17-09-2010

Arsenals trains new film professionals

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    RIGA: Promising film talents from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Armenia and Georgia will take part in a newly launched training program offered by the Riga film forum Arsenals (www.arsenals.lv). Dubbed the Riga Virus: Training for Emerging Cinema Professionals, it will take place 20-23 September, gathering 20 participants working on 10 feature film projects.

    The four-day English-language program will offer script development and film marketing workshops, lectures, case studies and a pitch session. The training is created for two-member teams consisting of a screenwriter and/or a director and/or producer.

    In the script development workshops participants are: the Armenian authors of projects Shining Waltz and Hamlet (both from Armenia); Georgians with Instructions of Divorce, Lithuanians with The Queen is Asleep, and Latvia's Gilgamesh by director Kārlis Vītols and screenwriter Inga Ābele. Måns F.G. Thunberg, a Swedish screenwriter and the manager of the Thunbergs Manusverstad screenwriting workshop, is tutor.

    Film marketing workshops will see the creators of Armenia's Alpine Violet, Georgia's Saga of Soviet Man, Estonia's Heart of the Wolf, and two projects from Latvia, In the Tight Circle by director Aija Bley and producer Kristīne Kušnere, and Riverside of Freedom by director Olafs Okonovs and producer Guna Stankovska. Hege Astrup Sannum, a Norwegian marketing manager is tutor.