The ending of 2013 will be very busy for Academy of Documentary Arts. ADA undertakes several training activities and kindly invites to participate in all of them.

The Baikal ADA Green workshop will take place, in Irkutsk (Russia), during The XII-th Baikal International Festival of Popular-Science and Documentary Films "People and Environment" (http://www.baikalkinofest.ru/en/ ).  ADA experts – Dorota Roszkowska and Krystian Matysek - will lead masterclasses focused on development process, fundrising and secrets of shooting of documentary nature films. More information and participant accreditation available at http://docuarts.eu/baikal/

From November 7^th to 10^th, workshops focused on scriptdoctoring and documentary projects development will be held in Kiev (Ukraine). The aim of that event will be teaching young filmmakers how to develop film idea and construct storytelling. Within next few days the call for projects will be open and further details will be announced at www.docuarts.eu

The second edition of ArtDocFest ADA Pitching will take place in Moscow (Russia), during the ArtDocFest Festival of Documentary Films (http://www.artdocfest.ru/eng ) from November 30 ^th till December 9^th. The Pitching session will consist of three days of projects preparations and one day of public presentations in front of decision makers from leading Russian TV stations. The call for projects is open until October 10^th. More information at www.docuarts.eu/artdocfest

ADA launches co-operation with new partners - documentary film festivals in Poznań and Szczecin. Representatives of Academy are invited to lead presentations of ADA’s training initiatives at 22^nd Dokument Art Film Festival  (http://dokumentart.pl/en ) in Szczecin (Poland) on October 18^th and on November 22^nd , during the 17^th IDFF Off Cinema (http://www.offcinema.pl/en ) in Poznań (Poland).

All above mentionned ADA’s activities are co-financed by Polish Film Institute and events in Russia also by Polish Cultural Center in Moscow.

IMAGINE by Andrzej Jakimowski – which premiered in Toronto last year and was winner of best director and Audience Award at the Warsaw international Film festival amongst many others has been chosen as the Polish representative at the European Film Awards.

 

Further now to its release in Poland in by Kino Swiat in April of this year, IMAGINE will be released by KMBO wide in France on October 23rd.  Meanwhile further sales have been made following the deals with Kino Świat and KMBO,   to Russia - P&I Films Distributions, Turkey – Calinos, and Germany via Neue Visionen.  A deal is in the offing for the US and Canada and this will be announced later in October.

Boasting a healthy €2.05 million budget the producers secured top British and German actors Edward Hogg and Alexandra Maria Lara to join the cast of largely blind children the much bruited third feature and first English language film from Polish-born Jakimowski, for a shoot that took in the Portuguese capital Lisbon and a major location in a Convent School orphanage in Evora. Other cast includes: young blind French actor Melchior Derouet (as Serrano), and Francis Frappat (Doctor).

 

The film, written by Jakimowski, tells the story of Ian (Hogg), a charismatic (and blind) spatial orientation instructor, who arrives at a top notch Lisbon ophthalmological clinic where he is in charge of sessions with blind patients. As a new teacher he uses unconventional methods, and during his spatial orientation sessions Ian quickly wins the trust of his students; a small group of children and teenagers of various nationalities. Among his students, a young woman called Eva (Lara) is especially withdrawn and secluded. Ian concentrates his efforts to make her overcome her shyness. He brings her outside the clinic without any permission to help her rediscover the pleasures of life.

 

"For Ian, the mind and imagination rather than sensory perception allow him and his patients to move around and live actively." Says Jakimowski," but in the end his methods - although successful - prove to be too challenging."

 

Film and Music Entertainment in London have brought together a posse of young blind actors ranging in age from nine and sixteen.

 

"Jakimowski is one of those rare European film makers," says UK producer, Mike Downey, "whose films have the ability to travel and communicate whatever the language. In this, Jakimowski’s first English language outing he has created in the roles of Ian and Eva challenging roles for both leads, which will be a great showcase for the talent of these two amazing leads. They are real gems of parts."

IMAGINE  is a Poland-France-Portugal co-production between ZAiR (Warsaw), KMBO (Paris), Filmes do Tejo II Multimedia (Lisbon) and is funded by the Polish Film Institute, the Centre National de la Cinematographie (CNC), the Institito Do Cinema E Do Audiovisual (ICA), Canal + Cyfrowy, Can do Films and Wytwornia Filmow Dokumentalnych i Fabularnych. Mike Downey of Film and Music Entertainment co-produces.

 

"The subject of spatial orientation by blind people is fascinating." Says director Andrzej Jakimowski, "The remarkable and rarely used technique of "echolocation" used by Ian is only one element of this phenomenon. In fact he pays much more attention to imagination than any sensory perception. This is the outcome of several months’ research into spatial orientation techniques used by blind people - and more broadly by research into the reality of blind people’s lives. I find some of their methods poetic and absolutely cinematic at the same time."

 

Jakimowski’s most recent feature, Tricks was the Polish Academy award nomination in 2009 and has picked up major awards at Venice, Tokyo, Sao Paolo, Miami and Thessaloniki film festivals. Released in all major international territories the film has performed solidly at the international box office.

For Further Information Please contact:

 

Tanja Lunardelli at Film and Music Entertainment (53 Great Portland Street, London W1W 7LG, Tel: + 44 207 255 1834, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

 

Cottbus, 19. September 2013 – This year will see the 15. edition of the East-West co-production market connecting cottbus, as usual held in parallel to the 23. FilmFestival Cottbus. On November 7 and 8, 140 participants will have the opportunity to present ideas for new feature films, initiate co-productions between Eastern and Western Europe and discuss current topics for the European film industry.

Since 1999, a total of 173 projects were pitched at connecting cottbus, about 60 of which have since been completed. This year alone, four films that were pitched in Cottbus have so far been presented in the competitions of international festivals: The Serbian-Croatian THE PRIEST’S CHILDREN and the Serbian-Swiss WITHERING could be seen at Karlovy Vary, while the Romanian ROXANNE was screened in Locarno and the Romanian-German WOLF in Sarajevo. Earlier well-known coco projects include Sergej Loznitsa’s MY JOY (Cannes 2010) and Srdan Golubovic’s THE TRAP (Berlinale 2007). Both films will be shown at the FilmFestival Cottbus as part of the anniversary series „15 Years of connecting cottbus“. Following the screenings, producers and supporters will provide insights into the production history of these films, i.e., all the work that goes into an international coproduction before it hits the screen. The third film in this series is the recently completed TANGERINES, an unusual tale of love and hate in the Caucasus on the background of a little-known chapter of Estonian-Georgian relations.

During the pitching on November 7, 13 projects from 11 countries will be presented to potential European co-production partners. One of them, the new project by last year’s winner of the FilmFestival Cottbus Grand Prize, Polish director Maria Sadowska, was already a given by winning the “Special Pitch Award“. With Oleg Sentsov‘s KAI, connecting cottbus will present the new project by one of the shooting stars of Ukrainian cinema whose current film “Rhino“ is being realized as a German-Ukrainian coproduction.  Jan Cvitkovic‘s Slovenian slacker comedy SISKA DE LUXE takes up the baton from his festival success “Gravehopping“ (2005). CITY OF BIRDS by Alena Alova is a timeless coming-of-age story among Russian-Jewish emigrants in an Italian small town of the 1980s. Serbian director Ognjen Glavonic explores the individual responsibility for the war crimes committed in the name of his nation in Kosovo with his film THE LOAD. Turkey is represented with two projects: BLOOD MONEY by Kıvanc Sezer and DETAILS OF A DREAM by Orhan Eskiköy and Özgür Dogan, whose earlier works “On the Way to School“ and “The Voice of My Father“ successfully toured the international festival circuit.  

The relationship between the individual and the family is a connecting link of this year’s projects, especially in extreme situations such as sickness, betrayal or economic difficulties. In different facets, this theme can be found in formally highly diverse film projects such as PIPELINE by Asif Rustamov (Aserbaidjan/Germany), Stelios Kammitsis‘ THE MAN WITH THE ANSWERS (Cyprus/Greece), Giedre Beinoriute’s BREATHING INTO MARBLE (Lithuania), Kuba Czekaj’s THE ERLPRINCE (Poland), Andrej Cretulescu’s SEVENTEEN SECONDS (Romania) or Blerta Zeqiri’s MARRIAGE. The latter, a director from Kosovo whose “The Return“  won the short movie award at Sundance two years ago, dares to inquire into the topic of homosexuality, mostly still taboo in her country of origin.  

Panel discussions and workshops about current themes and trends in the European film industry also are part of the program of the coproduction market led by Bernd Buder and Martina Bleis. This year’s focus is on financing options and the market situation for West-Eastern co-productions. In cooperation with the Torino Film Lab, connecting cottbus offers a workshop for audience design that will examine how producers can adapt their projects early on to the needs of their intended target audience. A second new partner is the Producers‘ Network, that within the context of the “Best Pitch Award“ will make available an accreditation for the Producers’ Network at the Marché du Film Cannes 2014. Every year, coco offers three monetary and in-kind prizes: the “Best Pitch Award“, selected by all participants, the “Post Pitch Award“ conferred by a jury of prominent industry representatives and the already mentioned “Special Pitch Award.

connecting cottbus is sustained by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg GmbH, the MEDIA Program of the European Union and MDM / Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung GmbH. Supporting partners are Universal Publishing Production Music GmbH, MEDIA Antenne Berlin Brandenburg, Moscow Business Square, ACE, CineLink Sarajevo, the Nipkow Programm Berlin, EAVE,  the Torino Film Lab, the Producers Network,  and the MAIA Workshops.

The coco Post Pitch Award 2013 is sponsored by The Post Republic.

connecting cottbus is organized by the FilmFestival Cottbus GmbH.

A full list of all pitching projects 2013 is available on our website:

www.connecting-cottbus.de

Press contact:                     

claudiatomassini & associates

International Film Publicity

Tel:+49 30 44 34 06 06 - Mobile:+49 173 205 5794

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - www.claudiatomassini.com