Ex Oriente Film

TUTORS

TUE STEEN MÜLLER – Head of Studies  (Denmark)

Born in 1947. Worked with short and documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board - as press secretary, head of distribution and information and as a commissioning editor. Articles for national and international newspapers and magazines. Co-founder of Balticum Film- and TV-Festival, Filmkontakt Nord and Documentary of the EU. Travelled to European short and documentary festivals often to be seated as a jury member. Has given documentary courses and seminars in more than 30 countries. In 2004 awarded the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. In 2005 awarded a prize at the DOCLisboa for his contribution to the international development and promotion of Portuguese documentaries. Since its foundation in 1996, director of EDN (European Documentary Network). Given the EDN Life Achievement Award in 2005. From 2006 freelance consultant and teacher in Danish and European documentary matters. Maintains and regularly updates his film blog, filmkommentaren.dk. 

MARIJKE RAWIE – Head Tutor, film consultant  (Netherlands)

Marijke Rawie, Managing Director of ExpertDocs, was during the last 17 years Head of Art Documentary at AVRO, 1st public broadcaster in the Netherlands. In 1991 she founded the documentary slot "AVRO Close Up" which became one of the leading international co-producers and co-financers of documentaries in Europe. She started her tv-career in1974. She worked as director and producer of documentaries at various Dutch broadcasters (NOS, VARA, NCRV), before she went to AVRO. Marijke Rawie is involved in several international documentary institutions: Vice President of EBU Documentary Expert Group; Vice President of Advisery Board Discovery Campus Masterschool; Boardmember of the 1st World Congress of Arts Producers; Doc.expert EDN; Doc. expert Eurodoc. She is the founder of ExpertDocs, International Documentary Training & Consultancy, in which she combines the international documentary coproduction and (pitching) training knowledge she has acquired over the years.

MIKAEL OPSTRUP – Producer, Final Cut Productions  (Denmark)

1955 Born in Copenhagen, Denmark; 1976-79, Degree in Film Studies at the University of Copenhagen; 1980-88, Appointed at Danish Film Center, distribution of shorts and documentaries; 1984-94, Independent Producer and production manager of shorts & documentaries for the National Film Board of Denmark, the Danish Film Institute and Danish TV; 1995-98, Initiator and manager of the festival ”Films from the South” organized in cooperation with the Copenhagen Film Festival; 1993-98, Co-owner & Film producer at ”Manden med Cameraet”. Producer of a number of international TV series & documentaries; 1998-99, Degree at EAVE, MEDIA Programme for ‘European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs’; 1998-2002, Production adviser / Shorts and Documentaries at the Danish Film Institute; 2000- Tutor at EDN related workshops; 2002- Co-owner & Head of documentaries at Final Cut Productions. Producer of e.g., ‘The German Secret’, Joris Ivens competition IDFA 2004, Hot Docs Toronto 2005; 2005 - Board member EDN.

DR. STEFAN RÜLL – Attorney-at-law, copyright expert  (Germany)

Attorney-at-law and Mediator, active in the film and television industry for many years, amongst others as Managing Director and Corporate Counsel of the POLYPHON Television Production Group in Hamburg as well as at SENATOR Film Production and Distribution in Munich and Berlin. His Law Office in Berlin focuses on the legal consultation and representation of national and international producers mainly regarding co-productions, and of authors, directors, and other artists in the field of intellectual property law, film, and television. Dr. Rüll is a member of the committee for copyright and media law with the Bar Association in Berlin, board member of MiMMA e.V. (Mediation in the Media, Music and the Arts e.V.), member of the International Association of Entertainment Lawyers (IAEL), founder and managing director of OnTrust Inkasso– und Abrechnungsgesellschaft mbH, and owner of Avocado FilmProduction e.K. He lectures regularly at leading German film schools and European professional training initiatives.

GITTE HANSEN SCHNYDER – Deputy Director, First Hand Films  (Denmark)

Born on Bornholm in Denmark. Lives in Switzerland since 2000. In Zurich Gitte has worked with international distribution of feature films, and joined in 2002 First Hand Films, an international sales agency for high quality documentaries. Gitte has previously worked in DR's factual department, been coordinator of the Nordisk Forum for Co-financing of Documentaries organised by Filmkontakt Nord, she has worked for the former MEDIA project DOCUMENTARY with the first edition of the EDN TV Guide (European Documentary Television Programming Guide) and with a study on the European Documentary sector. For 5 years Gitte was head of Information and Promotion at Filmkontakt Nord. She has served on several juries at film festivals around Europe, has joined Vertigal Strategies, Eurodoc session, and has been consultant and lecturer at workshops in Europe. Gitte holds a master in Film and Rhetoric from the University of Copenhagen.

ALESSANDRO ROSSETTO – Director, producer, scriptwriter, cinematographer  (Italy)

Alessandro Rossetto was born in 1963 in Padua, Italy. He studied Cinema and Anthropology both in Bologna and in Paris, Rossetto is movie writer, director, producer, director of photography and camera operator. Selected filmography: “Il Fuoco di Napoli” (aka Fire of Naples); “Bibione Bye Bye One”; “Chiusura” (aka Closing); “L’Aria che Respiro” (aka The Air I Breathe, screenwriter) for Tao Due Productions; “Maggio Selvaggio” (aka Wild May, screenwriter) for Fandango Productions; “Nic dwa razy - Nulla due volte” (aka Nothing Twice), a tribute to Wislava Szymborska, Polish Nobel Literature Prize-winning poet. One of his most recent films “Feltrinelli”, a co-production between four countries, was successfully screened at the 2006 Locarno Film Festival and distributed on an international level. Rossetto’s latest work, entitled “Raul”, was presented at the 2007 Rome International Film Festival. In 2007 he founded, along with Paolo Benzi and Alberto Fasulo, the production company Faber Film srl.

CHRISTIAN BEETZ - Producer, Managing Director, Gebrueder Beetz Media GmbH (Germany)

Born in 1968, Flawil, Switzerland. He received a masters degree in theatre and cultural studies from Humboldt University, Berlin. Recent works (selection) - documentary films: Hotel Sahara (executive producer); The Bug Trainer (producer); Blixa Bargeld - Mein Leben/Ma Vie (author, producer); The Most Secret Place on Earth - CIA's Covert War in Laos (executive producer); Between Insanity and Beauty - The Art Collection of Dr. Prinzhorn (producer, author, director); Macedonian Dream - A Girl and Her Accordion (producer); FC Barcelona Confidential (co-executive producer); Einstuerzende Neubauten: Listen with Pain (author, director, co-executive producer), etc. Documentaries in production (selection): My Life with Carlos (executive producer); Harvest Gold (producer); In the Shadow of the Emperor - Victor Segalen's Archaelogical Expedition Through China in 1914 (author, executive producer, director). Since 2006, Christian has been a board member of AG Dok. He has taught classes on audiovisual culture studies and TV feature and documentary film at Humboldt University Berlin or Hannover Media Campus.      

STAN NEUMANN - Director  (France)

Born in 1949 in Czechoslovakia and based in France, Stan Neumann started his film career as an editor and makes inventively constructed documentaries on culture and history. He has made more than 30 documentary films or cycles, among others: The Last Marranos (70', 1990); Paris, le roman d'une ville (51', 1991); Rainer Maria Rilke (52', 1997); A House in Prague (70', 1998); Norman Mailer's America (3x52', 1998-99); Apparatchiks & Businessmen (52', 2001); Language Does Not Lie (Diaries Written under the Third Reich) (80', 2003-04); The Hidden Life of Masterpieces - Rembrandt (43', 2009). Since 1994, along with Richard Copans, he has been in charge of the TV collection "Architectures" (Arte/Les Films d’Ici/Musée d’Orsay/Musée du Louvre/Centre Georges Pompidou/Dapa). So far 40 films (x26’) have been made, Stan Neumann has directed 17 of them. Projects in preparation: Stargazer, a feature film produced by Les Films d’Ici and Arte Cinema, shooting scheduled for December 2009. 

PETER KEREKES - Director  (Slovakia)

Born in 1973 in Košice, Slovakia. Graduated in directing from the Faculty of Film and Television, Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, Bratislava. Since 1999 he has been a lecturer at his alma mater, leading classes on nonfiction film and film directing. Filmography: Cooking History (2009); Across the Border (Part 3 - Helpers, 2004); 66 Seasons (2003); Morytats and Legends of Ladomirova (1998); Balog Jozsef, Pribennik 66 (1996); About Three Days in Monastery Jasov (1996); A Man about Book, a Book about Man (1994).

HELGE ALBERS - Producer  (Germany)

Helge Albers, born in 1973, studied film production at the HFF Konrad Wolff. In 1999 he founded, along with Roshanak Behesht Nedjad and Konstantin Kröning, Flying Moon Filmproduktion. He was the producer of Havanna, mi amor by Uli Gaulke, Weg! by Michael Baumann, Heirate mich by Uli Gaulke and Jeannette Eggert, Silent Waters by Sabiha Sumar, Hallesche cometen by Susanne Irina Zacharias and Waiting for the Clouds by Yesim Ustaolgu. Together with his partners he produced Gorgomeesh by Nora Hoppe and Comrades in Dreams by Uli Gaulke, and the co-production Summer Palace by Lou Ye. He is a member of the German and European Film Academy. Flying Moon Filmproduktion concentrates on the development and production of high quality feature films and feature-length documentaries, with an emphasis on international co-productions as well as the development of new talent.

PHILIPPE VAN MEERBEECK - Consultant, DIVA Project Coordinator, VRT  (Belgium)

Graduated in Social Communication at the HRITCS in Brussels. Started in 1980 as collaborator for the award-winning historical TV series ‘De Nieuwe Orde’ (The New Order); Wrote & edited historical series for VRT, a number of which were nominated & won awards (Prix Stendhal, Prix URTI). In 2000, became Head of VRT Television Archive. In 2001, he was appointed Programme manager at VRT’s second channel CANVAS, in charge of documentary strands on history, social affairs, science & authored documentaries. Member of EBU Documentary Group, EDN, and National Coordinator for INPUT. He attended international events as IDFA, Hot Docs, IDF, Sunny Side, with tutoring experience in Germany (Discovery Campus), France, Netherlands, Turkey and Greece. In 2005, Philippe traded docs for DIVA, the digital content project of VRT. He participated in the thematic content VRT elaborated for its Charter 2007-2011, and is currently developing various projects related to digitised content and new media. Philippe is member of the Flemish Film Fund, and CONTOUR, a meeting point for media art; he consults on documentary and digital content. 

GUESTS

ANNA KASLOVÁ - Coordinator, East Silver TV Focus  (Czech Republic)

From 1999 to 2006, Anna was involved in several commercial television projects, working for an independent production house in Prague as a production assistant, assistant to producer, later as a 2nd AD, and for 3 years as a project manager creating online presentations for TV stations. For seven years, she also worked for the VIP guest service of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. She is currently completing a BA in Theory of Interactive Media at Masaryk University in Brno. In 2006 she joined East Silver and, apart from being responsible for organizing the annual documentary market, she is also the coordinator of the East Silver TV Focus project.