Alberto Barbera (Italy): born in Biella in 1950. After graduating in Modern Literature with a thesis on the History and Criticism of Film, he began his collaboration with the AIACE (the Italian association of Friends of Art-House Films) of Turin, for which he served as president from 1977 to 1989. From 1980 to 1983 he was the film critic for the daily newspaper “La Gazzetta del Popolo” and since 1982 has been a member of the Order of Journalists, on the list of publicists. He has collaborated with many magazines, and has curated or participated in many radio and television shows for RAI. In 1982 he began his collaboration with the Festival Internazionale Cinema Giovani (now the Torino Film Festival), first as a press agent, then as the Secretary General and member of the Selection Committee, from 1984 to 1988. From 1989 to 1998, he served as Director. From December 1998 to April 2002 he was the Director of the Venice International Film Festival. From 2002 to 2006, he was the co-director of “RING! Festival of Film Critics” in Alexandria. Since June 2004 he has been the Director of the National Museum of Cinema in Turin. Since 2008, he has been President of the Advisory Board of TorinoFilmLab. Since 2012 he is again the Director of the Venice International Film Festival.
Academic Team
Savina Neirotti
Jane Williams
Michel Reilhac
Amy Dotson
Joana Vicente
Head of Programme
Savina Neirotti (Italy): born in Genova, she graduated in Philosophy in Torino and went on to study Aesthetics at the University of Pennsylvania. After returning to Italy, she became Head of the Press and Communication Office of the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, where she was also in charge of the Educational Department. In the same years, she became one of the owners of Scuola Holden in Torino – a school for storytellers – ideated by novelist Alessandro Baricco. She has been Director of Scuola Holden’s Master in Narration Techniques, supervising all the school activities, focusing on the international contacts. In the same years she has written articles and interviews on narration and classical music, book reviews and film reviews for Italian and international newspapers. She has ideated and directed Script&Pitch Workshops since 2005, and TorinoFilmLab since 2008. TorinoFilmlab is an international Lab that includes 5 training courses, a co-production event and a funding system. It develops around 40 projects a year. She is now Head of Programme of Biennale College – Cinema.
Head of Studies
Jane Williams (UK): Jane Williams set up Dubai International Film Festival’s Industry Office in 2006 which became the Dubai Film Market in 2009. She has played a leading role in the development of a number of initiatives to support filmmakers in the Arab region including: the establishment of the Dubai Film Connection the only co-production platform in the Middle East; Interchange a training and development programme bringing Arab and European filmmakers together to work on 10 projects for the international market organised in collaboration with TorinoFilmLab, EAVE and the Media Mundus. Jane comes from a background of training and development and in the UK worked for a number of organisations and companies including the BFI and NFTS. In 1998 she moved to Amsterdam to become Head of Training at the Maurits Binger Film Institute in Holland. Since 2002 she has been working as a freelance consultant for a number of funding organizations and international festivals. She has worked for the Cinemart and Hubert Bals Fund at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Balkan Fund, Thessaloniki International Film Festival Greece, the Industry Office at the BAFICI in Buenos Aries and Taormina Film Festival Sicilie, Italy. She is an expert for the European Commission and currently consults for the Royal Film Commission in Jordan.
Michel Reilhac (France): executive director of ARTE France Cinema for more than 10 years, until November 2012. Director of several organizations, tv producer, producer-curator-author of participative events, he’s also a filmmaker. Among his films: the documentary film All alike?, To Be a Man for Canal +, Kenya Islands for Arte, The Good Old Naughty Days. Since 2000, he has started his own production company, Melange: his first film production, a first short by Licia Eminenti, Intimisto, has been selected for the official competition as the opening film at Venice Biennale in 2001. Among his film productions: Cry Woman by Liu Bing Jian, L’Intrus by Claire Denis and 7 days, 7 nights by Joel Cano.
Project assistant
Valentina Bellomo (Italy): graduated in 2007 in “Economy and Management of Arts and Cultural Activities” at Cà Foscari University (Venice) and in 2008 a Master Degree in “Cultural Management: Strategic Planning”. Has worked for several years as a production secretary for the official web tv and web radio of the Music Festival “Rototom Sunsplash” both in Italy and in Spain. Between 2008 /2009 she worked for the organization of “RIFF – Roma Independent Film Festival”. Since 2010 has worked in film production including “The Tourist”, “Effie Gray” and “The Best Offer”; continues to build on this experience working for tv series and commercials. In May 2013 joins the Biennale College – Cinema team as project assistant.
Community Manager
Gabriele Capolino (Italy): he graduates at the University of Padova in Performing Arts and Entertainment Multimedia Production in 2012 with a thesis about the contemporary American indie cinema. From 2006 he has been web editor and film critic for Cineblog.it, one of the most famous italian movie webzines, for which he is also press correspondent at international festivals such as Venice and Cannes. Today he is the Community Manager of Biennale College – Cinema.
Pitching Trainer
Stefano Tealdi (Italy): born in South Africa in 1955, he graduated in Architecture and was head of audiovisual production at the Politecnico di Torino in Italy. He established Stefilm with others in 1985 where, to date, he develops, produces and at times directs, documentary features and series. Stefilm’s internationally acclaimed films include Leonardo, the man behind the shroud? (Silver Screen Award 2002), Porto Marghera – Venice (59th Venice Film Festival), Rice Girls (60th Venice Film Festival, MOMA fortnight 2003), Citizen Berlusconi (nominated Grimme Award – Germany 2004), Monstar United (IDFA 2009), Vinylmania (Official film Record Store Day 2012) and Char, No man’s land (Berlinale Forum 2013). EAVE graduate in 1992, he is the director of the annual Italian workshop Documentary in Europe and chaired the European Documentary Network EDN. He teaches at universities and master classes and tutors for EDN – European Documentary Network, Esodoc, Med Film Factory, Scuola Holden, Films de 3 Continents, Zelig Film School.
Group Leaders
Gino Ventriglia (Italy): story editor and script consultant both for cinema and television; he’s a tutor for TorinoFilmLab as well for other international development programs. He won a Fulbright Fellowship, and got a Master of Fine Arts in Directing and Scriptwriting at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He teaches drama writing at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, the Italian National School of Cinema. He has written screenplays for cinema and television, like the script for Arrivederci amore, ciao by Michaele Soavi. He lives in Rome.
Amy Dotson (USA): Deputy Director of IFP (Independent Feature Project), the oldest not-for-profit membership and advocacy organization of independent filmmakers in the U.S., founded in New York in 1979. Amy is also an independent film producer: she produced Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo, a documentary film by documentario di Bradley Beesley, who premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival 2009; her last film production, I Used to Be Darker by the internationally renowned director Matt Porterfield, will premiere at Sundance 2013.
Producer Consultants
Mike S. Ryan (USA): producer of several award-winning features. He’s an Independent Spirit “Producer of the Year Award” Nominee, one of Variety’s 2007 “10 Producers to Watch” and an IFP advisory board member. Among his film productions: Junebug by Phil Morrison (nominated at the Academy Awards for Amy Adams), Old Joy and Meek’s Cutoff (official competition at Venice 2010) by Kelly Reichardt, Palindromes (official competition at Venice 2004) and Life During Wartime (best screenplay at Venice 2009) by Todd Solondz, Choke by Clark Gregg, and The Turin Horse by Béla Tarr. He was also a location manager for films like Ride with the Devil by Ang Lee, Storytelling by Todd Solondz, and Far from Heaven by Todd Haynes.
Tristan Goligher (UK): Executive Producer on the iFeatures 2 low budget development and production initiative, funded by Creative England, the BFI Film Fund, and the BBC. He worked in development on the Digital Shorts, Digital Nation, and Cinema Extremeshort film schemes. As a producer, Tristan recently produced Andrew Haigh’s Weekend, which world premiered at SXSW 2011 winning the Emerging Visions Audience Award. Since then, Weekend has played numerous festivals, winning a number of jury and audience awards. Weekend also won two BIFAS, including Best Achievement in Production.
Vincent Wang (France): French although born in Taiwan, after meeting Tsai Ming-liang, the famous Taiwanese Director, for the first time in 1999, he went back to his native country and founded his first production house, Homegreen Films, with Tsai Ming-liang and the actor Lee Kang-sheng. He thus became an independent producer. His deep knowledge of both Western and Chinese cultures along with his movie production savoir-faire were part of the reasons for the success of his Chinese European productions: The Wayward Cloud by Tsai Ming Liang winner of Silver Bear at Berlin Festival in 2005 , Face by Tsai Ming Liang selected in Official Competition at Cannes Festival in 2009 and recently Stray Dogs by Tsai Ming Liang selected in Official Competition at Venice Festival in 2013 and winner of the Grand Jury Prize. In 2009, he came back to his adopted country and created House on Fire in Paris , in order to continue producing quality films between Asia and Europe and in 2012 he purchased Les 3 Luxembourg, Cinéma Art & Essai in Paris , to promote arthouse movies from all over the world.
Script Consultants
Marietta Von Hauswolf von Baumgarten (Sweden): script consultant and screen writer connected to Binger Filmlab, TorinoFilmLab, Generation Campus/screenwriters Lab Moscow, as well as to various independent film companies and programmes. She is head of MotherofSons (MOS), development/film/production/art/ company based in Stockholm. She is a member of the Swedish Drama Union since 1997 and citizen of the NSK State since 1999, and minister of K.R.E.V since 1996. Marietta is also working as screenwriter for short and feature films and TV within this company: she wrote ‘Call Girl’,which won the Fipresci award in Toronto 2012. Call Girl was also (among others) in official competition of the Turin Film Festival 2012 and the Buenos Aires Film Festival 2013.
Anita Voorham (The Netherlands): has worked as a writer, script-editor and a producer on several comedy and drama series for independent production companies between 1995 and 2005. She currently works as a script-editor for the Dutch public broadcasting company NTR, as a script advisor/tutor for TorinoFilmlab and the Binger Filmlab and as a script advisor for several independent producers. Among his works as a script editor: Little Sister Katia by Mijke de Jong, and Life In One Day by Mark de Cloe. As a scriptwriter, Anita worked for the popular, award-winning drama series Gooische Vrouwen, which has sold to many countries including the UK, France and Germany.
Giacomo Durzi (Italy): As a screenwriter he wrote several TV movies and TV series for Italian TV and has been working for the main production companies such as Tao Due (Distretto di polizia, RIS), Grundy-Freemantle Italy (Liberi di giocare, La nuova squadra) Cattleya, Publispei (I Cesaroni), and Magnolia (Camera cafè, Vicky tv). Recently, he wrote the Italian adaptation of the series In treatment (Wildside for Sky Cinema), and currently writing a new tv series, Sicilia Connection (Tao Due for Mediaset). As an editorial and script consultant, he worked for NBC Universal Italy and Fox International Channels, launching new channels, selecting and developing the productions for Fox Life and History Channel. He worked as head writer and script consultant for Mediavivere-Endemol Italy and the Italian company Itc Movie, developing new formats for TV series, and for the german production company Tandem Communications. As a director, he wrote and directed several documentaries for italian and european broadcasters such as RAI, The History Channel, NBC Universal Network, CHANNEL 4 and MTV. His last film SB I knew him well, has been world premiered in competition at the 2012 Festival Internazionale del Film di Roma, selected in many other international film festivals and released in theatres and tv in Europe. As a producer, he produced short films, documentaries and features such as L’estate di mio fratello by Pietro Reggiani (in competition in many international festivals, won several prizes such as the Jury Prize at the Tribeca Festival in 2005), and Non pensarci by Gianni Zanasi, in competition at the 2007 Venice Film Festival. He has teached screenwriting and mentored students at the DFFB (Deutsche Film und Fernsehakademie Berlin), at the IFS (Internationsl Filmschule Koln), and he’s tutor and teacher for the development project Racconti Script Lab by the BLS (Business Locations Sudtirol-Bolzano Film commission). He is a member of the “Associazione 100Autori” board, the Italian guild for screenwriters, italian delegate of FERA (Federation of European Film Directors), and of the executive board of “Giornate degli Autori-Venice Days” of the Venice International Film Festival.
Creative Producers
Diana Elbaum (Belgium): Diana Elbaum has produced a wide range of award-winning films since becoming a producer in 1989, initially in advertising and then in motion pictures. Her films span all genres and cultures and have received critical acclaim on all continents. She is known for masterfully bringing together international talent and financing. Diana is deeply committed to growing Europe’s film industry and, to this effect, devotes time to EAVE training young film producers. In 2009 she receives the Eurimages Award, Prize awarding producers playing an active role in European co-productions. Diana founded her production company, Entre Chien et Loup, in 1989 and 10 years later, Sébastien Delloye, joined forces with her. Entre Chien et Loup has produced more than 60 films, including among others: Thomas in Love, The Rashevski Tango, La Raison du Plus Faible, Daratt, Irina Palm, La Marea, Les Barons, Rapt, Winds of Sand, Women of Rock, Quartier Lointain, A Screaming Man, La Cinquième Saison, The Congress, Bethlehem. Diana Elbaum is also the co-owner of the company Liaison Cinématographique, a Paris based production company. Her work and curiosity have taken her around the world several times, enabling her to enrol cutting-edge writers, directors and talent from all continents: Sam Garbarski, Nabil Ben Yadir, Ari Folman, Yuval Adler, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Nathalie Borgers, Nic Balthazar, Raoul Peck, Diego Martinez Vignatti, Miel Van Hoogenbemt, Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth. She is a graduate of NYU. Her production company is headquartered in Brussels, where she lives with her two multicultural children.
Titus Kreyenberg (Germany): Titus Kreyenberg was an executive producer for film and television for many years before he founded his own production company unafilm in 2004. unafilm produces feature films: straight forward and artistically challenging, fiction and documentary, national and international. The company’s films compete in internationally acknowledged film festivals around the world, Cannes, Berlinale, Toronto, IDFA, San Sebastian among them. The German-Swiss coproduction “Colours in the Dark” achieved a major success in German cinemas, “Heli” a coproduction with Mexico premiered in competition at Cannes Film Festival in 2013 to win the Best Directors award. The Cologne and Berlin–based unafilm is an active member of ACE, the German Producers Alliance, AG DOK and the European Film Academy.
Helle Ulsteen (Sweden): Kamoli Films is run by award-winning ACE producer of the 2007 International Emmy®Award Nominee Smiling in a War Zone Helle Ulsteen, who has produced a number of prize winning films for the international film world and markets – many in association with Lars Von Trier & Dogme 95. With films such as The Exhibited and The Purified capturing the brotherhood of Lars Von Trier (The Idiots) and Thomas Vinterberg (Festen). And Helle Ulsteen has produced highly interactive Art such as Psychomobile #1: World Clock, Lars von Trier’s innovative live-installation with 56 characters/actors improvising for two months in 19 rooms and controlled by living ants live-linked from New Mexico US into a Copenhagen Art Museum to artists like Peter Greenaway and his 100 Objects. Helle is currently in production with Sin Titulo – filming in Denmark and Argentina by the Cannes acclaimed Director Lisandro Alonso, starring Viggo Mortensen as the protagonist Gunner Blixen. A Co-Production between Kamoli Films Denmark, Perceval Pictures US, 4L Argentina, Carlos Reygada’s MantarrayaProducciones Mexico, Ilse Hughan, Fortuna Films Holland, Les Films du Worzo, France. And she recently won a 35.000 euro development prize at Stockholm Film festival with the new project Wasted together with Swedish writer & director Marietta von Hausswolff von Baumgarten, who won the Fipresci Prize 2012 in Toronto with her film Call Girl. Kamoli Films is aiming at international Co-productions, Joint Ventures and innovative business models in the Film & Transmedia Bizz and has close partners in all Scandinavia, Europe and the US. And she is currently opening a brand new innovative Oeresund Agency & Fun Film Funding company Scandinavian Lovers together with her Swedish Partner Helena Danielsson. Kamoli Films has received various support from EU-MEDIA. All her films carry strong A-Records from most prestigious Film Festivals as sales ranking figures between 40-100 Countries – US market included – where she has sold to HBO, PBS, Sundance Channel and worked with various US Distributors such as Oscilloscope Pictures amongst others. 5 of her new film projects are being supported by The Danish Film Institute. And two New Talent Slate projects have been 2012 selected for the prestigious TorinoFilmLab, for the Framework and the Script & Pitch.
Experts
Hans Bruch Jr. (Belgium): graduated in the cinematography department in 2007. Bruch Jr. worked as a cinematographer on Little Baby Jesus of Flandr and Bluebird (Gust Van den Berghe), both of which were selected for the Quinzaine de Réalisateurs in Cannes. The cinematography for La Cinquième Saison (Peter Brosens – Jessica Woodworth) got him a spot on stage at the Venice film festival.
Mathilde Henrot (France): born in 1975, with a diploma from HEC business school, INALCO (B.A. in Chinese), Paris X (B.A in Philosophy) and Paris II (LLM in Literary and Artistic Copyright Law), Mathilde Henrot worked 8 years for MK2 where she was Director of Sales, also handling acquisitions for international sales. In 2010, together with Alessandro Raja, she founded Festival Scope, the benchmark online service for film professionals allowing them to watch on demand films from more than 80 of the most prestigious international film festivals. She founded also Maharaja Films, production company which line up includes: The Strife of Love in a Dream directed by Camille Henrot, Directors’ Fortnight 2011, Smugglers’ Songs directed by Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, Jean Vigo Prize 2011, Locarno Official Competition 2011 and as French co-producer Alps directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, Venice Official Competition 2011 -Best Screenplay. Since 2012 she also programs for the Sarajevo Film Festival (Bosnia) and in 2013 for the 2morrow Film Festival (Russia).
Katie Mustard (USA): an honors graduate of USC film school, has worked as a Producer and Line Producer for the past twelve years and has overseen the production of 29 feature films. Her first short film, Swallow, premiered at Sundance in 2003 and was distributed by HBO. In 2005, she produced the very successful short In the Morning, which premiered at Sundance and went on to win festivals across the world. Katie’s most recent short film, Eve, premiered at the 2008 Venice Film Festival and was directed by Natalie Portman, starring Lauren Bacall, Ben Gazzara, and Olivia Thirlby. As a feature producer, Katie has overseen production of numerous films, including The Missing Person (Michael Shannon & Amy Ryan), Made in China (winner Best Festure at SXSW Film Festival 2009), The Greatest (Pierce Brosnan & Susan Sarandon), and The Son of No One (Al Pacino, Katie Holmes, Ray Liotta, & Channing Tatum). In 2010, her film Night Catches Us, premiered at Sundance (starring Kerry Washington and Anthony Mackie), which she co-produced and went onto be nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. In January of 2011, Katie had her eighth film premiere at the Sundance Film Festival with Restless City which appeared in theaters in April 2012. Most recently, Katie premiered The Devil Inside which top’d the box office scales as the largest grossing genre film of its time. This year, she produced A Case of You starring Evan Rachel Wood, Justin Long, Sam Rockwell, Brendan Fraser & Vince Vaughn and Growing Up and Other Lies with Josh Lawson, Adam Brody, and Amber Tamblyn.
Ian Sellar (UK): Director, Writer, Teacher. His first feature, Venus Peter was in official selection in Cannes and Sundance. This was followed by Prague – also chosen for Cannes, Tokyo and many others. As a writer his, Home Road Movies was winner of the Cartoon d’Or and numerous other prizes. Ian, based in the UK, is senior lecturer at the National Film and Television School. He runs workshops, normally at first feature level, for writers and directors at the Binger in Amsterdam and various other parts of the world. Ian also works with individual directors and writer/directors, advising from script development onwards, and has thus influenced a number of internationally successful films. Ian blames his Scottish upbringing for the humor and tenacity that he brings to all of his work – qualities that have allowed him to form a close connection to filmmakers from a wide range of cultures and backgrounds.
Mary Stephen (Hong Kong): born in Hong Kong of Chinese origins, graduate of Concordia University (Montreal), based in Paris since the 1980s. Collaborated for 25 years as fim editor and co-music-composer with French New Wave director Eric Rohmer, from being editing assistant to his then-Editor Cécile Décugis (who edited Breathless by J.L. Godard) to Rohmer’s last film The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (2008). In the past decade has working with young filmmakers and producers in France, China, Turkey, and Canada, editing, advising and associate-producing independent fiction and documentary films in these countries, including Majority by Seren Yüce (Lion of the Future, Venice Film Festival 2010) with his 2nd film Silence (shooting June 2013), Last Train Home by Lixin Fan (Joris Ivans Award, IDFA 2009), Umbrella and 1428 (Orizzonti Doc Award, Venice Film Festival 2009) by Du Haibin with new film Patriotism ‘90 (releasing in September 2013), Blind Mountain by Li Yang, Wild Grass of Qingdao by Lina Yang, Judge by Liu Jie, My Marlon and Brando by Hüseyin Karabey. Continues to make own films, such as Vision from the edge : Breyten Breytenbach painting the lines as well as teaching/coaching in workshops/symposiums in Asia, Europe and Australia.
Paul Tyler (UK): Paul Tyler founded Handling Ideas, from a twenty-year career spanning television and cross-media production at the BBC, theatre management, format development and undergraduate teaching. Paul makes production companies more effective at responding to the ever-growing need for deeper user engagement and consistent user experience across multiple devices. He applies a toolkit for mapping, visualization and prototyping. Paul works with businesses developing film, television, cross/trans-media, games, products, services and campaigns across communication, marketing, commerce and design. Starting at the bottom of the production ladder, Paul worked his way up through BBC apprenticeship to Producer and multi-camera studio Director. A flirtation with online in late nineties took him to cross-media production. With one of BBC’s first innovative cross-media productions under his belt, he found himself supporting others within the industry across Europe, as they wrestled with how to interact with their audiences.
Joana Vicente (USA): producing partner with Jason Kliot, together they have worked on over 40 feature films by such acclaimed directors as Jim Jarmusch, Brian De Palma, Steven Soderbergh, Miguel Arteta, Hal Hartley, Nicole Holofcener, Alex Gibney, and Todd Solondz. Together with Marc Cuban and Todd Wagner, Vicente & Kliot launched the pioneering digital production companies Blow Up Pictures and HDNetFilms, which ushered in a new era of digital filmmaking that radically transformed the landscape of American independent film production and distribution.