Astra Film

LAURENŢIU DAMIAN
Laurentiu Damian is a magna cum laudae Doctor in cinematography and media. He is currently a professor at the National University of Theatre and Cinema Arts. He is member of the U.N.A.T.C. Senate and Prorector of the same University. He is the director of the Video Publishing House within the Ministry of Culture. His professional activity covers numerous media and educational projects. He was the general manager of the Cinema magazine. He is the scriptwriter and the director of fiction and long feature films, author of numerous documentary films, wrote several articles, editorials and studies relating to cinema history, aesthetics and aesthetic analysis in cinematography.

JANOS DOMOKOS

Janos Domokos was born in Budapest, Hungary. In 1979, he obtained his M.A. degree of the University of ELTE in Hungarian Language and Literature and Cultural Anthropology. Several years later, he got his second M.A. degree in Film and Video Communications of the same university. He is the festival director and one of the founders and organizers of the Dialektus Hungarian Visual Anthropological Festival in Budapest. Between 1998-2001, he was the President of the Hungarian Independent Film and Video Association. Domokos has written scripts and worked as a film director since 1991. He is author of documentary films, experimental films, television films and programs.

ROLF HUSSMANN
Rolf Hussmann works at IWF Knowledge and Media Gottingen as producer. He was co-founder and board member of the "European Association of Social Anthropologists"(EASA). Currently he is chairman of the Commission of Visual Anthropology of the International Union of the Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences(IUAES), teaches at the universities of Gottingen and Braunschweig, and is one of the organizers of the "Gottingen International Film Festival"(GIFF). He is the author of several documentary films and editor of the "Bibliography of Ethnographic Film".

VINTILĂ MIHĂILESCU

Vintilã Mihãilescu is Doctor in Psychology at the University of Bucharest, lecturer at the Faculty of Sociology, Psychology and Education and professor at the National School of Political and Administrative Sciences and at the Centre for Advanced Studies in Sofia, Bulgaria. He coordinated research projects and several grants. Mihãilescu published extensively books, papers and articles issuing contemporary matters such as nationalism, national culture and identity which are connected to the author's areas of interest: etnopsychology, social antropology and communitary studies. He is a columnist for the Dilema revue and chief editor of the Yearbook of the Romanian Society of Cultural Anthropology.

SLOBODAN NAUMOVIC
Slobodan Naumovic is B.A. in Ethnology, M.A. in Social Anthropology, at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris and graduade from the School of Journalism video and TV Camera. His academical background led to a broad area of expertise: Ethnography of Serbia, Political Anthropology, Historical Anthropology, Visual Anthropology and Internet Culture. Currently, he is a lecturer at the Department of Ethnology and Anthropology, Faculty of Philosophy, Belgrade. He is vice-president of the Research Group for Political Anthropology, (IGPA) and founding member of the Association of Social History (UDI), both in Belgrade.

CRISTIAN NIŢULESCU

Cristian Nitulescu 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. He is the author of books on the study of language.

MARC PIAULT

Marc H. Piault, Directeur de Recherche Honoraire at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), President of the Comité du Film Ethnographique , teaching Visual Anthropology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociale in Paris (EHESS) and at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). Anthropologist and film-maker, he made several films in Niger and Nigeria where he was mainly concern with precolonial political systems, as well as in a rural area south of France where he worked on local identity. Since 1996 he is developping research in Brazil on beliefs, violence and plural identity.

ANDREI SHEMYAKIN

Andrei Shemyakin is Head of the Department of Modern Russian Cinema in Russian Film Institute, and also the Director of the Center of Visual Culture in Russian State Humanitarian Institute (RGGU), at the same time - the author, screen leader and creative director of the TV programme "Documentary camera", channel "Culture", format 39 minute a week.

MICHAEL STEWART

Michael Stewart received his Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of London (L.S.E.) 1988: Brothers in Song: The persistence of (Vlach) Gypsy community and identity in Socialist Hungary. He has been, variously a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study, Budapest, a Rubin Research Fellow at School of Public Policy, UCL; a Leverhulme Research Fellow, Dept. of Anthropology, London School of Economics; a film Producer in independent production companies and BBC. His own filmmaking includes Justice, What Magdalena Said, Scenes After a Revolution and Across the Tracks.

AFF2004 _AWARDS

Award for the Best Film:in the International Competition
  Dhobighat by Giorgio Garini, Italy

Awards for the Best Documentary:
  Masters and Slaves by Bernard Debord, France

Special Jury Prize:
  The Last Peasants by Angus Macqueen, U.K.

Commendation:
  Heaven in a Garden by Stephane Breton, France

Commendation:
  Ambassadors by Jouko Aaltonen, Finland

Best Central&Eastern European Documentary:
  Pretty Dyana by Boris Mitic, Serbia and Montenegro

City of Sibiu Award:
  My Lost Russia by Iossif Pasternak, France

Commendation:
  Life In Fresh Air by Danko Volaric, Croatia

Commendation:
  Landscape by Sergei Loznitsa, Russia

Best Romanian Documentary:
  Land is Waiting by Laurentiu Calciu, Romania

Commendation (Latin Union):
  Adam and Eve by Dite Dinesz, Romania

Best Student Film:
  Living With Gods by Reni Jasinski Wright, Taiwan
  Sweet Life and All That Goes With It, Anne Schiltz, U.K.

Commendation:
  Earth in Your Hand by Eva Stotz, Germany / Romania