Juries 2009
International Jury
Bogdan Žižić, film director
Bogdan Žižić graduated from the Zagreb Law School in 1957. In the early 1960s he worked as a playwright in residence in Zagreb until he became the director of that production house. The first film he directed was the 1964 documentary ‘Flood’, about the big flood in Zagreb that took place that year. After that he continued making films on a regular basis. In 1975, he made his first long feature film, ‘The House’. His filmography includes more than one hundred short and medium-length films for cinema and television and five long feature films, for most of which he wrote scripts, too. Besides in Croatia, he shot feature films and documentaries in Germany, Italy, France and Czech Republic.
David Fisher, filmmaker
David Fisher has been directing documentary films since 1989 and has gained respect as one of the leading filmmakers in Israel. His documentaries are known for their deep, thorough investigations, revealing new aspects of life in Israel. His most notable film, ‘Love Inventory’, won the best documentary award at the Jerusalem Int’l Festival, won the Israeli Film Academy Award for best documentary 2000, and started its international tour at the Forum in the Berlinale 2001 followed by many more festivals. From 1999 to 2008 Fisher served as the Director General of the New Israeli Foundation for Cinema and Television. In this capacity Fisher was responsible for commissioning documentaries and promoting them overseas. In 2006 he founded ‘Greenhouse’ – a Mediterranean film project for the development of feature length documentaries.
Saša Vojković, filmologist and film director
A filmologist, film director and an associate professor at Department for Cultural Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Letters in Rijeka, Croatia. After obtaining her degree from the Zagreb Academy of Dramatic Arts, she obtained her MFA and PhD at the University of Amsterdam. She carried out her postdoctoral research at the Hong Kong University for Science and Technology. Her books: ‘Subjectivity in the New Hollywood Cinema: Fathers, Sons and Other Ghosts’ (ASCA Press), ‘Yuen Woo Ping’s Wing Chun’ (Hong Kong University Press) and ‘Filmski medij kao transkulturalni spektakl: Hollywood, Europa, Azija’ (Hrvatski filmski savez).
Regional Jury
Casey Cooper Johnson, Production Manager, Filmmaker
Casey Cooper Johnson is an American producer who has lived and worked in Kosovo since June 1999. Casey holds a degree in Environmental Education from the University of California at Berkeley. He co-founded the Youth Video Project, a film program that produced ‘Postcards from Peja’, a documentary film in the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. He produced ‘Outside the Framework’, a televised film festival on RTK in 2003, and later the UNDER CONSTRUCTION Balkan Documentary Series. In recent years Casey has directed documentaries such as ‘Whose Security?’ and ‘Weddings and Diapers’ (Big Stamp for Best Film in Regional Competition Zagrebdox 4). He is currently the executive director of Crossing Bridges Productions and co-produces ‘Life in Kosovo’ on RTK.
Irena Taskovski, producer
Irena studied in Prague, graduating from the Film Academy (FAMU). She has also studied at the Sam Spiegel Film and TV School in Jerusalem and obtained Master degree from National Film & TV School, London UK. Irena has produced multiple award winners ‘Village B’, directed by Filip Remunda, and ‘Czech Dream’ directed by Vit Klusak and Filip Remunda. She has organised and programmed several film festivals (including a tribute to Stephen Frears at the 2001 Sarajevo Film Festival, Indies Film festival in Prague 1999 and Festival of Czech Films in Bosnia 1998.). Based in London, she is currently managing Taskovski Films Ltd Production and Sales Company.
Silvestar Kolbas, director of photography
Silvestar Kolbas obtained his degree in film photography at the Zagreb Academy of Dramatic Arts. Kolbas joined TV Zagreb in 1985. He worked as a cinematographer in a number of this TV house’s departments. In 1991 he was reporting from the war-engulfed regions of Croatia, primarily Eastern Slavonia. He received the award for the best debutant cinematographer on the 1989 Manaki Film Camera Festival in Bitola, Macedonia for Ž. Tomić’s film ‘Diploma for Death’. He often shoots films of FACTUM production house, for which he also made his debut as the director – ‘All about Eve’ (2004). He is a member of Croatian Film Makers’ Association, Croatian Cinematographers’ Association and Croatian Journalists’ Association. Teaches at Zagreb’s Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Movies That Matter Jury
Jon Alpert, journalist and filmmaker
Jon Alpert is an American journalist and documentary filmmaker, known for his use of a cinéma vérité approach in his films. A native of Port Chester, New York, Alpert is a 1970 graduate of Colgate University. Alpert has traveled widely as an investigative journalist, and has made films for NBC, PBS, and HBO. Over the course of his career, he has won 15 Emmy Awards and three DuPont-Columbia Awards. He has reported from Vietnam, Cambodia, Iran, Nicaragua, the Philippins, Cuba, and Afghanistan. In 1972, Alpert and his wife, Keiko Tsuno, founded the Downtown Community Television Center, one of the country’s first community media centers. Many years and many brilliant films later Alpert serves as co-founder/co-director of the Downtown Community Television Center (DCTV), America’s largest and most honored non-profit community media center.
Tin Gazivoda, director of Human Rights Center, Croatia
Tin Gazivoda is director of Human Rights Center, Croatia. He is managing all activities of the HRC in line with the Law on Institutions and the HRC Statute. Worked at UNOHCHR and Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights. Studied at University of Zagreb, Faculty of Political Science (M. Sc. International Relations), University of Stanford, California, International Policy Studies (M.A.) and International Relations. He is member of the Executive Board of the Academy for Political Development, NGO aiming to educate about socio-political issues.
Magdalena Petrović, producer
Born in 1973, Magdalena Petrović obtained her degree in Science, Music and Theatre at the University of Bologna. She worked as a journalist and producer and has made a few short promo films on human rights protection. She is currently the producer of Zagreb-based fade In Studio which, among other things, deals with the civil society issues.
Young Jury
Saša Bijelić, student
Saša Bijelić was born in Zagreb in 1986. In 2005 he was admitted to production studies at the Academy of Dramatic Arts. While studying, he produces or takes part in the production of some twenty theatre and student projects. He had a fruitful cooperation with David Kapac, with whome he made around dozen projects. While on his third year of studies he produced two thesis films: ‘Gdje pingvini lete’ by Josip Vujčić and ‘Show Must Go On’ by Nevio Marasović. In 2008, he became the student representative of the Production Department of the Academy and the Vice-president of the Students’ Association of the Academy. After completion of his graduate studies, he was admitted to post-graduate studies of production (Production of Audio-visual and Multimedia Projects).
Davor Kanjir, student
Davor Kanjir was born in Zagreb in 1974. He studied at the European Film College in Ebeltoft, Denmark (1997- 1998) and was an intern in the Cinema Department of the London chapter of the Hollywood-based Columbia Pictures (Sony Europe House) for the territories of Great Britain and Republic of Ireland. He worked in marketing departments of distribution houses Continental Film (2000 – 2003) and Issa Film i Video (2005). He wrote film reviews in Kinoteka and in Croatian edition of British film magazine Total Film. He is a graduate of the BFA film, theatre and TV production program at the Zagreb Academy of Dramatic Arts where he is currently studying documentary film and TV direction.
David Kapac, student
David Kapac was born in Zagreb in 1986. In 2005 he was admitted to graduation studies of film and TV direction at the Zagreb Academy of Dramatic Arts. While studying, he directed and wrote some fifteen short, documentary and TV student projects; he also worked as an assistant director and co-writer in projects of his older colleagues. He regularly works with Saša Bijelić; together they made a few professional projects. That same year, having completed his graduate studies, he enrolled in the post-graduate studies of direction (feature films). Filmography: ‘Kud puklo da puklo’, ‘5 lakih koraka’ and ‘Pariz’.
