The competition section of the International Women’s Film Festival, Cologne, Germany will be held between October 11-15 and the Jury members are Madhusree Dutta, Tahmineh Milani and Anke Scheib.
Madhusree Dutta
Madhusree Dutta was born 1959 in Jamshepur/Jharkhand, India. In 1980, she graduated with a degree in business studies from Jadavpur University in Kolkata. Three years later, in 1983, she gained a further qualification in drama and acting at the National School of Art and Drama in New Delhi. She learnt the practical side of film creation working as an assistant director and editor for the Bollywood film industry between 1987 and 1990. Since 1993, she has been making films on the subjects of identification, marginalisation and gender roles. Along with Paromita Vohra and Suhasini Mulay, Ms Dutta is India’s most successful documentary-maker and has been awarded various prizes at national and international film festivals. In 1990, she was appointed manager of the Majlis, a multicultural centre for alternative culture and rights discourse in Bombay. In 1993, for her debut film “I Live In Behrampada”, she received the Filmfare Award for Best Documentary. Further distinctions include: 1994 National Award for Best Documentary on Social Issues; 1997 Rapa Best Public Service Advertisement Award; 1998 IDPA (Indian Documentary Producers Association) Award 2000; National Award for Best Anthropological Film and the IDPA Award and Best Script Award at the Shanghai Film Festival.
Tahmineh Milani
Tahmineh Milani was born 1960 in Tabriz, Iran. She is one of Iran’s most successful Iranian film directors. Though trained as an architect, she discovered her passion for film construction while attending a screenplay workshop in 1979. She subsequently worked on numerous films in a script-girl and assistant-director capacity until she shot her first film “Children of Divorce” in 1989, thus launching her career as film director. Her breakthrough on the international scene came with “The Legend of Ah”(1990) and “Two Women” (1999) for which two films she was awarded four prizes by the American Film Institute Film Festival, Further prizes include: Best Artistic Contribution; Cairo International Film Festival 2001; Best Screenplay Asia-Pacific Film Festival 2002; Grand Prix for Best Film Geneva 2003; and the Audience Award Chicago 2003. She has sat on the jury at the following film festivals: Chicago 2003, Kartay, Tunis 2004 and Karala 2005. Tahmineh Milani has never been fearful of addressing controversial or sensitive themes in her work. For her political viewpoint in “The Hidden Half” (2001), she was imprisoned. Thanks to a petition led by some of the world’s leading directors – such as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Sean Penn – and thanks to a pardon by President Khatami, she was released from prison after two weeks.
Anke Scheib
Born 1969 in Dortmund, Germany, but grew up in Wolfsburg. After leaving school, Anke Scheib read drama and Islamic studies in Berlin and Hamburg. She then worked for Greenpeace in Hamburg and Amsterdam. As news editor and production director, she was responsible for the filming of action reports and documentaries on worldwide location. She also helped with setting up media facilities in Asia (Hong Kong). In 1998, she transferred to Colonia Media Filmproduktion — at first as assistant manager and then as producer. In that capacity, from 2000 to 2005, she produced a number of TV plays and a good few of the Tatort cop series based in Cologne. She was also responsible for Label 131, CMF’s unit for young filmmakers. Ms Scheib has now been working as editor in the TV Film Department at the WDR, Germany’s largest TV Company, since April 2005