Angelika Levi is a Berlin based filmmaker. Her work is shown at international film festivals, cinemas and exhibitions. Her short film Faust aufs Auge (1988) won the No Budget Video Prize Hamburg, and Desiree & Polylepis (1994) was rated “high quality” by the German Film Classification Board in Wiesbaden. MY LIFE PART 2, her first full-length documentary, won several awards and had its premiere at the Forum/International Berlin Film Festival 2003. Her essay film ABSENT PRESENT (2010) had its Premiere at The Women´s Film Festival in Barcelona. Children of Srikandi had its Premiere at the Panorama/ international Berlin Film Festival 2012 and won also several awards. MIETE ESSEN SEELE AUF (Rent eats the soul) was shown as a 3-channel film installation in the exhibition "Housing Question" in "Haus der Kulturen der Welt" in Berlin 2015. Levi is working also as an editor and dramaturgic advisor. Her film AHORITA FRAMES premiered at the 71st Berlinale in Forum Expanded in 2021.
*1956 in Salzburg. Studied at Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna from 1975-80. In the early 1980s she worked for the weekly evening of performance „Wednesdays at A’s“. 1987 Scheirl starts to live and work in London and among an international scene of queer and transgender artists. In the mid 90s she/he adopts the transgender identity of „Hans“. Graduation as Master of Arts at Central Saint Martins College London in 2003. Beneficiary of the Austrian governmental scholarship in 2006. Chair of „Kontextuelle Malerei“ (contextual painting) at Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna since 2006. Won the city of Vienna’s award for visual arts in 2012. Annual DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) scholarship in Berlin in 2018/19. In 2019: Austrian Art Award for Visual Art and attendance of Biennale Lyon together with Jakob Lena Knebl. Also with Knebl, Scheirl will represent Austria at the Venice Biennale in 2022.
B. Ruby Rich is a well-known film critic, festival programmer, cultural theorist, and chronicler of social trends on screen and off. She coined the term queer cinema.
Borjana Gaković studied media and film studies in Potsdam and Berlin. Co-editor of the 68th edition of the feminist film journal Frauen und Film (on women filmmakers of the 60s) and the quarterly magazine on cinema politics Kinema Kommunal. She is spokeswoman for the German Association of Municipal and Cultural Cinemas and presents film programs in various cinemas. She has participated in numerous film, theater and media(theory) related projects, inter alia as co-curator of the symposium Reluctant Feminism within the 17th goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film in Wiesbaden 2017, Aufbruch der Autorinnen (The Rise of Women Directors) initiated by Sabine Schöbel (Zeughauskino Berlin, 2015 and 2016), the exhibition and film series Cinema Archeology within the project Living Archive – Archive Work as a Contemporary Artistic and Curatorial Practice (2013) as well as Asynchronous – Documentaries and Experimental Films on the Holocaust (2015) of the Arsenal - Institute for Film and Video Art. She is living in Berlin.
Balvers studied saxophone at the Amsterdam Academy of Music . She is a member of the Amsterdam Saxophone Quartet and has worked in that city with internationally renowned musicians. She is also a member of Maud Nelissen's film music orchestra The Sprockets and teaches saxophone at the music school in Amersfoort.
Francesco Ferarrini graduated at the conservatory of Rovigo in the class of Maestro Simoncini. From 1991 to 1996 he studied under Maestro Mario Brunello at Fondazione R. Romanini in Brescia. From 1984 to 1999 he perfected his studies under Maestro Franco Rossi. As First and Principal Cellist he worked with renowned ensembles and performed at the most important italian and international theatres and as a member of various orchestras. In 2003 he arranged the monday concerts at San Bernardino-Verona and founded chamber-ensemble "Interpreti Italiani". Ferrarini did records for labels such as BMG – Ricordi or EMI as well as for italian broadcasting. He teaches Cello at the conservatory of Trent and plays a violoncello (italian school) from 1700.
Gabu Heindl, Dr.phil, is an architect, urban planner and activist in Vienna. She teaches at the Architectural Association in London and is a Visiting Professor at Sheffield University and in Vienna. Her architectural office GABU Heindl Architektur focuses on public construction, affordable living, public space and collaborative construction projects. Current research commissioned by Vienna Housing Research Programme and Vienna Chamber of Labour. Numerous international publications and lectures. Co-Editor of Building Critique. Architecture and its Discontents, Spector Books, 2019. Her book Stadtkonflikte. Radikale Demokratie in Architektur und Stadtplanung will be released in 2020 in Vienna.
Heiny Srour was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1945 She lived, worked and studied there. BA Sociology at the ESL (École Supérieure des Lettres/French University of Beirut). PHD research in Social Anthropology in the Sorbonne in France under the guidance of Maxime Rodinson. She worked as teacher and journalist in Lebanon. She was also a film critic in Paris. Her film THE HOUR OF LIBERATION HAS ARRIVED was the first arab film by a woman to be selected at the Cannes Film Festival.
1976 Study at Hochschule für bildende Künste, Hamburg. Lives in Berlin as a freelance writer. Editor of various publications i.a. Abenteuer eines Auges – der Dokumentarfilmer Johan van der Keuken; Choreografie für eine Kamera – Maya Derens Schriften zum Film; Čechov und Theater, 1938 – Warum wir heute genau hinschauen müssen.
Radio features i.a. Archimedes Auge – Ella Bergmann-Michel, Raus mit der Sprache – Günter Bruno Fuchs, Die Butterverschwörung – der Überlebenslauf des Oskar Huth.
Films: Mein Herz schlägt blau – die Künstlerin Ella Bergmann-Michel (with Maria Hemmleb); Kazimir Malevič – das befreite Nichts, Abladeplätze – der Maler Leonid Šejka (with Peter Urban).
Katja Wiederspahn studied philosophy and film studies in Frankfurt am Main and gender studies in Berkeley, California. After many years of working with the independent dance theater company Laokoon Dance Group, she was drawn to cinema in the early 1990s and has been passionately addicted to it ever since. Cinema is her passion, hobby, livelihood, cruising spot, teaching and theory workshop - and much more besides. From her dance theater work, on the other hand, she has retained her love of dancing, although she pursues it far too little, she says. As a translator - especially as a member of the queer_feminist translation collective gender et alia and together with Dagmar Fink - she loves and celebrates the work on the term and the collective examination of language, and as a film festival worker together with Dagmar Fink, among others, simply everything that the cinema has to offer as a public, shared, even collective space for experience and discussion. (Source: queertactics.at)
Born on October 13, 1928 in Tbilisi, she had made 9 feature and 4 documentary films. Her films have been nominated and awarded at numerous film festivals in Europe (Cannes, Venice, Berlinale), in Asia (Tokyo IFF) and in the Soviet Union. She was also a member of the jury at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1984. In 2015, Lana was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for her contributions to cinema at Tbilisi and Batumi IFFs. Lana was one of the founders of film faculty at Shota Rustaveli Theatre and Film Georgia State University. She was also one of the initiators of the National Film Center in Georgia, which is based on the French model. She is also known as a translator of poetry, translating and reading poems in French, English, Russian and Georgian. In the 1990s, Lana went into politics and became a member of parliament in 1992. From 1999 to 2008, she served as the Permanent Representative of Georgia in the Council of Europe and UNESCO. She finished to work on her last feature Golden Thread, which will be shown in December 2019 at Tbilisi Film Festival.
Lucio Degani started studying the violin at the Udine Music Conservatory and finished his musical studies at the Florence Conservatory, achieving top marks. He perfected his studies with M° R. Zanettovich and attended the Chamber Music courses organized by Zanettovich, De Rosa and Farulli. He collaborated for several years with the Orchestra Giovanile Italiana, the Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale of Bologna, The Orchestra Filarmonica and the Orchestra Sinfonica of Udine.He played as soloist under the direction of famous conductors (Bertini, Haag, Maazel, Muti, Nanut, Rostropovic, Scimone, Sinopoli, Thielemann etc).From 1986 until now he played as solo parts with the famous chamber orchestra “I Solisti Veneti” directed by the Maestro Claudio Scimone,and since 2000 he's the principal violin and soloist of that group playng in the most prestigious theatres and music halls around the world (Lincoln Center New York; Suntory Hall Tokyo; Musikverein Wien; Mozarteum Salzburg; Schauspielhaus Berlin; La Scala Milan; Opera and Salle Pleyel – Paris). His violin is a Girolamo Amati II of 1734.
Madeleine Bernstorff (Berlin), writer und film curator. Research-based, mostly collaborative projects. Co-founder of Kino Sputnik Berlin in 1984 as well as the feminist film group Blickpilotin in 1989. Film/video programmes about Early Cinema and the Suffragette Movement, filmmaker René Vautier in an internationalistic and anti-colonialistic context, Carole Roussopoulos’ video activism, „Kamerahelm“-artist Margaret Raspé or the political/technical surroundings of film activist Ella Bergmann-Michel’s works. Bernstorff is a member of the commission of International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and teaches film history. Occasionally films/videos of the „small kind“: trailers, video-letters, Super8-movies. In 2016/17 she produced the 23-video-series NSU-Komplex auflösen! with the group SPOTS.
Mala Reinhardt (*1989) studied Cultural Anthropology (BA & MA) in Cologne, New Delhi and Kampala (2009-2016). Currently she studies documentary film direction at Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF (Potsdam/Germany). She works as independent director and producer for documentary films.
Nelissen is a Dutch composer and pianist with a special interest in music for silent film. She worked in Italy with Charlie Chaplin's last music arranger, Eric James. She is now a much sought-after silent film pianist and composer at festivals in Europe, the USA and Asia.
Maud established her own silent film music ensemble, The Sprockets, and has performed with them as well as other ensembles at home and abroad. Maud Nelissen has collaborated with Kinothek Asta Nielsen many times in the past; for Remake 2021 and 2019 she composed the music for SHOES (1916, Lois Weber) and HINDLE WAKES (1927, Maurice Elvey). The composition for NORRTULLSLIGAN was also commissioned by the Kinothek.
Monika Treut is one of the pioneers of New Queer Cinema, works as a writer and director and manages production company Hyena Films. Her work includes award-winning documentaries, narrative and experimental features, which focus on gender roles and sexuality from a feminist perspective. Treuts most prominent films include Seduction: The Cruel Woman, Die Jungfrauenmaschine and My Father Is Coming. She is a member of Pro Quote Film, Deutsche Filmakademie, AG DOK and Freie Akademie der Künste in Hamburg.
Film scholar and passionate cinema-goer. Research and publications on film theory and
aesthetics, film and history, (film) history writing.
Editor of French editions of Siegfried Kracauer’s works Theory of Film, History: The Last Things Before the Last, and others.
Pavla Frýdlová is a film director, screenwriter and published author. Up until 1990, she worked as a dramaturge and editor at Barrandov Studios in Prague. At the same time, she focussed actively on the areas of film theory and criticism, publishing her study “FrauenFilme in Osteuropa” with Trafoverlag in 1996 with funding from the Berlin Senate. She is co-founder of the Prague-based NGO Gender Studies, where she directed the international oral history project “Women´s Memory: Searching for Identity under Socialism” over the course of 12 years. She has released a series of publications, radio shows and documentary films on the basis of interviews conducted with women from different generations. Frýdlová is a recipient of the American Zirin Prize for her outstanding contributions to the field of women’s studies in Central and Eastern Europe.
Rombout Stoffers studied classical percussion at the Conservatoire of Amsterdam. He has worked for many orchestras e.g. the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He created and performed in many musical theatre productions with a variety of Dutch groups all over the World. Rombout has worked with Maud Nelissen for more then 20 years. Besides playing percussion he also sings and plays the accordion in many of her compositions for silent movies. With her and her film orchestra "The Sprockets" he travels all over Europe.
Born March 1 - 1966 in Tbilisi. After her studies at Tbilisi state Academy of Fine Arts, Department of Theatre Design and Painting, she works as set and costume designer on several feature and short films. 1992 enters FEMIS, Paris Film School. Directorial Department. Graduated in 1996 with Diploma of excellence and public presentation of her Diploma work.
Her short film FELICITA 2009 won a Special Jury Price at Venice Film Festival and Trieste Film Festival. 2014 her first feature LINE OF CREDIT was presented at Venice Film Festival’s official selection, Orizonti. It was awarded at Tbilisi Film Festival for best Directing and awarded with the Golden Linx - The Best Feature Film Award - At Fest New Directors New Films – Espinho-Portugal.
Salome Alexi translated from French in Georgian language Le plaisir de yeux of Francois Truffaut and Notes sur le Cinématographe of Robert Bresson. Edition Cezanne, 2016 and 2017. She worked as a producer and editor on Lana Gogoberidze’s last feature GOLDEN THREAD coming in 2020.
Born and raised in Sindos, a suburb of Thessaloniki. She is the creator, writer, director and lead actress of the drama series SWITCH, based on her life and several years of work as an undercover Dominatrix in New York. At the New York Women in Film and Television Festival, Switch was recently awarded first place in the “Suspense/Action/Thriller” category; Toska received the “Award for Outstanding Actress”. Toska's work also includes her award-winning directorial debut BENEATH THE OLIVE TREE, the short film based on true events IN THE VICE, the thriller PRONOIA, currently in production as a feature film, the comedy web series LIVIN' THE DREAM, co-produced with Kim and Mai Spurlock, and THE SOUNDING - a forthcoming feature film on which she served as executive producer. Stavroula is currently working on her memoirs and developing several projects with her company The Toska Matrix Productions. She is a member of the board of directors of the Hellenic Film Society USA, is the event director for Film Fatales in New York, a proud feminist and an advocate for women's rights.
Stefanie Zingl is a filmscholar and film archivist at the Austrian Film Museum and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History. She studied film studies and art history at the University of Vienna and the University of Havana, Cuba.
Her research interest is in amateur culture with a focus on oral history interviews. She organizes Home Movie Days, is active as a curator and gives lectures on non-industrial film practice.
Su Friedrich (*1954, USA) is one of the most important contemporary experimental filmmakers and a pioneer of Queer Cinema. Her linking of formal experiments in the tradition of structural film, narrative elements and a feminist analysis of power structures and social codes has been honored with retrospectives all around the globe, i.a. at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum New York. (Source: Filmkollektiv Frankfurt)
From October 24th till 27th, Filmkollektiv Frankfurt e.V. will host the first retrospective of Su Friedrich in Germany, with films and video works from 1979 to 2016.
Born 1942 in Hamburg, Sünke Michel studied educational theory and psychology at Universität Hamburg and fine arts at Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg and the Royal College of Art London. After teaching at Werkkunstschule Hamburg she established a studio collective with Prof. Hans Michel. Documentary films, posters, books, photography, exhibitions, art in the public space.
Since 1997 freelance artistic and editorial works. Since 2006 lectures and readings.
Director Teona Strugar Mitevska was born in Skopje, North Macedonia in 1974, into a family of artists. Even as a child she was acting, later she studied painting and graphic design and afterwards finished the Master of Fine Arts Program Film at Tisch School of Arts in New York. Her debut film VETA was awarded by the jury of Berlinale 2002. Since then her feature films are regularly shown on festivals. (Source: jip film & verleih)
Studied economics. Freelance work with various museums. Since 1999 curator at the DFF - Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum / Deutsches Filmmuseum Frankfurt am Main and head of the film archive and film-technological collection, film restorations and DVD productions, collaboration on and conception of film-historical exhibitions, catalogue editor and publications on German Film. Since 2013 responsible for the digitisation projects of the DFF.
Ulle Zeilfelder (*1950) studied Political Science and Composition in Berlin. For 14 years she worked as a teacher in schools of general education in Berlin. Simultaneously and afterwards she worked on texts and compositions i.a. for theatre and film. In the context of the chilean solidarity movement 1974 she got to know actress Elfriede Irrall, with whom she amicably collaborated for many years. In 1981, Irrall, Zeilfelder and Olaf Scheuring founded the „theatergruppe spielwerk“. They collectively developed severals plays such as „Liebe ist“ after Christa Wolfs Kassandra. In 1982/83 Zeilfelder composed the music for Irralls film UMS FREIWERDEN HÄTTE ES JA GEHEN SOLLEN.
Born in Vienna. Studied Visual Media Design at Universität der Angewandten Kunst in Vienna under Prof. Peter Weibel. Studied Elektroacoustics and Composition at Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna under Prof. Dieter Kaufmann Mag.art. (with honor). Lives in Berlin since 1995, works as film editor since 1996. Directed by (i.a.): GERECHT IST, WAS FALSCH IST (2019, screenplay), BLUEPRINT (2001, experimental feature, 66 min), FLAMING EARS (1992 with Ashley Scheirl+ Dietmar Schipek, 84 min), THE DRIFT OF JUICY (1989, Video, 10 min). Edited by (i.a.): DEMOKRATIE UNTER DRUCK (2019, 92 min, arte, directed by Inga Turczyn+Manuel Gogos), CARTE BLANCHE FÜR PIA MARAIS CARI COMPAGNI (2018, 22 min, arte, directed by Pia Marais), HITLERS HOLLYWOOD (2017, 106 min, arte + Kino, directed by Rüdiger Suchsland).
Vaginal Davis is internationally recognized as a performance, visual and video artist. As a visiting artist, Vaginal Davis led workshops at McGill University in Montreal, Canada in 2007. In 2005 she led performance workshops at the University of Manchester, England. In this context, she developed a theater piece with students, The Maladjusted Rule, combined with accompanying courses with disabled secondary school students. In collaboration with feminist performance artist Holly Hughes, Davis led performance workshops at Harvard University in 2002. From 1985-2002, she regularly taught workshops and seminars in writing, performance, and experimental film and video at the University of California, Los Angeles, California Institute of the Arts, Art Center School of Design, Otis Parsons School of Design, and New York University. As a visual artist, her work has been included in the 2007 group exhibition “Womanizer,” curated by Kembra Pfahler, Deitch Projects, New York and the group exhibition, “The Way That We Rhyme: Woman, Art and Politics” (2008) at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco.
