This summer, Cinema Politica’s co-founders are in Kosovo for the 20th jubilee edition of the Dokufest, the International Documentary and Short Film Festival held each year in Prizren.
CP Executive Director Svetla Turnin is on the jury for the 2021 Truth Dox Competition, as part of jubilee edition of DokuFest International Documentary and Short Film Festival (Kosovo). The Truth Dox Competition features a selection of films on the intersection between investigative journalism and documentary filmmaking.
Truth Dox Jury:
London-born Claire Simon, started her career by directing independent short films. After discovering the practice of direct cinema with the Ateliers Varan, she then made several documentaries such as Coûte que coûte and Récréations , which garnered multiple awards. Afterwards, she wrote and directed three feature fiction films (Sinon oui, Ça brûle and Les Bureaux de dieu), which were presented in the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes. While many of her films such as Nord, Le Bois Dont les Rêves Sont Faits, Le Concours and Young Solitude having had their premieres in prestigious film festivals, she will continue her ‘premiere’ tradition with her last feature fiction “I want to talk about Duras“, at San Sebastian 2021.
Dea Gjinovci is a Swiss-Albanian director-producer based between Paris and Geneva. She is a 2019 Sundance Talent Forum alum and Film Independent Fellow. Her award-winning documentary short ‘Sans le Kosovo’ won Best National Film at DokuFest in 2017, while her debut feature-length documentary ‘Wake Up on Mars’ received support from the Sundance Film Institute and Ford Foundation/JustFilms, as well as won the “Perspectives d’un doc” pitch award at Visions du Réel 2018. It premiered virtually at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival and Visions du Réel in Switzerland. Gjinovci was awarded the “Best New Talent” mention at Biografilm Festival 2020 and Zagrebdox 2021, and Wake Up on Mars was nominated for the prestigious “Prix de Soleure” and “Opera Prima” award at Solothurner Tage 2021.
Svetla Turnin is the co-founder, Executive Director and Head of Distribution of Cinema Politica, a Canadian-based exhibition and distribution network for political documentary around the world, and the online streaming platform CP On Demand. In 2016 she co-founded Cinema Politica Productions, which is dedicated to supporting the work of emerging women and queer filmmakers, and is currently producing AGENT DYNAMO by Bulgarian-Canadian director Lea Marinova. Svetla writes and publishes about documentary activism, women in documentary, and film festivals. She is currently a guest editor for the upcoming edition on Cinema and Resistance for the Bulgarian independent left publication Dversia. Since 2016 she’s been curating the documentary competition at Sofia International Film Festival and is a graduate of EURODOC 2018.
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On August 11, CP co-founder and professor Ezra Winton discusses documentary politics, ethics and values in the world of film festivals.
What is the relationship between documentary, festival screenings and activism? Is sharing socially engaged films with audiences enough to inspire change? Is the audience act of knowing about injustice enough to end injustice? Do festivals have a responsibility to offer alternative ways to share and screen political documentaries? In this discussion, film professor, curator and writer Ezra Winton makes critical connections between documentary politics, ethics and values in the world of film festivals.
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