JURY AFF 2021
NEW VOICES IN DOCUMENTARY CINEMA
ANA GRGIC
Ana Grgic is a scholar of Balkan and East European cinema, with a background in the film and TV industry (HBO, CBS, Fox Productions). She is currently Associate Professor at Babeş-Bolyai University and editor of Studies of World Cinema: A Critical Journal. She has published widely on questions of identity, memory and archives in cinema, and co-edited a book titled „Contemporary Balkan Cinema”, which was published last year at the Edinburgh University Press.
LAURA MUȘAT
Laura Musat graduated Film Production in London in 2015. She has worked both in commercial and film production with agencies and production companies such as Digital Spirit, deFilm and the independent producer Gabriela Suciu. Besides her work as a freelancer, she has started her own boutique production company, Castalia Pictures, and produced several shorts which were selected and/or received awards at festivals like Vila Do Conde, Sundance, and SXSW, to name a few. She is the founder of Romanian Film Development Association (ADFR), the coordinator of the short film scriptwriting residency The Script Contest and the editor-in-chief of the online film magazine Films in Frame.
MIHAI ANDREI LEAHA
Mihai Andrei Leaha Mihai Andrei Leaha is a Romanian audio-visual researcher, anthropologist, filmmaker and educator, based in Brazil. He writes articles and makes documentary films about societies that he studies and people with whom he interacts. As a member of the Commission for Visual Anthropology and other organizations, he has a long-term involvement with curating, promoting and programming ethnographic films at various conferences and festival events. He taught visual anthropology in Cluj-Napoca and São Paulo, and he organizes conferences and workshops on visual and multimodal anthropology in Romania, Brazil and Peru. He is currently doing a post-doctorate at the University of São Paulo, researching the local, DIY electronic music scene.
CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE
JOAN GONZÀLEZ
Joan Gonzàlez is the director of DocsBarcelona, an executive producer, filmmaker and editor. He has produced more than 150 documentary films, some of them having been awarded at the Berlinale or selected at festivals like INPUT or Sundance. Joan Gonzàlez was given the European EDN Award in 2013 for his contribution to the development of the documentary culture in the South of Europe.
CONSTANTIN PÂRVULESCU
Constantin Pârvulescu is senior researcher in film and media studies at Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca and lecturer in critical thinking at University of St. Gallen. He specializes in the relationship between audiovisual texts and politics, history and economic issues. He authored several articles on film and media, as well as the monograph „Orphans of the East: Postwar Eastern European Cinema and the Revolutionary Subject” (Indiana University Press, 2015). He edited „Recent Quality Film and the Republic of Europe” (a double special issue of Studies in European Cinema, 2018), „Global Finance on Screen: From Wall Street to Side Street” (Routledge, 2017) and „A Companion to the Historical Film” (Wiley, 2013/2015).
SHANE SMITH
Shane Smith is Director of Programming at Hot Docs, North America`s largest festival and market for documentary film. He previously worked at the Toronto International Film Festival as director of Special Projects and director of Public Programs. Prior to TIFF he was Director of Programming at Channel Zero Inc, Director of CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival, Short Film Programmer for Sundance Film Festival, and Programmer for Inside Out LGBT Film Festival. He has participated on juries and panels at festivals and events around the world.
DOCSCHOOL
LETENYEI LÁSZLÓ
Letenyei László is an economist and cultural anthropologist with a PhD in Sociology. He is a habilitated associate professor at Corvinus University of Budapest, where he teaches visual anthropology. His handbook on Cultural anthropology was published earlier this year in English and German editions. He realized fieldworks in Peru, Ecuador and Mexico and also participates in applied anthropological projects in Central Europe (Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia). TeTT Studio, founded by Letenyei László in 1999, produces 10 to 20 documentaries per year.
MONICA SEBESTYEN
Monica Sebestyen is the director of Cinema Arta in Cluj-Napoca, one of the few arthouse cinemas in Romania. Also, she is the co-founder and co-director of the UrbanEye Film Festival in Bucharest. She believes in the impact of culture and education on the societal and urban development. Over the last eight years she has coordinated various cultural projects focused mainly on film, but also on art, architecture and education.
LIVIU TIPURIŢĂ
Liviu Tipuriţă is a BAFTA-nominated director and producer. He has worked in television for over twenty years with flagship TV documentary strands in the UK and the US – at the BBC, Channel 4, ITV and CNN. He has won numerous prestigious international awards including The George Polk Award, Foreign Press Award and The Royal Television Society Award. Born and raised in Sibiu, Liviu moved to the UK in the early 1990s and studied filmmaking in Newcastle and Edinburgh. He lives and works in London. He is a member of the British Academy of Film and Television (BAFTA), Directors UK and the Royal Television Society.
ROMANIA
CECÍLIA FELMÉRI
After graduating from the Sapientia University in Cluj-Napoca, Cecília Felméri followed a master program at the National Film School in Bucharest. She teaches at Sapientia University. Spirál, her first feature film is a Hungarian-Romanian co-production produced by András Muhi, Gábor Ferenczi, Mónika Mécs, Ernő Mesterházi, Oana Giurgiu and Tudor Giurgiu and starring Bogdan Dumitrache, Alexandra Borbély and Diána Magdolna Kiss. Spirál won the Special Mention of the Jury at Warsaw IFF, the Special Jury Prize at Thessaloniki IFF and Best Film at Al Este IFF in Peru. Cecilia won more than 30 awards with her shorts.
DIMITRIS KERKINOS
Dimitris Kerkinos studied Film Studies at the University of Manitoba, Canada, and did his PhD dissertation on “Society and Cinema in Cuba of the 90s” for the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of the Aegean. He joined the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in 1999, and since 2002 he is programming the Balkan Survey Section. He has curated retrospectives and tributes to directors and national cinemas for TIFF and Thessaloniki Documentary Festival. He has published essays on cinema and anthropology and has been the editor of many documentary and fiction film monographs.
COSTI ROGOZANU
Costi Rogozanu was born in 1977 and he is a graduate from the Faculty of Letters of the Bucharest University. He published several books: „Agresiuni, digresiuni” (Polirom, 2006), „Carte de muncă” (Tact, 2013), „Epoca de mijloc” (Tact, 2019). He was also the coordinator of collective works: “Iluzia anticomunismului. Lecturi critice ale Raportului Tismăneanu” (together with Vasile Ernu, Ciprian Şiulea and Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu, Cartier, 2008) and „Epoca Traian Băsescu. România în 2004-2014” (together with Florin Poenaru, Tact, 2014). He wrote articles on the contemporary Romanian cinema în „Filmul tranziției” (edited by Gabriela Filippi and Andrei Gorzo, Tact, 2017) and „Politicile filmului” (edited by Andrei Gorzo and Andrei State, Tact, 2014). He is a member of the CriticAtac group and he has worked in mass-media for 25 years. He is currently an editorialist for the Romanian daily Libertatea.