Participants 2007

In the past I have worked as 3D animator and videoeditor. Later I used to direct several TV shows – about extreme sports, music and lifestyle. I have also directed one short film and a few documentaries. In 2006 I directed two social documentaries – one about people with mental problems “Thin Ice” and one about the danger of alcohol abusing among teenagers – “42 Degrees”.

Elena Zervopoulou has worked as an ethno psychologist in Paris (Masters in Clinical Cross-cultural Psychology, University of Paris) offering therapeutic sessions to immigrant families and their “second generation children” by using an ethnological and psychoanalytical approach. She has been a consultant for the Primary Education department of UNESCO in Paris, in charge of developing and implementing a sub-program for the reinforcement of the education and of the socio-economic integration of Malagasy street children, abandoned and handicapped children (in Madagascar). She is currently collaborating with the University of Athens, as a consultant-tutor, for educational seminars/workshops on cross-cultural issues.
Being sensitive to “Communication for Development”, she has obtained a Masters in Anthropological and Documentary filmmaking from the University of Nanterre in Paris (tutorial by Jean Rouch and his crew). Her academy film was projected in 2004 at the «The International Ethnographical Film Festival», in Paris. She has been meeting traditional, “indigenous” communities (in Chile, in Indonesia, in Malaysia, in Philippines…). Through filming them she has tried to highlight their local wisdom, necessary for their sustainable development, while dealing with social and human rights issues. Elena has co-produced, directed, filmed and edited the following documentaries: “Sabah” 26min (bought by RAI and ERT), “Flowers and knives ” 52min, “Sea Gypsies” 52min (in production), “Ngata Toro” 52min (in production), and a 30min video for Action Aid Greece. Since 2006, as an associate producer for Doclab in Rome, she has worked on nationally and internationally distributed long documentaries.

I studied Telecommunications & Mediatechnology at University of Applied Sciences (FH St.Pölten - Austria) between 2001 -2004. After my diploma I went for a 14 month long journey to Central Asia focusing on panoramic photography and mountaineering. Since March 2006 I work at the Golden Girls Filmproduction (Vienna) mainly in the field of editing, colour grading and animating as well as Digital Cinema Mastering for DOCUZONE Austria and 35mm Filmtransfers for various clients. As a production manager and director I worked for a couple of documentary films, musicvideos and commercials.

Since 1997 Sandijs has been working as a journalist, scriptwriter and director for films and television programmes on important social and environmental issues. At Vides filmu studija (a production company based in Riga, Latvia) he makes programmes on environmental issues commissioned by “Vides Fakti” (Environmental Facts), a weekly 28-minute TV programme on nature and environment. Parallel to that, as the journalist of the Latvian Television he travels to different “hot spots” of the world – Georgia, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan – making reportages on events and developments in those countries.

I have been working in the documentary field as a free lance for 6 years, mostly into social documentaries production and development. Working together with scriptwriters to develop their idea, and presenting the project to adequate financing sources.
I have also directed four short documentaries: “The City” about the City of London, “Alpha” about Haitian people, “Catapoum” about Catalan woman thrown out of her house and “Los pescadores” collaborating with teenagers of an immigrant neighborhood of Barcelona. I have also assisted closely the direction of two long feature documentaries: “Cinéma Soleil” shot in Cité Soleil, Haiti and “Death of a whore” about prostitution in Europe.

Graduated in Semiotic Studies on Cinema at Bologna university with 110 cum laude.
In 2003 I collaborated to the Orfeo Telestreet Project. I’m still interested in social aduiovideo networking.
I continued my studies with a master in documentary production in 2005. I worked as sale agent for C.D.I. international distributor for current affair in Milan.
In 2006 I’ve been working on human interest documentaries for Zanahoria Produzioni and Palomar s.r.l., based in Rome, covering the roles of producer, fund raiser, researcher, assistant director and photographer.
Currently I’m working on “Gift-giving” my second documentary, codirected with Emma Rossi-Landi, on a popular school in Kati, in the outskirt of Bamako, Mali’s Capitol City. In this school a gruop of women is fighting against globalisation giving the students their traditional values, among them a sort of circled economy, based on solidarity an mutual aid.
Since August 2006 I’m researching and preproducing Panic.K Attacks! with the financial support of Italian Psychology Institutes and Regione Toscana scholarship.

Matti Pohjonen is a reseacher, visual artist and filmmaker residing in Brussels. He is currently finishing the write-up of his PhD from the the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, a school where he also was a Student Research Fellow for three years. Prior to his PhD, Matti Pohjonen completed an MA in Antropology of Media and two BAs in International Studies and Journalism.
In addition to his acedemic experience, Matti Pohjonen is also the co-founder and creative director of the media production company negativewarmachine and recently finished an experimental documentary that looked at the impact of the recent economic boom in Mumbai, India. He has also recently co-founded sacredmediacow, a centre on media research and practice at the School of Oriental and African Studies. The aim of the center is to act as a bridge between academia and practice, textual theory and the visual arts and Europe and the rest of the world.
Being trained in both the practical side of visual arts and film as well as in critical theory and reseach, Matti Pohjonen's current professional goal is to combine research with the the use of new digital technologies and film for artisistic and social purposes.

Barbara Orton is a BAFTA award winning producer/director, and founder of True TV & Film – a small international production company based in Glasgow, Scotland and specializing in ambitious Documentary and Factual film projects on compelling arts, politics, human interest subjects – local and global. The last production was 2 x 60 min docs for BBC1 prime time Sunday night “Bruce Goes Dancing” featuring British TV star, Bruce Forsyth.

Working in television since 1995. Master degree in Cinematography and Media, actually developing a doctoral research on tv film and documentary.
Since 1997 exclusively worked as tv documentary author, director and producer. Signed about 10 documentary films, awarded nationally and internationally for some of them (see included cv. During the last three years worked on a four episodes series on the History of Gold Mining in Romania, which allowed me to become aware of the not only cultural but social implications of the controversial Rosia Montana mining project. This is the subject I hope to develop in ESoDoc.

I started my career in cinema as video editor in a TV News Department in 2003.
In 2004 I was hired by OWH TV Studio, initially as video editor. My main obligation is editing, but, as soon as we are a small NGO, each of us performs more jobs, meaning for me production, co-directing, translating films, dubbing, shooting and international correspondence if necessary. I am also permanently involved in Youth Projects doing the media part of different national and international projects, including shooting, editing.
Every year we organize the only International Documentary Film Festival in Moldova, “CRONOGRAF” (www.owh.md ), where I make the translation and dubbing voice over of the films in Romanian (which means more than 100 translated and dubbed films during 3 years).
My portfolio represents all the works made by OWH TV Studio since June, 2004: www.owh.md.

I studied Cultural Anthropology and Theatre- Film- and Television Studies at the University of Cologne, Germany and at the National University in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Since 2003 I am working as a freelance author and filmmaker in cooperation with the film production company Kigali-films from Cologne. We are producing documentaries for different TV stations and NGOs in Germany and Austria, mainly on topics related to socio-political and development issues. Besides that I am editing and writing for a monthly online newsletter focussing on topics like renewable energies, human rights, gender issues, HIV/AIDS and international cooperation.

In 2005 I set up Shoreditch Films productions as a producer, collaborating with Israeli and Palestinian documentary filmmakers, exploring points of dissent and opportunities in Middle Eastern cultures. In 2006 I took part In the Israeli International Co-Productions Forum, with the film Ya shadad, (In Between). I am currently completing Ya Shadad, a 26min short-doc, which was shot in the West Bank. More so, I am working on two more short documentaries, which are in early production stage.

Director, producer and cameraman – studied directing at La fémis (National Film School) and cinematography at the Lodz Film School. Collaborated with Andrzej Wajda, Agnieszka Holland and Krzysztof Kie?lowski. Directed short films and documentaries: A Trace (about his father, Stanislaw Latallo), Constellations, Another Gaze and lately for Arte France Our Street. He founded his production company: Camera Obscura.

BORBÁLA KRIZA obtained her MA in Sociology and Sociology of Minorities at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Budapest and also studied at Nationalism Studies Program of Central European University, Budapest. Currently she is a Ph.D. candidate at Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris as well as lecturer at Institute of Sociology, ELTE. She participated in numerous research projects; her main research interests include far right political parties and ideologies in Europe, national myths and identity, migration, minorities, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and collective memory. She has published extensively in Hungarian and English, her reports and articles appear regularly in the Hungarian press. Since 1999, as expert, researcher, interviewer, she has contributed to several prize winning documentary films treating social issues (Being Decorated, The End of the Road, From Home to Home by Tamás Almási, Once They Were Neighbours by Zsuzsanna Varga, Terminus by Gábor Péter Németh). Currently she is working on her own documentary entitled Rocking the Nation on ‘patriotic rock’ subculture.

Right now Kofler is the director of helios, which is an audiovisual communication agency. A firm with very particular productions and a very particular philosophy. In helios, besides being the director, he’s producing documentaries and once in a while also realizing one as director/dop. Since 2001 Kofler has been the managing director of OEW Organization for a world of Solidatity in Southtyrol for 3,5 years. He has been working for Society for Threathened peoples (human rights). He is part of advisory council on cooperation development of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano. Since 1995 Kofler travels around the world making documentaries on his own, with helios, for NGO’s and broadcasters.

As communications officer for terre des hommes schweiz (tdh) I create audio and video documentaries of our projects. Furthermore, I am responsible for frequent media contact and the publication of our newspaper, which is issued four times a year (circulation: 60,000). Tdh is a politically and confessionally neutral association, and abroad tdh supports around 70 projects in 11 countries. On site tdh works in collaboration with grassroots organizations.

Officially I am a Diplom-Geographer. But my main profession: being curious and enquiring! So my real passion is bringing up topics in public or create new public in broaching topics that are being ignored by the mass media. These are mostly political and social topics. Practically that means that I work as a free editor in a student television station. My responsibilities are editing, sometimes camera and post-production of our contributions. I am also organizing every year a globalization-critical film festival “Globale” in Berlin.

Ulrike A. Helmer was born in 1964 in the South of Holland, to a German mother and a Dutch father. Ever since her childhood she was interested in other cultures and youth and subcultures. She was a great music lover too. As a student in Utrecht she put a hobby to effect, working at a concert hall for many years, doing the lighting. Aged twelve, she got her first photo camera and started taking pictures and working in a dark room. After secondary school she went to Paris for a year. Back in Holland, while studying Cultural Anthropology, she discovered she didn’t want to look at the world in a scientific way. She switched to photography and film studies at the art academy. Gradually, she developed a cinematographic view of the world.
A great deal of her films concentrate on contemporary society and people’s struggles to conquer a place within it - as artists, writers, rappers, musicians or entrepreneurs. Her main characters are often underdog types and are seen trying to make small but significant changes in their own way. She has made a considerable number of documentaries about music, arts and youth culture in various countries across the world. For some years, she worked for the VPRO - Holland’s famously wayward broadcasting station. Her latest feature length documentary, “Dutch Touch”, focuses on hip hop culture and music in her own country. In her films she always aims to tell a story in a raw and impressionistic way, rather than in the traditionally journalistic and verbal way. Image, colour and sound are her essential ingredients. She approaches her topics as an anthropologist would, with an open eye and an open mind, trying to understand and explain from the inside out.

In 2002, Zuzana Drazilova established Sunfilm Productions company and started to produce documentaries with social and political themes: executively did „Prague Zoo And Floods” and as main producer 2 docus from series „Lost Neighbours“: “Expedition Jews” (47 min.) and “Kids from Hartmanice” (31 min., 2 prices). Currently produces “Teens & Jews” series about nowadays anti-Semitism and develops a feature-length docu “Šchkola” about a common life of Czech, German and Polish pupils. Applied “Daughters of Political Enemy” is the newest project in a beginning development phase.

I am currently Head of Productions at Largeblue Productions, and helped to found Green.tv - the world’s first broadband TV channel dedicated to environmental issues - supported by UNEP. I’ve worked on location in the UK, Cambodia and Sweden. My work has been televised by the BBC and ITV, as well as in Singapore, and has been screened at London’s IMAX cinema.
Past projects have included a documentary on a unique dance course for disabled dancers, a film about the family of Guantanamo detainee Jamil El-Banna, and a film on murdered Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.

I am a documentary writer and director. I graduated in Communication Sciences at “La Sapienza” University in Rome in 2003.  I’m specialised in Digital Cinema, Production, Multimedia and technological contents for interactive communication in Milan in 2004.
I developed my professional experience in audiovisual production working at RAI, Italian Public Broadcaster, since 2004. I worked for "Internet Café", a programme about new technologies, and for "Alle Falde del Kilimangiaro", a tv show about travel and world cultures. I wrote and directed several  short documentaries about social issues such as african women condition or child soldiers. I wrote  three documentaries about the Italian Blind Institute and
the life of blind people. I’ve been awarded at Future Film Festival (Italy) with the first prize for a tv spot realized with animation technique. (it’s possible to see it on YouTube).

I am a freelance documentary filmmaker and photographer who lived and worked 5 years in the Middle East, freelancing as a TV camerawoman and editor, filmmaker and stills photographer. Now I have returned to Norway and are continuing this work. I am as a filmmaker mostly interested in topics around social injustice, and the state of civil liberties and human rights in the new millennium. I have just had my first film (as photographer) in theatres in Norway.