2016 Edition

MOVIE – international fiction & documentaries

Balazs Simonyi (Hungary)
Balazs Simonyi (1980, Budapest) graduated in Literature & Film, and is currently completing his PhD in Art Theory.
He has been working as a freelance filmmaker since 2002 with many works of international success. His films have been screened at major festivals, from Cannes and Karlovy Vary to Clermont-Ferrand and Cracow, from Aspen and St. Louis to Seattle and Vancouver. His upcoming feature-length documentary ULTRA will be premiered in fall 2016, coproduced by HBO Europe.

Ekin Asar (Turkey)
Ekin Asar was born in Ankara. After graduating from high school in İzmir, she moved to İstanbul. She studied cinema at the University of Galatasaray. She had filmmaking education in New York Film Academy. She worked as an assistant director for a feature film called Çağrılan. She worked as an International Coordinator in 15th İzmir International Short Film Festival. She has been working for Film Hafızası for over a year as a supervisor of Discovery Department. She shot several short fiction films and documentaries.

Tsanko Vasilev (Bulgaria)
His master degree in Culture Management and Audiovisual Communication follows his Bachelor in Cinema and TV Directing, which made him a desired lecturer for festivals like BEGINNING International Festival of Debut & Students Film (St. Petersburg, Russia), BACKUP Kurzfilm Festival (Weimar, Germany), Encounters Short Film & Animation Festival (Bristol, United Kingdom), ALTERNATIVE Film/Video Festival (Belgrade, Serbia), PLATFORMA VIDEO International Digital Film Festival (Athens, Greece), MILANO FILM FESTIVAL (Milan, Italy).
He is the founder and director of IN THE PALACE International Short Film Festival (Sofia, Bulgaria).

Pilar García Elegido (Spain)
Director, producer, and screenwriter of short films and documentaries. In 1999, she receives the Goya Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) with Confluencias. Her short documentaries Positivoand Ventanashave been nominated by Academia de Cine in 2000 and 2016, respectively.
Since 2003, she has been working as film office advisor at Comunidad de Madrid. She organizes and coordinates events like Semana del Cortometraje of the Comunidad de Madrid or Ventana del Cine Madrileño.
She is also a writer, and her blog is: www.lacalledelavida.com

ANIMALAB – international animation and experimental shorts

Bruno Tondeur (France)
Bruno Tondeur wishes he lived in a world where Sangoku would exist for real, and where artistic budgets wouldn’t be reduced by the state to increase the ones of armament.
Bruno studied illustration in Saint-Luc and animation in La Cambre.
He has directed three short films awarded in various festivals around the world. He also co-founded TABASS co. studio, a collective of five animators based in Brussels, Belgium. They make commission films, advertisement, TV series and animated short films.

Michal Procházka (Czech Republic)
Michal Procházka (1975) is a Czech animation producer, festival programmer, traveler and organizer, living currently in Seoul, Korea. He is a founder of Visegrad Animation Forum (VAF) – a regional educational, promotional and industry platform for the support of animation production – that is organized annually by professionals associations from Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary or Slovenia. He is living in Seoul, where he also teaches animation and project development at local universities (for ex. KARTS Seoul).

Andrea Martignoni (Italy)
Italian performer, sound designer, historian and distributor into the field of Animation. He works closely with The Animation Workshop School in Viborg and collaborates with several international festivals with master classes, workshops, lectures on topics related to animation and soundtrack. He is often invited to international juries and selection committees throughout the world. He carries out workshops together with Basmati B.C. and OTTOmani Cultural Association and he is active in promoting the Italian animated film internationally.
He curated with Paola Bristot ANIMAZIONI, a DVD collection about Italian contemporary animation.

Elisa Giovannelli (Italy)
Elisa Giovannelli is in charge of the Education Department “Schermi e Lavagne” of Cineteca di Bologna, organizing all year long classes on the history and language of film, screenings for schools, workshops, guided visits, contests for students, training initiatives for teachers, film clubs for children during the weekend, and meetings with the film industry professionals. During the festival “Il Cinema Ritrovato”, every year Schermi e Lavagne organizes the seminar of the European network Europa Cinemas on the strategies to develop the participation of young audiences.

CORTITALIA – national shorts, all genres

Jacopo Chessa (Italy)
Jacopo Chessa (Turin, 1973). A film historian by training, he has focused in particular on French cinema of the 1950s and 1960s. He has published two books and several articles, he has taught at Université de Paris III – Sorbonne nouvelle and collaborated with the Italian Resistance Movement National Film Archive. In 2010, he founded in Turin the production company Prime Bande together with Andrea Spinelli. Since the beginning of 2014, he is the director of Aiace Nazionale and of Centro Nazionale del Cortometraggio, film archive and promotion agency for the Italian short films.

Lu Pulici (Brazil)
Lu Pulici was born in 1963 in Descalvado, Brazil, and lives in Pennabilli (RN). He qualified as an architect at Universidade Católica de Santos in Brazil, and graduated as a film director from Centre d’Estudis Cinematogràfics de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain. From 1993 to 2001, he worked as Art Director in the Spanish film industry for various productions of both short films and features. He also made three short films produced for Centre d’Estudis Cinematogràfics de Catalunya.
In 2015, he created the film production company 22S Productions.

Vito Palmieri (Italy)
Vito Palmieri graduated in 2004 in Film Theory from DAMS in Bologna. His short film Tana libera tutti (2006) receives acclaim both from the audience and the critics, with over fifty awards. In 2011, he approaches documentaries with Il Valzer dello Zecchino – Viaggio in Italia a tre tempi. In 2012, he directs the short Anna bello sguardo and in 2013 Matilde. Since the academic year 2014/15, he is a contract professor at the “Multimedia and Audiovisual Workshop” of the CITEM degree course, University of Bologna. In 2015, he shoots the documentary Le pareti di vetro and in 2016 he works on his first feature See you in Texas, produced by Ascent Film.

ANIMARE – international animated shorts for kids

Junior Jury
The Junior Jury is formed by 100 children aged between 4-13 and chooses the winner of the ANIMARE section.
During “screening duels” of two films at a time, the jury members have watched the 16 finalists, using special plastic caps to express their preferences. On Saturday 9th July 2016 in Cesenatico (FC), the jury members gathered in the charming square of Piazza delle Conserve to choose the winner.
All children forming the jury have received a certificate of participation.