08/03/2023 - The Slovakian-based educational and networking initiative will welcome professional guests, host case studies, and screen works by emerging Central and Eastern European student talents

Ukrainian director Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk, who will discuss “Highlighting the Peculiarities of Film Characters” at the forum

The Visegrad Film Forum (15-18 March), an educational and networking initiative based in Slovakia, has built up a reputation as a go-to place for students and early-career film professionals from Central Europe. The organisers have revealed the line-up of guests who will hold master classes and case studies in order to reveal the nuts and bolts of their work, as well as the latest changes in the audiovisual industry in Europe and beyond. “I am glad that, after an uneasy two-year hiatus, we will again have the opportunity to meet at the Film and Television School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, and create a space for sharing knowledge and experience among respected professionals and the up-and-coming generation of filmmakers from all over the world, who will be coming to Bratislava specifically for the Visegrad Film Forum,” says the initiative’s director, Jakub Viktorín.

The tenth edition of the gathering will welcome Polish cinematographer Pawel Edelman as a guest. Edelman, who collaborated intensively with Wladyslaw Pasikowski (The Messenger [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Aftermath [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) and Andrzej Wajda (Katyń [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Andrzej Wajda
interview: Michal Kwiecinski
film profile], Afterimage [+see also:
film review
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interview: Zofia Wichlacz
film profile]), and who worked with Roman Polanski on titles ranging from The Pianist [+see also:
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film profile] to An Officer and a Spy [+see also:
film review
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film profile], will speak on the topic of “Working With Images That Have to Serve the Film”. Edelman is currently working on the next Polanski project, The Palace, written by Ewa Piaskowska, Jerzy Skolimowski and Polanski, about a New Year’s Eve dinner party in 1999 at the luxurious Gstaad Palace in Switzerland, which takes an unexpected turn.

Independent producer Jim Stark, who arrives on the heels of the success of Triangle of Sadness [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ruben Östlund
interview: Ruben Östlund
film profile], will discuss “The Role of the Producer in Independent Filmmaking”. Stark brings a wealth of experience to the Visegrad Film Forum table, given his long-running collaboration with Jim Jarmusch, while having also worked on award-winning films such as The Whistlers [+see also:
film review
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interview: Corneliu Porumboiu
film profile] by Corneliu Porumboiu, Samuel Maoz’s Foxtrot [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Samuel Maoz
film profile] and Our Time [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Carlos Reygadas
film profile] by Carlos Reygadas. Ukrainian director Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk, the winner of the European Film Academy’s 2022 European Discovery of the Year Award, is the maker of several short films and the director behind the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight-premiered Pamfir [+see also:
film review
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interview: Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk
interview: Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk
film profile]. He will be on hand to talk about “Highlighting the Peculiarities of Film Characters”. Like many other Ukrainian filmmakers, Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk is working on capturing the ongoing conflict, developing multiple documentaries, including a collaboration with The New Yorker.

Experiences in Hollywood will be discussed by production sound mixer Mark Ulano, and boom operator and utility sound technician Patrushkha Mierzwa. They both boast 40 years of experience in sound, Mierzwa being one of the first female boom operators in Hollywood. Ulano won an Academy Award for Sound Mixing on Titanic, while they both garnered Oscar nominations for Ad Astra and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Ulano’s career takes in more than 140 films, and he has worked with leading Hollywood directors such as Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, James Gray, Jon Favreau, Paul Thomas Anderson, Robert Rodriguez, JJ Abrams, Stephen Frears, Robert Altman, Quentin Tarantino and Frank Darabont. Meanwhile, Mierzwa has 90 movies under her belt, having teamed up with a similar ilk of directors. They will deliver a master class about the role of sound, accompanied by a detailed analysis of scenes from the films they have worked on. Last but not least, the line-up of guests includes Iranian director Sepideh Farsi (Dreams of Dust, The Gaze [+see also:
trailer
film profile], The Siren [+see also:
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trailer
film profile]), who will discuss “Capturing Iranian Reality”.

This year’s programme will feature a slew of case studies, including those on Pamfir, An Officer and a Spy, From Dusk Till Dawn and the latest documentary by Vitaly Mansky and Yevhen Titarenko, Eastern Front [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Vitaly Mansky, Yevhen Titar…
film profile]. The Visegrad Film Forum will once again present films by students from its partner film schools: the Film and Television Faculty of the Slovak Academy of Performing Arts, Poland’s Warsaw Film School, the Czech Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts, the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, and the Slovenian Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television Ljubljana. The screenings will be followed by discussions about cinematography as a whole, the circumstances under which the individual films emerged, and the professional training provided at the selected educational institutions.

The full programme is available to peruse here.