrants from Croatia on to the Western Europe, for a hefty fee. The film was premiered in the Competition Programme at Berlinale 2003 and following that at more than fifty international film festivals, where it won many international awards. It was released theatrically in more than 20 countries. According to The Guardian, “Slovenian writer-director Damjan Kozole has given us one of the most powerful and provocative movies of the year” (Peter Bradshaw). 2008 Sight & Sound ranked Spare Parts among ten most important films of the “New Europe”.

Labour Equals Freedom (Delo osvobaja)

Labour Equals Freedom was premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival 2005 and won the Grand Prix (Golden Palm) and best director award (Silver Palm) at the 2006 Valencia Int. Film Festival. It tells a story of a depressed middle-age man who, due to a twist of fate, finds new joy in life through working for the common good. According to Variety, “Kozole creates a mood of affectionate cynicism, with shrewd subtexts tallying foibles of contempo society” (Eddie Cockrell).

Forever (Za vedno)

Forever (2008) is a minimalist, full-length feature film Kozole shot in six nights in his own apartment. The film was premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival 2008 and won the Golden Sun award for best film at the European Film Festival in Skopje, Macedonia. The story of Forever develops in almost real time. We witness what is going on behind an apartment door: the hellish psychological moments of a couple where the thin line between love and hate breaks down. According to Rotterdam International Film Festival programmer Ludmila Cvikova, “the script is masterfully processed by the director and the entire film is carried by the excellent achievements of the two leading actors”.

Slovenian girl (Slovenka)

Slovenian girl (2009) was premiered at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival and following that shown at more than 70 international film festivals. Alexandra, a twenty-three-year-old Slovenian, leads a double life: she is a respectable student and a call girl. The film won Public award at the 2010 Cinessone Int. Film Festival, Paris and Nina Ivanisin won many international awards for her leading role. The film was released theatrically in more than 30 countries, in US under the title A Call Girl. According to Moving Pictures Magazine, “the film is ultimately a fascinating study of free enterprise in free fall. In this mesmerizing chamber piece, director Damjan Kozole has contrived a new style of narrative to convey a view of capitalist culture at once outrageous and non-judgmental” (Shaz Bennett).
Documentary films

Kozole is also the author of many documentaries dealing with visual arts like Ulay – a feature length docu about artist Ulay (2012) or Two or Three Things I know About Her – about visual artist Zora Stančič (2010), and docu-films dealing with social themes like The Long Vacation – a feature length docu on formally erased citizens (2012). —Wikipedia

Małgorzata Szumowska (born 26 February 1973 in Cracow, Poland) – is a Polish director, screenwriter and producer. Szumowska is the daughter of journalists Maciej Szumowski and Dorota Terakowska and the sister of Wojciech Szumowski, a documentary film director.

Career

Szumowska spent two years studying History of Art at Jagiellonian University before she started film studies. Szumowska graduated from the celebrated film college in Łódź, which boasts such alumni as Andrzej Wajda, Roman Polański or Krzysztof Kieślowski. As a student, Szumowska made a short which was ranked 14th in the history of Łódź Film School Cisza (Silence) is a short documentary film in which Szumowska tried to capture a simple life of a Polish rural family.

Szczęśliwy człowiek (Happy man)

Szumowska graduated from the film college in 1998 and made her debut feature film Szczęśliwy człowiek (Happy Man) in 2001. The film was nominated to The European Film Award and Szumowska became a member of the European Film Academy in the same year.The plot explores complicated relationships among three persons facing enormous difficulties who nonetheless strive to achieve happiness, or, at least, steer clear of tragedy.

Ono (Stranger)

Her next film, Ono (Stranger), focused on the relationship between a pregnant woman and the baby she is expecting. Having decided not to have an abortion, the mother tries to prepare her child for the experience of the outside world. Things get complicated when the woman faces health problems.

Ojciec (Father)

In 2005 Szumowska made a short film Ojciec (Father), one of thirteen contemporary stories written by Polish film directors to celebrate Solidarity which made up the film Solidarność, Solidarność (Solidarity, Solidarity). Based on her father’s experiences, Szumowska’s film uses archival footage from his documentaries.

33 sceny z życia (33 Scenes from Life)

A significant breakthrough in Szumowska’s career came in 2008, with 33 sceny z życia (33 Scenes from Life), starring Julia Jentsch, which won a special prize at the Locarno International Film Festival. Inspired by her own life, but, as she is careful to emphasize, “not autobiographical”, the film tells the story of Julia. A talented photographer married to Piotr, a successful composer, Julia has a perfect and financially comfortable life until one day the idyll is interrupted.

Elles

Szumowska worked also as a co-producer of Antichrist, Lars von Trier’s horror film released in 2009. In 2011, she completed her international project, Elles, starring Juliette Binoche. The worldwide première of Elles took place at Toronto International Film Festival.It tells the story of Anne, a Parisian journalist investigating prostitution among the students. Her research takes her to two girls, Charlotte and Alice, whose lives differ greatly from her own. They let her discover a world which she finds both repulsive and seductive.

Nowhere

Szumowska’s latest project has been in production since 2011. Szumowska has refused to reveal any plot details but she hopes that it will be her best film to date. Entitled Nowhere, the film is set in Mazury, a rural lake region in northeastern Poland.

Born in 1955, Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr began making amateur films at the age of 16, later working as caretaker at a national House for Culture and Recreation. His amateur work brought him to the attention of the Bela Balazs Studios (named in honor of the Hungarian cinema theorist), which helped fund Tarr’s 1979 feature debut Family Nest, a work of socialist realism clearly influenced by the work of John Cassavettes. The 1981 piece The Outsider and the following year’s The Prefab People continued in much the same vein, but with a 1982 television adaptation of Macbeth, his work began to change dramatically; comprised of only two shots, the first shot (before the main title) was five minutes long, with the second 67 minutes in length. Not only did Tarr’s visual sensibility move from raw close-ups to more abstract mediums and long shots, but also his philosophical sensibility shifted from grim realism to a more metaphysical outlook similar to that of Andrei Tarkovsky. After 1984’s Almanac of Fall, Tarr (who had written his first four features alone) began collaborating with Hungarian novelist Laszlo Krasznahorkai for 1987’s Damnation. A planned adaptation of Krasznahorkai’s epic novel Satantango took over seven years to realize. The film, a 415-minute masterpiece, finally appeared to international acclaim in 1994.

(From http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=2:113677)

Troell writes his own scripts and serves as his own director of photography. His realistic films with a lyrical photography in which nature is prominent have placed him in the first rank of modern Swedish film directors along with Ingmar Bergman and Bo Widerberg, the former considered best of the three.

Troell was born in Limhamn outside Malmö, Sweden. For several years, he worked as an elementary-school teacher but started to make shorts films in the sixties. He became director of photography for Widerberg but soon made a debut with his own first feature, Here’s Your Life (Här har du ditt liv, 1966), about a working class boy in Sweden, set in the beginning of the 20th century. The film was based upon an autobiographical novel by Eyvind Johnson. His next film Who Saw Him Die? (Ole dole doff, 1968) won the Golden Bear award at the 18th Berlin International Film Festival.

Troell’s major work in the 1970s became The Emigrants (Utvandrarna, 1971) and its sequel The New Land (Nybyggarna, 1972), two epic films about some peasants emigrating from the barren Swedish countryside to America in the 19th century. Once again, Troell films were based upon the novels of a Swedish working-class author, in this case Vilhelm Moberg’s famous Emigrants suite. As in many of Troell’s films, Max von Sydow plays one of the major roles. The Emigrants was nominated for several Academy Awards. After a brief and unsuccessful sojourn in Hollywood, which resulted in the films Zandy’s Bride (1974), starring Gene Hackman, and Hurricane (1979), Troell made The Flight of the Eagle (Ingenjör Andrées luftfärd, 1982). It is a film about S. A. Andrée’s disastrous Arctic balloon expedition of 1897. The Flight of the Eagle was nominated for the Academy Awards (foreign language film).

The release of Il Capitano: A Swedish Requiem (Il Capitano, 1991) became controversial since the film is based upon a true story; the brutal murder of a Swedish family just a few years earlier (see Juha Valjakkala). Yet, it concentrates on the psychological power game between the murderer and his girlfriend rather than the violence of the crime. It was awarded the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Troell has also made documentaries, for instance Land of Dreams (Sagolandet, 1988), dealing with modern society’s alienation from nature and A Frozen Dream (En frusen dröm, 1997) in which he once again brings up Andrée’s polar expedition.Even in his seventies, Troell remains productive. His recent films include As White as in Snow (Så vit som en snö, 2001), based on the life of Swedish aviatrix Elsa Andersson, a documentary called Presence (Närvarande, 2003), and his latest film Everlasting Moments (Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick, 2008). He is currently in the early process of making a new film, about the Swedish journalist Torgny Segerstedt—wikipedia