Astra Film

 Astra Film Fest 2000 had 45 films in competition from 19 countries.

JURY

SIMONA BEALCOVSCHI
Anthropologist, research interests in communication: construction of representations in totalitarian regimes, cultural models in socialist societies, semiotics of the visual document. Preparing doctoral thesis in anthropology with the University Montreal. Author of documentary films, national and international awards.

MICHAL BUCHOWSKI
Professor of Anthropology at the University of Poznan and at the Comparative Central European University-Viadrina in Frankfurt-Oder. Teaches Theory of anthropology, Systems of beleifs, social and cultural issues of contemporary Central European societies. Published several articles in
international journals and books, among others Reluctant Capitalists (Berlin, 1997),  The Rational Other (Poznan).

PETER LOIZOS
Professor at the Department for Social Anthropology, London School of Economics. Courses taught on aspects of social, economic and political development, with poverty, and environment, drought and famine as key themes. Prior to becoming an academic, worked for five years as a documentary filmmaker and continued making documentary and ethnographic films throughout his academic career. Books, papers, reports, chapters and articles on property transfer and class; political development and patronage; ethnic conflict; participation in DFID development projects (Nepal, and Nigeria); refugee adaptation to destitution, and refugee social capital conservation;  ethnographic film (Innovation in Ethnographic Film: from innocence to self-consciousness. Manchester & Chicago, 1993; Conceiving Persons: ethnographies of procreation and fertility. with P.Heady, Athlone,1999).

DAVID MACDOUGALL
Queen Elizabeth II Fellow and Convenor, Programme in Visual Research, Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at the Australian National University Canberra. Trained at the University of California at Los Angeles Graduate Programme in Ethnographic Film. Made films in Africa, Australia, India, and most recently in Sardinia (complete filmography on page 60). International awards. Writings on theoretical issues in  cinema and ethnographic documentaries (most recently Transcultural Cinema, collected essays, Princeton University Press, 1998).  

CRISTIAN NIŢULESCU
Works as an executive producer for the News Department of the Romanian Television.  Training in letters, further training in TV Management and Cultural Anthropology. Produced and directed a series of programmes on cultural anthropology topics for the Romanian Television.

MARK SOOSAAR
Director of the Chaplin Art Centre/The Museum of New Art in Pärnu, Estonia. Author of documentary films, winner of international awards. Founder of the Pärnu International Festival of Documentary Film. Initiated a network to support and promote filmmakers and documentary filmmaking in Eastern European countries.

VIOLETTA ZENTAI
Visiting lecturer at Janus Pannonius University, Pecs and ELTE University, Budapest. Research interest in political anthropology, capitalist transformation, gender and transition, and occidentalism in Central and
Eastern Europe. Publications: with Feischmidt M., Magyari-Vincze E., eds. Men and Women in East European Transition (Cluj, 1997), Ed. Politikai antropologia, (Budapest, 1997).

And yet in so many ways mainly East European societies have come to depend on the very Gypsy people whom they so often ignore. With a series of recent films about different aspects of Romany lives we hope to allow a chance to hear some of the untold stories as Gypsies would hope to tell them themselves, were they able to do so.