TorinoFilm Lab offers free filmmaking lectures

During the Malta FrameWork workshop a number of open lectures will be taking place from filmmaking to cinematography, from script development to the role of the producer.

The four lectures taking place from April 28 to May 1 from 18:00 to 19:15 are open to professionals, students and individuals working in the audio-visual industry.

Guest lecturers include Jonathan Nossiter who will focus on Filmmaking; Roshanak Behesht Nedjad who will focus on the producer's role; Franz Rodenkirchen who will focus on Script development; and Matyas Erdely who will focus on the cinematographer's early approach.

Participation is free of charge, but prior registration is required in view of seating restrictions.

To find out more about the open lectures, visit Malta Film Commission website www.mfc.com.mt, contact the Malta Film Commission on 21 809135 or send an email to [email protected].

Open lectures schedule

Saturday, April 28

The first lecture will focus on filmmaking; is it still an act of dissent and citizenship in an atomized and globalized world?

This will lecture will be given by Jonathan Nossiter who drawing on his own experiences working in France, Greece, Brazil, in the NY Indie scene and (briefly) in Hollywood, Nossiter will discuss the challenges and traps of his own and other colleague's efforts to view cinema as a means to question the local (or international) status quo.

Jonathan Nossiter is a prize winning American-Brazilian director has directed five feature films. The most recent is Rio Sex Comedy (2010) starring Charlotte Rampling, Bill Pullman and Irène Jacob, which had its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival and has been released in numerous countries.

His previous feature was Mondovino (2004), nominated for the Palme d'or at Cannes. In 2000, he co-wrote (with the British poet James Lasdun) and directed Signs and Wonders, a psychological thriller with Charlotte Rampling and Stellan Skarsgard, nominated for the Golden Bear in Berlin.

Prior to that he co-wrote (with Lasdun) and directed Sunday, which won the Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize for Best Film and Best Screenplay, the Deauville Film Festival's Grand Prize for Best Film and their International Critics' Prize and was shown in Un Certain Regard at Cannes (1997).

His first feature was Resident Alien, a documentary-fiction hybrid with Quentin Crisp and John Hurt, shown in Toronto and Berlin in 1991.

Born in 1961 in Washington, DC., the son of a journalist, Nossiter grew up in France, England, Italy, Greece and India.

He studied painting at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, the San Francisco Art Institute and studied Ancient Greek at Dartmouth College in the US. His film career began as an assistant to director Adrian Lyne on his thriller Fatal Attraction (1987).

He also worked as an assistant director in English theatre (Newcastle Playhouse, King's Head) and in New York (Soho Repertory Theater).

Nossiter has also worked for many years as a sommelier and his book on wine and cinema, Le Goût et le Pouvoir (Liquid Memory in the US and UK) was published in 2007. He is now based in Rome.

Sunday, April 29

The second lecture will focus on the producer's role: what is it really about? This will be given by experienced producer Roshanak Behesht Nedjad (Flying Moon, Germany) who will focus on the role of the producer, something many film professionals are not really aware of.

She will offer her definition of a job description and focus on the producer's work during the early development phases, what influence financing and the production structure might have on the story development and how to present a project both to potential business partners as well as to consumers, and how to prepare a project for the market.  

Roshanak began working in the film-industry as a festival coordinator and production manager.

In 1999 she started her company Flying Moon, together with Helge Albers and Konstantin Kröning. Since then they produce audience-oriented films (feature films as well as documentaries) with an edge and a strong focus on International co-productions, with partners from countries like Ireland, UK, Turkey, Iran and many others.

Films by Flying Moon were screened successfully on festivals and sold around the world, among them are award-winning projects like Havanna, mi Amor (Golden Lola 2001) or Silent Waters (Golden Leopard 2003).

Monday, April 30

The third lecture will focus on Script development: method, practice and myth and will be given by Franz Rodenkirchen who is an internationally working script consultant and tutor.

He will talk about how the task of helping a writer or writer-director develop a film script is often approached with a scriptwriting method, yet the actual working practice might question the validity of that.

Yet, if we try to stay outside the box, we seem to enter a largely uncharted territory, where we have to allow for the uncertainty of process, without knowing where we will arrive. So how can we ever make suggestions towards useful and productive changes?

Franz Rodenkirchen as a script advisor regularly works for the Binger Filmlab, Amsterdam, where he also teaches his 'A la carte'- workshop Story Editing - Six days of practice.

He is also a tutor and member of the selection team at TorinoFilmLab/Script&Pitch workshops and the Script Station of the Berlinale Talent Campus, Berlin. He also works with CineLink, the co-production market of the Sarajevo Film Festival.

He co-wrote four feature films with director Jörg Buttgereit and helped in bringing them to the screen. Franz has been consulting on mostly international film projects since the 1990s, predominantly with writer-directors.

Tuesday, May 1

The fourth lecture will focus on the cinematographer's early approach - a discussion. This will be given by Matyas Erdely who is is a cinematographer based out of Budapest, Hungary.

In Hungary there is a long tradition of involving the director of photography from very early on in a project's life. 

In this talk, experienced Hungarian DOP Matyas Erdely will discuss his take on working with scripts and entering the artistic and practical collaboration with the director. How do you, for example, begin to approach the visual style, define your visual goals and the cinematographic choices at an early stage? And how can you continue to develop and refine them?

Matyas Erdely has completed both the Hungarian University of Drama and Film in Budapest and the Masters Program at the American Film Institute Conservatory in Los Angeles.

He started to shoot commercials while still in film school for high profile agencies and clients between narrative projects, which he believes is a fantastic way to maximise his creative energy.

His narrative works were screened at several hundred film festivals around the world, such as Cannes, Venice, Berlin and Sundance and have won several prizes.

He is a 'regular' at Cannes with six films in different sections in the past few years including Delta, a Hungarian-German co-production that was in the main competition and won the FIPRESCI Award in 2008, Tender Son-The Frankenstein Project also in Competition and the Mexican film Miss Bala that was distributed by Fox International Pictures after its Cannes premiere.

His latest film The Woman Who Brushed Off Her Tears, a Macedonian-German-Belgian co-production premiered in Berlin this year.

To find out more about the Malta Film Commission, visit www.mfc.com.mt.