Head of Programme
Savina Neirotti
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
Michel Reilhac
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.
Jane Williams
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.
Story Developers
Gino Ventriglia
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.
Naomi Roth
Naomi Roth is an explorer. Initially attracted by anthropology, studying human societies and cultures led her to grow a passion for other cultures, visions and other realities. She began her career as a journalist and community builder, working with Parisian associations pursuing new solutions and concrete applications to create a sustainable and ethical future.
In early 2016, she became engaged as a volunteer and traveled Europe for the first world VR tour. Back in Paris, she took part of the Café VR freshly imported from Montreal -demoing VR to a larger public- and decided to further understand the potential of VR applications to education, health, rehabilitation and awareness.
Naomi launched Virtuality for Reality in 2016, an international online open-door community bringing together professionals, researchers and VR directors inspired by VR for good. She was invited the same year to co-create an innovation lab (on VR/AR/AI technologies) for a multinational startup, then worked inside the laboratory on the elaboration of new lines of research.Today she gives lectures at French Universities and collaborates to various international projects destined to understand how environmental influences affect our choices and behaviour.
Visual Advisors
Amaury La Burthe
After a few years in the computing industry Amaury La Burthe turned to his true passion: he followed a Masters in Acoustics and Signal Processing Applied to Music at IRCAM in Paris. He then worked as an assistant researcher for Sony Computer Science Laboratory (Sony-CSL) and as Lead Audio Designer for video game company Ubisoft. Through his professional experiences he developed a dual expertise: scientific and artistic knowledge in the field of sound design and speciality in the creation of interactive material. Amaury worked for Sony on various music browser prototypes and recently for interactive music prototypes. He also worked for Ubisoft as audio designer on Prince of Persia: Warrior Within & Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and as lead audio designer for Splinter Cell: Double Agent & Farcry 2.
Tupac Martir
Born 1977 in the UK, of Mexican heritage, Tupac obtained his BFA, from Creighton University under the guidance of John Thein and National Geographic Photographer Fr. Don Doll, SJ. Tupac Martir is an artist, visual designer and creative director with a varied portfolio of projects in the arts and entertainment scene. He has provided production design, visuals and lighting direction for Elton John, Sting, Coachella, New York Festival of Light, Nederland Dans Theater, Xu Bing at the V&A Museum, the Serpentine Gallery and the Old Vic Tunnels to name a few. Over the years, Tupac has become synonymous amongst the London, Paris, Milan and NewYork fashion scene. His work has been delivered for shows during fashion week for major designer houses Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, Vivienne Westwood, Moschino and Thomas Tait, among others. As an artist, he has exhibited in Mexico, USA, Argentina, Cuba, Colombia, UK, as well as being an official entry for the Morelia Film Festival with his multidisciplinary piece ‘The Gentleman, The Merrmaid, Mexican Cinema, Loteria’ originally created for the British Council as part of the Cultural Olimpyad during London 2012. Tupac’s work has been published in major publications, such as Wallpaper* Magazine, Vogue, Rolling Stone, NME, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Live Design and LSI. He has developed a reputation for creating unique mulitidiscipianry productions from several art forms including two of his own, ‘Nierka’ and ‘Looking Outside My Window’.
Toby Coffey
Toby Coffey is Head of Digital Development for the National Theatre. His team is responsible for the creative and technical development of the digital interfaces between the NT and its audiences. He focuses on developing forms of digital engagement and interaction around the NT and its repertoire of productions. Toby is currently leading the NT’s Immersive Storytelling initiatives looking at the application of 360 films, VR and installations in compelling methods of storytelling. Relevant areas include 360 films, virtual reality, augmented reality, installations, telepresence, digital publishing, online, UX, app development, device based engagement, digital art direction, social media, transmedia and documentary production. Toby has over 15 years expertise in the digital arena from creative, technical, production and social perspectives.
Creative Technologist
Carl Guyenette
An empathetic, technological polymath that harnesses imagination, creativity, engineering and method to manifest dreams into digital reality. Founder and Creative Technologist at Hyperspatial.io.
Christian Möller
Christian Möller is a Director of Photography and VR Technologist with more than 10 years of experience. He is specialized in documentary and narrative projects. With his passion for omnidirectional filmmaking he shot multiple research and commercial films, focusing on different approaches to the art of camerawork and new ways of storytelling. Christian strong intercultural skills and ability to adapt have been key in all his projects with different international teams in almost all locations (e.g. USA, Russia, China, Uganda, Kenia, Tanzania, Costa Rica, Switzerland, France) across the Globus. Driven by the strong influence of Virtual Reality in his work since 2011, he founded the company INVR.SPACE GmbH based in Berlin/Germany in 2015. At INVR.SPACE he is responsible for developing strong visual imagery and suitable portfolio. His impressive record till end of 2016 at INVR reflects his level of experience, with several projects he has been in charge.
Sergio Ochoa Jiménez
His interest in researching and creating new technologies has given him a deep knowledge and understanding of each step involved in the development of the audiovisual process.
His career began as software developer of applications and graphic interface. He then combined his technical expertise with artistic creation and became CGI artist and VFX supervisor.
He founded his own enterprise which quickly became one of Spain´s most relevant production companies. After years of direction, post production and production he moved into creative direction and art direction for advertising campaigns. He then returned to the film market as VFX supervisor and DI expert (Technicolor). Throughout his career he has founded several innovative companies in the arena of FX and VFX, who were quickly absorbed by larger companies.
His wide background allows him to help towards the development of a high end post production suite (SGO Mistika), focusing on colour grading and the stereoscopic tool set and SGO Mistika positioning in the international market as a leading technology. Currently, he works as CEO / Creative Technologist in the SGO office in France.
Experts
Fanette Martinie – Line producer
After a first experience on feature film Le Havre by Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki as a production secretary, Fanette Martinie quickly became a line producer. Since the beginning of a career, she has had an interest in working on international productions, whether be receiving foreign crews in France or organising film shoots abroad (Kazakhstan, India…). Alongside feature films, Fanette has worked on cross media and VR projects. She is keen on supporting producers and storytellers using her knowledge and experience, whatever the media.
Martje Friedrich – producer
Martje Friedrich is a VR producer for INVR.SPACE. Her responsibilities include the planning and realization of national and international VR projects as well as the project management for R&D projects.Martje studied theatre and media sciences in Erlangen and dramaturgy at HFMT Hamburg. She started to work as a dramatic adviser for theater and performance projects, especially interested in innovative approaches. This took her to the UFA Lab as a media producer, responsible for various TV and online projects (ZDF, Arte, WDR, RTL). Finally, she dedicated her work to the world of Virtual Reality and started to work for INVR.SPACE an award-winning Virtual Reality Full Service Studio, leader in Europe, working creatively on self-developed, immersive projects as well as supporting clients with their VR projects. The team of creatives, technologists and business professionals has a vast amount of gear and knowledge to produce and postproduce VR Content worldwide. On top of that INVR builds self-developed camera rigs, engages in different fields of Research and Development.
Paul Tyler
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.