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PANELS/ROUND TABLES 

The New Digital Platforms - “The Future of Cinema?”

Saturday, 21 April – Cinema São Jorge, Room 2 

Moderador: Neil Young (jornalist/film critic)

Guests: Cláudia Tomaz (filmmaker), Edgar Pêra (filmmaker), Maria João Cruz (screenwriter “Produções Fictícias”/festival microfilmes), Kevin Jerome Everson (filmmaker). 

The objective of this panel is to talk about the impact that the new digital platforms (i.e. mobile phones, i-pods, etc.) are having on cinema. Some decades ago, the emergence of videos led to a profound alteration in the way image and movement were viewed and at the time it was debated whether this new medium could be considered a new artistic form or not. Nowadays, there are no doubts left about this reality (which established itself naturally), but once again, formats and artistic tendencies are being questioned, especially as the super 8 and 16mm formats are disappearing and film is no longer regarded as the only possible reality. Therefore, it makes sense to bring together professionals around a table to debate the problem.

A New German Cinema – “Renaissance, revolution or renewal?”

Sunday, 22 April – Cinema São Jorge, Room  2 

Moderador: Michael Baute (film critic/producer)

Guests: Romuald Karmakar (filmmaker),Nuno Sena (IndieLisboa), (other guests to be confirmed) 

One of the retrospectives that will take place within IndieLisboa 2007 is “A new German cinema”. A strange, if not at all obscure designation, if we think that the choices reveal the taste of its curator, Olaf Möller (European Editor of the magazine Film Comment) and somehow point towards the paths defended for a certain type of German cinema.  Many types of cinema fit into a single cinematography. And this is what this retrospective is about. A pathway towards the discussion of contemporary German cinema. Names such as Karmakar, Christian Petzold, Ulrich Köhler, Christoph Hochhäusler or Valeska Grisebach win prizes in festivals and at the same time their work is recognised and recognisable within a cinematic context. From its first edition, IndieLisboa has taken notice of this new German cinema, choosing films by these authors for the competition, but at the same time, and whenever possible, the experiences of others have been used to reflect on Portuguese cinema. That is, once again, our aim.

Independent Production and Direction – Production Means and Strategies and how they are coordinated with artistic creation in a worldwide context

Tuesday, 24 April – Cinema São Jorge, Room 2 

Moderator: Charlotte Garson (film critic of Cahiers de Cinéma)

Guests: Hal Hartley (filmmaker/EUA), Maria João Sigalho (producer/Portugal), Michael Baute (film critic and producer/Alemanha) 

To speak of independent cinema is to speak of freedom in terms of artistic creativity, whether with the help of grants (given away or otherwise) or simply carried out outside the industry. What is of interest to discuss here is how an intelligent, considered production, aimed at revealing an author’s work, can at the same time provide artistic freedom and be aimed at the distribution circuit. The importance of art-houses or art and trial cinemas for the launching of these films. The importance of festivals within the context of promoting these works.

Cultural diversity in the European context: “Festivals as an intercultural space: the UNESCO Convention”

Thursday, 26 April – Cinema São Jorge, Room 2 

Moderator: Antonio Falduto (ANAC)

Guests: Ugo Gregoretti (President of ANAC – Italian Film Authors Association and of Italian Coalition for Cultural Diversity), Pierluigi Frassineti (screenwriter), Silvana Buzzo, Nino Russo, Thom Palmen (European Coordination of Film Festivals)

In partnership with the Italian Film Authors Association, we will organise a panel where the intention is to discuss the diversity of European cinema, and its context within the reality of festivals. At a time when the decreasing support of the Media Programme for European Audiovisuals is increasingly spoken of, and within the context of the possible disappearance of the European Coordination of Cinema Festivals, a body that brought together about 250 European film festivals that contributed greatly to promote European audiovisuals, this will certainly be a hot subject.

New audiovisual practices in the cinema/contemporary art boundary

Friday, 27th April – Cinema São Jorge, Room 2 

Moderator: François Bonenfant (programmer of the French Cinemateca)

Guests: João Pedro Rodrigues (filmmaker), Matthieu Orléan (expositions curator on the french Cinemateca), Géraldine Gomez (film programmer at the Centre Georges Pompidou) 

Within a context of contamination, cinema boundaries are increasingly dimmer and cross over with the other forms of contemporary art. Nowadays, many film makers set up installations of their films, at the same time that they exhibit photographs, and everything gets mixed up together in an audiovisual project that we often find difficult to define. The most solid proposals in the cinematic field arise nowadays in this cross-over, which is why sections such as the Laboratory find a place in IndieLisboa, and as we stated earlier, it is a space of total freedom and for those who really want to take risks.  

SEMINAR

“Distribution and Exhibition” – aimed at students in the film or audiovisual fields, as well as other professionals in these areas.

Wednesday, 25 April– Cinema São Jorge, Room 2 

The seminar will begin at 09h30 a.m. and will finish at 5h30 p.m. It has a fee of 35€ (brunch included) and participants must request his presence confirmation until 18 April , by email (guest@indielisboa.com) 

MASTERCLASSES

In its previous three editions, IndieLisboa organised, in partnership with the school Restart, a set of master classes and workshops that have shown the importance of the teaching and training component of the Festival. Well-known people such as John Cooper (Director of the Sundance Film Festival), Jay Rosenblatt (director/independent hero IndieLisboa 2006) or Mike Blum (animator/animation director of some Disney productions) attended the Festival and spoke to interested audiences.

In 2007, there will be a larger number of master classes given by some of the overseas guests at IndieLisboa 2007: Caveh Zahedi, Kevin Jerome Everson, William E. Jones and François Bonenfant. The masterclasses have no fees, interesteds must send an email to info@restar.pt, requesting the confirmation of their participation. 

WORK WITH FOUND-FOOTAGE

By WILLIAM E. JONES

Sunday, 22 April (10h00-13h00/14h00-17h00) 

Objectives

The aim is that the participants learn to collect, select and work with found film material, the so-called found-footage. We will talk about alternative forms of independent cinema and video production with low (or very low) costs, a propos of an original type of work, with a strong personal and author component, which, while respecting the great film masters, reframes them within its own context.

Content

- Presentation and analysis of the work by William E. Jones

- Work with found-footage (found film material)

- The importance of research and collection of material

- Material selection and how appropriate it is to the work one wants to produce

- The importance of sound in work with found-footage 

Lecturer

William E. Jones’s metier is homosexuality, his vernaculars and experimental documentary film, his landscapes, Southern California (where he lives and works) and suburban Ohio (where he was raised), his mode, dandyism. In eleven remarkable films and videos and countless photographs produced over the last fifteen years, building upon the cinematic inventions of both Californian and foreign artists – from Morgan Fisher, Fred Halsted, Joe Gage and Thom Andersen to Werner Schroeter, Luis Buñuel, Jean-Daniel Cadinot, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet – Jones has rethought hackneyed categories of, as well as boundaries between art and pornography, fandom and critique, Hollywood and other kinds of filmmaking. Unlike so many artist and others of the moment who deploy porn images for moribund notions of “titillation” or “shock”, using imagery to reify or reiterate rather than to question dominant sexual and relational practices, Jones thwarts such unthinking, often by a moving renewal of what escaped or was lost, deemed beneath consideration.

IndieLisboa 2007 will present his medium-lengh film (V.O.) presented in major festivals worldwide and his newest short film (Mansfield 1962).

LOW BUDGET FILMMAKING

By CAVEH ZAHEDI

23 APRIL (monday) 10h00-13h00/14h00-17h00 

Objectives

American independent filmmaker Caveh Zahedi will offer a master class in low budget filmmaking. Through an in-depth case-study of the making of each of his four feature films, he will discuss the practical realities involved in making personal films that also find distribution in the marketplace. The class will include a discussion of screenwriting, production, post-production, distribution and marketing.   

Lecturer

Caveh Zahedi began making films while studying philosophy at Yale University. After graduating, he went to Switzerland to try to work with Jean-Luc Godard, but the partnership never happened. On the return to the United States he began work on a film about the turn-of-the-century photographer Muybridge. After, he applied to UCLA film school and moved to Los Angeles, in the hope of making more commercially viable films. At UCLA e met and began collaborating with Greg Watkins. Today, they co-directed “A Little Stiff” an experimental narrative in which he re-enacted his unrequited love for a UCLA art student, using the real-life participants. The film premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Festival, won widespread critical acclaim, and aired on both German television and the Sundance Channel. After that, Caveh Zahedi made several short and feature films. They were all presented in important film festivals like Rotterdam or Sundance. Some of the shorts were made in collaboration with Jay Rosenblatt (Independent Hero IndieLisboa 2006).

IndieLisboa 2007 will present his latest work – “I Am a Sex Addict”, presented also in major festivals worldwide.  

INDEPENDENT CINEMA – DIRECTING/PRODUCING

KEVIN JEROME EVERSON

24 APRIL (tuesday) 10h00-13h00/14h00-17h00 

Objectives

The aim is that all the participants learn e register new alternative forms of independent film and video production, especially with low budgets. At the same time, they should face a kind of original work, with a strong personal and author component.   

Content

- Presentation and analysis of the work by Kevin Jerome Everson

- Independent production/direction strategies

- Working with different film/video formats

- Cinema as an instrument of intervention  

Lecturer

Kevin Jerome Everson’s artwork and films are about responding to daily materials, conditions, tasks and/or gestures of people of African descent. His work is diverse, through a variety of mediums such as photography, film, sculpture, artist books and paintings. The results usually have a formal reference to art history and resemble objects or images seen in working class culture. This strategy invites the work to be interpreted by a variety of communities. Over the last 10 years he has completed two features and over thirty something short 16mm, 35mm and digital films. His films focus on the conditions, tasks and gestures in a Black American working class community. They reveal the relentlessness of every day life, as well as its beauty, and have a naturalistic, almost documentary-like feel. He’s teacher in the University of Virginia. IndieLisboa 2007 will present two of his latest works (Cinnamon and According to) presented in major festivals worldwide.