At Meetings on the Bridge workshops the first international presentations of 8 feature films and 2 documentaries, along with 4 feature film and 1 documentary at the post-production stage, from Turkey, were made this year. A total of 80 international filmmakers who came to Meetings on the Bridge to meet and network with the filmmakers from Turkey had a total of 300 meetings with the directors and producers of the projects and films in the workshops.
Upon the presentations in the Film Development Workshop, the international jury comprising of Gabor Greiner (Films Boutique), Hisham Alghanim (Kuwait National Cinema Center), Jamila Wenske (One Two Film), Ossama Bawardi (Philistine Films), Remi Burah (ARTE FRANCE) decided on the award winning projects.
The projects and films that received the Meetings on the Bridge awards were announced at a reception held at the Cezayir Restaurant on Wednesday, 13 April.
The closing reception starts with the speeches by Istanbul Film Festival Director Kerem Ayan, Head of Meetings on the Bridge Gülin Üstün and Anadolu Efes Turkey Corporate Communications Manager Simge Balaban.
Winners of the Film Development Workshop
The selection committee selected 10 projects out of the 100 applications for the Film Development Workshop held for the 9th time within the scope of the Meetings on the Bridge.
•More, Director: Onur Saylak, Doğu Akal, Scriptwriters: Hakan Günday, Doğu Akal, Onur Saylak, , Producer: Ziya Cemre Kutluay – b.i.t arts
• Escape from Harem, Scriptwriter: Serdar Soydan, Producer: Olena Yershova Yıldız- Tato Film
• The Tortoise Trainer, Director, scriptwriter, producer: Orhan İnce
• Letter of Ashes, Director, Scriptwriter: Lusin Dink, Producer: Emine Yıldırım – Giyotin Film ve Nar Film
• Perihan, Director: Can Evrenol, Scriptwriter: Cem Özüduru, Producer: Müge Büyüktalaş – MO Film Prodüksiyon Ltd. Şti.
• Pure, Director, Scriptwriter: Ali Vatansever, Producer: Selin Vatansever Tezcan – Terminal Film Yapım
• Border Disorder, Director: Uğur Becer, Scriptwriters: Gökhan Kılınç, Nafi Avcı, Producer: Aslı Akdağ (documentary)
• Clown in Down, Director, Scriptwriter: Esra Saydam, Producers: Işılay Yanbaş, Nisan Dağ – Karlakum Film
• The Age of Restoration, Director, Scriptwriter: İmre Azem, Producer: Gaye Günay – Kibrit Film (documentary)
• Zuhal, Director: Nazlı Elif Durlu, Scriptwriters: Nazlı Elif Durlu, Ziya Demirel, Producer: Anna Maria Aslanoğlu – İstos Film
Müge Büyüktalaş, the producer of Perihan received the Meetings on the Bridge Award of USD 10,000 from Jamila Wenske.
Melodika Sound Post-production Award was presented to Ali Vatansever for his project Pure by Didem Oğuz, the co-founder of Melodika.
The Mediterranean Film Institute (MFI) Script and Development Workshop Award, which comprises four stages, was presented to Lusin Dink for her project Letter of Ashes. The director and scriptwriter of the project will participate in the script workshops, two of which will be on the Nisiros and Samos Islands of Greece in 2016 and two of which will be online.
Special Mention Award is presented to Onur Saylak and Doğu Yaşar Akal for their project More by Remi Burah.
Work in Progress Workshop
5 films were selected for Work in Progress in its 5th edition that aims to support feature films and documentaries in their post-production stage. Selected films were presented to the distributors, sales companies and festival representatives within the Work in Progress Workshop are:
• Mr. Gay Syria, Director, Scriptwriter: Ayşe Toprak, Producer: Cem Doruk- Aheste Film, Co-producers: Antoine Simkine- Les Film D'Antoine, Christine Kiauk- Coin Films
• My Father’s Wings, Director, Scriptwriter: Kıvanç Sezer, Producer: Soner Alper- Nar Film Yapım
• Inflame, Director, Scriptwriter: Ceylan Özgün Özçelik, Producer: Emre Oskay, Sadık Ekinci, Adnan Şapçı- IFP, Co-producers: Armağan Lale- Filmada, Ceylan Özgün Özçelik- EHY
• The Verge, Director, Scriptwriter, Producer: Erkan Tahhuşoğlu- Şiyara Film, Ayhan Salar- Salar Film
• The Bank of Broken Hearts, Director, Scriptwriter: Onur Ünlü, Producer: Kerem Çatay, Yamaç Okur- Ay Yapım
The Work in Progress jury members Lorenzo Esposito (Locarno Film Festival), Rickard Olsson (Picture Tree) and Zsuzsanna Kiraly (Komplizen Film) watched the offf-line edit of the films and also held one to one meetings with each team.
The Anadolu Efes Award of 30.000 TL was presented to the director Ceylan Özçelik and producers Emre Oskay, Adnan Şapçı and Sadık Ekinci of Inflame by Anadolu Efes Turkey Corporate Communications Manager Simge Balaban. The award will be used to promote the film.
The director Erkan Tahhuşoğlu and the producers Ayhan Salaş and Erkan Tahhuşoğlu of the film The Verge received the Digiflame Award by Digiflame co-founder Oğuz Öztürk. This award was presented in the Work in Progress Workshop for the very first time and will cover the color adjustment and online editing expenses of the film.
The Başka Sinema Award was presented to the director Ayşe Toprak, and the producer Cem Doruk of Mr. Gay Siria by Başka Sinema Director İmre Tezel. The award will ensure that the film is exempt from paying the virtual print fee for its screenings at Başka Sinema theatres.
Neighbours Project
Meetings on the Bridge has launched NEIGHBOURS platform last year in order to initiate new international collaborations and enhance communication between filmmakers from Turkey and the neighbouring countries. With the aim of building a ground for institutions and individuals to cooperate while developing common stories, the platform, organised within Film Development Workshop, invites film professionals and filmmakers from neighbouring countries.The filmmakers of 5 projects had meetings with international film professionals and producers from Turkey at the workshops. The 5 projects that participated in the second edition of Neighbours section of the Meetings on the Bridge are as follows.
- Georgia – Maya, Director: Tamta Gabrichidze, Producer: Tinatin Kajrishvili- Gemini Film
- Iran – Mahmood, Director: Sina Ataeian Dena, Producer: Amir Hamz- Bonvoyage Films
- Cyprus - Smuggling Hendrix, Director: Marios Piperides, Producer: Thanassis Karathanos- Twenty Twenty Visions
- Syria - My Favorite Fabric, Director: Gaya Jiji, Producer: Laurent Lavole- Gloria Films Production, Ibarra Films, Dublin films
- Greece – Entwined, Director: Minos Nikolakakis, Producer: Minos Nikolakakis, Giorgos Georgopoulos- Multivision, Authorwave
Panels and Master classes
Meetings on the Bridge also included 9 panels, 1 master class, and 1 workshop this year between 8-14 April. The first panel, A Journey Begins: Festivals and Distribution, was moderated by producer Cihan Aslı Filiz (Bir Film), with the participation of Istanbul Film Festival Director Kerem Ayan, distributor Emre Akpınar (M3 Film), and producer Emine Yıldırım (Giyotin Film) as speakers. The speakers discussed the festival strategy, distribution models in Turkey, and the groundwork for the festival and distribution strategy laid by the producer in the preliminary preparation period of the film and its journey.
The second panel on the same day was Make Your Film Visible: Marketing, Social Media and Crowdfunding, which hosted marketing advisor İmre Tezel (Paz Film Agency), social media advisor Nihan Katipoğlu (Medyagaga), and crowdfunding project coordinator Seda Kürkçüoğlu (Fongogo) as speakers. The panel focused on film marketing techniques as an agenda that needs to be taken into consideration from early stages on, its viability in the later stages of the project, and the contribution of social media and crowdfunding on marketing.
In the master class What Reality Can Learn from the Fiction: Aesthetic and Narrative Tools in Documentary Filmmaking, Carlos Hagerman explained how to enrich the documentary narrative, by also giving examples of fictional elements used in documentary filmmaking.
In the panel The Experience of Fragmented Reality and Immersive Storytelling, moderated by Müge Özen (AC Film), the speakers Arne Ludwig (HEADTRIP), Benedict Moran (Documentary Filmmaker), Alper Özyurtlu (Timelooper), and Turhan Yiğitbaşı (Gamester) discussed integrating Virtual Reality (VR) techniques common to game production into the filmmaking process and their effect on audience interaction. In the second part of the event, there will be a workshop in which the participants had the chance to experience Virtual Reality in various contents.
The last panel of the day was Film Independent and Global Media Makers, where speakers Maria Raquel Bozzi (Film Independent), Karin Chien (dGenerate Films), and Kelly Thomas (Extraordinary Renditions), moderated by film critic Evrim Kaya, introduced the Film Independent platform and talked about the independent filmmaking processes through this platform. The panel also covered the international film exchange programme Global Media Makers and its practices in Turkey and other countries.
The two panels held as Meet and Greet, Meet the Funders and Markets and Meet the Festivals, hosted the directors and programmers of qualified international film festivals, funds, and markets, who gave information about the festival application procedures and admission phases, as well as talking about the promotion of films through funds and markets and about financing opportunities.
In the master class Genre Approach: An Introduction, moderated by academician Ass. Prof. Kaya Özkaracalar, speakers Jan Doense (House of Nether Horror), Lindsay Peters (Fantasia IFF), and Müge Büyüktalaş (MO Film) discussed the position of genre films and how they changed in cinema history from past to present, along with their effect on audiences and the point they carried filmmaking by using new technologies.
While debates on social gender equality take effect in every field, the master class Women Make Films focused on the place of women in the French and American film industries and recounted the efforts of institutions in these countries in order to maintain gender equality.
The panels and master classes culminated in the master class Creative Producing by Gavin Humphries (Quark Films), at the Galatasaray University on 13 April. Humphries talked about the development and finance methods used for a film from the preparation stage to the point where it reaches the audience and how far these methods can take a film.
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