An interview with Koen Daela, Program Director of Isola Cinema.<br> Cinema Without Borders: Please tell us about the history of IZOLA Cinema Film Festival. Koen Van Daele: The Isola Cinema festival took place for the first time in May 2004. Its programme focus was on African, Asian, Latin American and Eastern European cinema. The over thirty films of the official programme were shown on three venues, while the festival marked 5000 visitors, most of them enchanted by the spells of the open air cinema on Manzioli square. The festival hosted thirteen film artists and many more important guests from around…
Author: Bijan Tehrani
Bernd Desinger was born in 1962 in Oberhausen, Germany. He studied German language and literature, History, Psychology and Film. Bernd Desinger joined the Goethe-Institute in 1990. After postings in Germany and Athens, Greece, he became deputy director of the Goethe-Institute Toronto. In 2000 he was transferred to the Head Office in Germany, where he was in charge of film and media. In 2002 he became director of the Bonn branch of the Head Office, serving in a parallel capacity as head of the Department of Audiovisual Media. In this position he was responsible for the acquisition and co-production of documentary…
Carl Spence is currently the Artistic Director of the Seattle International Film Festival Group and the director of programming at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Before his tenure at these two organizations he was director of programming at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Prior to his work in San Francisco, Carl spent eight years at the Seattle International Film Festival as a programmer and associate director of the organization. He began his career successfully curating two years of film programs, concerts and live events at the University of Washington in 1991 followed by a brief stint working for…
Pero, the main character in Gravehopping, is an intelligent man in his mid-thirties. He uses his considerable talent as a writer for funeral speeches. These are not mere eulogies for the deceased, since Pero consciously and unconsciously entwines his own perception of past events and his life philosophy into them. He lives in a family house with his sisters Vilma and Ida, his father, and his nephew Johnny. Pero’s neighbour Shooki, Džoni’s father Jagger, and Renata—Pero’s great love—also frequently cross his path. Jan Cvitkovia, director of Gravehopping, was born in 1966 in Slovenia. Jan is an archaeologist, writer, actor, and…
A contributing writer for The New York Times, James Ulmer’s 20-year journalistic career has included eight years as international editor and columnist for The Hollywood Reporter, where he reported from the world’s leading film festivals and markets and supervised a fleet of 35 foreign correspondents. For Premiere magazine, he penned the national columns “James Ulmer’s World View” and “Rank and Bank – The Ulmer Scale.” He has also written for The Los Angeles Times, Variety, Directors Guild Quarterly, Movieline and The Observer in London. Ulmer has been interviewed in numerous national publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The Wall…
In “A Kiss on the Nose”, when Chiara’s distant father Romano dies, she is left to try and figure out the man and her own feelings about him. For that, she must go back to the very beginning: her parents’ birth and their first encounter. From fragments of memory and often whimsical reconstructions of events that she did not actually witness, little by little Chiara builds a picture of her father—but she does not have all the pieces yet… Laura Neri, director of “A Kiss on the Nose” was born in Belgium of a Greek mother and an Italian father,…
South East European Film Festival in Los Angeles showcases the work of filmmakers from Southern and Eastern Europe, and films made by expatriates who live in California and who trace their origins to the Balkans, the countries of the Danube, and the Black Sea. The only one of its kind in the United States, its message is not only to show films but to educate about South East Europe, its troubled history, and cultural diversity. In Los Angeles since 1992, Vera Mijojlic founded the first-ever festival of films from Southeast Europe, www.seefilmla.org, and launched promotional campaigns for Balkan films, as…
Bulgarian director Binka Zhelyazkova (born 1923) never shrank from controversy. Educated at Moscow’s prestigious film academy, she clashed with Bulgaria’s commissars and was at the forefront of political cinema under the country’s Communist regime. Intense and passionate about moviemaking as much as about her view of the society she lived in, Binka was ahead of her time. This documentary brings to light the woman behind the camera, and combines scenes from Binka’s films, rare archival footage, and candid interviews with former Bulgarian studio executives and film professionals. Her allegorical and urban dramas examined human rights, artistic freedom and the legitimacy…
The Polish American Film Society is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting a higher level of understanding of Polish culture through film. This organization showcases outstanding achievements of Polish cinema right in the heart of Hollywood. Each year, the Polish Film Festival of Los Angeles screens the finest selection of contemporary Polish cinema including full-length features, documentaries, animations, and shorts. Polish Film Festival provides an exciting venue for Polish filmmakers and actors to share their talents with an American audience. In an interview with Cinema Without Borders, Vladek Juszkiewicz, Director of the Polish Film Festival of Los Angeles talked about the…
“Journey from the Fall” is inspired by the true stories of Vietnamese refugees who fled their land after the fall of Saigon—and those who were forced to stay behind; the film follows one family’s struggle for freedom. Despite his allegiance to the toppled South Vietnamese government, Long Nguyen (as Long Nguyen) decides to remain in Vietnam. Imprisoned in a Communist re-education camp, he urges his family to make the escape by boat without him. His wife Mai (Diem Lien), son Lai (Nguyen Thai Nguyen) and mother Ba Noi (Kieu Chinh) then embark on the arduous ocean voyage in the hope…