Discussion “The Cinema of In-Betweenness: Navigating the Festival Circuit”
Film festivals play an important role in providing a valuable platform for the distribution of (short) films, as well as an opportunity for filmmakers to gain visibility. Once a film is finished, it needs to find its audience. But how to develop a successful festival strategy, especially considering the film's genre and format, as well as the wide range of festivals?
The discussion will be held in English on Tuesday, April 8, at 17:00 at Kanepes Kulturas Centrs, 1st-floor hall.
Admission to the event is free of charge and open to all.
PANELISTS
Simone Bardoni, Italy, moderator
Artistic director and programmer of Concorto Film Festival, an International short film festival born in 2002 in Pontenure, a village in the north of Italy, that takes place at the end of August in an open-air park arena near Piacenza. He graduated in Film Studies and Film Criticism at the University of Bologna and participated in several cinema seminars and workshops. He worked on movie sets, as screenwriter and has been involved as film curator for cinemas and events since 2012. He also works as professor at Cinema Studies faculty with lessons dedicated to the distribution of short films and their diffusion in festivals. He also collaborates with MIA | Mercato Internazionale Audiovisivo, a market event based in Rome, and with Lights On, world sales company of cinema. He's also book and film critic for the weekly paper magazine Film Tv.
Sarah Adam, Germany
Freelance curator, programmer, university teacher and adviser for moving image related projects. Her practice evolves around documentary and experimental forms, shortfilms and moving images in the public space.
She was a member of the selection committee for the German Competition at Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen and works for the Kinemathek Hamburg, Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg and Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival.
She was the festival director and main curator of the dokumentART in Neubrandenburg, Germany in 2018 and in charge of the Deframed Competition at the Hamburg International Short Film Festival from 2015 till 2018.
Sarah is on the board of directors of the Hauptverband Cinephilie, founder of the Arab Filmclub Hamburg, member of the B-Movie cinema collective in Hamburg, and part of the A Wall is a Screen project.
Flavia Dima, Romania
A writer, film critic, cinema curator and freelance translator and researcher. Her texts have been translated in several languages and have been published in magazines like MUBI Notebook, Filmmaker Magazine, Sabzian, Reverse Shot, FILM MENU, Films in Frame and Scena9. She has been an associate curator of BIEFF since 2020 and collaborates with Romanian festivals such as ESTE Film Festival and Art200. Her poetry debut, “ulaanbaatar”, appeared in 2024 at OMG Publishing.
Philip Ilson, United Kingdom
Philip Ilson is the Artistic Director of the London Short Film Festival, which he co-founded in 2004, after running the Halloween Society film club for 10 years previously since 1994. He was also the short film programmer for the BFI London Film Festival between 2006 and 2022, and is currently short film programmer at the Dinard British & Irish Film Festival in France. He has previously worked as a programmer at the East End Film Festival (London), Cork Film Festival (Ireland), the Branchage Festival (Jersey), Latitude music festival, and at Curzon Soho Cinema.
He has spoken on many panels at various festivals, as well as at BAFTA, the BFI, and various film schools including NFTS and London Film School.
Andrew Norton, Finland
Andy co-founded Raina in 2019, alongside award-winning documentary director Inka Achte. Raina is a Helsinki-based company offering a professional, tailored festival distribution & consultation service for high-quality documentary & short films from around the world. Raina's films have been selected for over 700 festivals including Locarno, Berlinale, CPH;DOX, IDFA & Tribeca. Andy is Head of Distribution handling Raina's relationships with festivals & filmmakers.
2ANNAS Forum is organized with the support of the National Film Centre, Creative Europe MEDIA Desk in Latvia and the Goethe-Institut in Riga. Admission is free of charge for anyone interested.