Sanfic 8

Internacional Competition

Isabel Coixet

Filmmaker (Spain, 1960). An important Catalan director, who after beginning in journalism and critiques has become one of the most prominent figures in recent Spanish cinema. She has participated in the official competitions of the main festivals in the world, such as Cannes, Berlin and Venice, among others, receiving awards at the last two. She was nominated for best director at the European Film Awards, and she has received three Goyas, one as a director and two as a screenwriter, for the films My Life Without Me and The Secret Life of Words, which was also chosen best movie of the year. She has also directed episodes in the collective movies ¡Hay motivo!, Paris je t’aime and Invisibles (Goya for best documentary in 2007). Last year she was part of the Berlinale’s jury, and in the advertising and music areas, she has made successful commercials and clips for campaigns and artists inside and outside Spain.

Abel Ferrara

Filmmaker (United States, 1951). One of the essential names in American independent cinema of the last two decades, thanks to films like The King of New York, Bad Lieutenant, The Funeral and Go Go Tales, among others. He has shone in fiction and documentaries, and he is a recurrent guest in the official selections of the main festivals of the world: Cannes, Berlin, Venice and Montreal; he has obtained important awards and has been nominated to two Independent Spirit Awards as best director. In his movies, known for its explicit images of violence, he has explored the most dangerous areas of the contemporary metropolis and the darkest aspects of human nature. At SANFIC 6, besides his duty as a juror, he will show his film Napoli Napoli Napoli, shot in Italy and premiered last year at the Venice Film Festival.

Robert Koehler

Film critic (United States). Since 1994, he has been a collaborator at the well-known magazine Variety, and his work is regularly featured in influential magazines such as Cinema Scope, Cineaste and Cahiers du Cinema, among others. Also, he has been a programming director at the Festworks Film Festival, a work that he had done also at the Los Angeles AFI Fest; he contributes to the programming of the series The Films That Got Away, organized by the Los Angeles Film Critic Association, which he also belongs to. As a member of the International Federation of Film Critics, Fipresci, he has been a juror at festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, Vancouver, Bafici and Ficco. His writings have been in anthologies of cinematographic critique, including Cine Argentino 99/08 and On Film Festivals.

Chilean Film Competition

Rodrigo Bellott

Filmmaker (Bolivia, 1978). One of the main artists behind the impulse Bolivian cinema has been experiencing in the last years. He presented his first film, Sexual Dependency, at the 2003 Locarno Festival, where he received the Fipresci Award. His second feature film as a director, Who Killed the White Lama?, was a box office sensation in Bolivia. In 2007 the specialized magazine Variety chose him as one of that year’s 10 more important representatives of the New Latin American Cinema. He was partly in charge of casting, as well as a collaborator, for Steven Soderbergh diptych Che. Last year he premiered his third feature film, Perfidy (which competed at SANFIC 5) and he directed one of the segments in Rojo Amarillo Verde, which will be shown in this edition of our festival.

Mike Maggiore

Programmer and publicist (United States, 1967). He is in charge of the programming for New York’s Film Forum, which since its creation in 1970 has become one of the city’s most emblematic cinemas for independent films, documentaries and foreign movies. He has also been in the Sundance Documentary Fund committees, and he has been a juror in the documentary categories at international festivals such as Vancouver, Miami and the DocAviv. Previously, between 1990 and 1993, he worked as an acting assistant director at the Film/Video Department of Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Nuno Sena

Programmer and curator (Portugal, 1969). He is one of the founders and programmers for IndieLisboa, the International Independent Film Festival of Lisbon, which in its seven years of existence has become one of the most important in the European circuit. Graduated from Communication Sciences with a specialization in Cinema, he worked as an assistant to the Direction of the Portuguese Institute of Cinema, was responsible for the programming and the editorial department at the Portuguese Cinematheque – Museu do Cinema. Also, between 2004 and 2006, he was the programmer for Doclisboa, an international festival for documentaries. Currently, besides directing and programming IndieLisboa, he teaches film history and writes about film for different newspapers and specialized magazines.

Local Talent Competition

Felipe Braun

Chilean actor and cultural promoter (Mexico, 1970). In his vast trajectory he has stood out in film, theater and television. Within the films in which he has worked, it’s possible to highlight Mi mejor enemigo, Se Arrienda and Radio Corazón. Also, in the last few years he has developed an important work as a cultural promoter and director at Centro Cultural Lastarria 90. From this place and through L90 Cine Digital, a valuable initiative to support young directors in their digital format projects is being developed. Recently he has been co-producer for works like Argentinean Carancho (shown this year at the Cannes Festival and also part of SANFIC 6) and the Chilean films Mandrill and Metro Cuadrado, among others.

Jim Finn

Filmmaker (United States, 1968). Considered to be one of the most important American independent film directors of the last decade, his trilogy of movies about communism -Interkosmos, La trinchera luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo, The Juche Idea- is part of the MoMA’s permanent collection, and retrospectives to his work have already been organized in seven other countries, aside from his work being shown widely at festivals such as Sundance, Rotterdam, Sao Paulo, AFI and Edinburgh, as well as in diverse museums and cinematheques. He is currently an academic at the Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches short film screenwriting. Besides his work as a juror, at SANFIC 6 he will present to the public the works that form the focus Jim Finn: Perceptions of Reality, centered on his filmography.

Jeff Werner

Filmmaker, editor and producer (United States). Active and awarded in cinema and advertising, he co-produced and edited the documentaries The Woodmans and The Other City, shown this year at the Tribeca Festival (the latter is also shown in SANFIC 6). In 2008, he co-produced and edited the documentary Kicking It (screened at SANFIC 4), programmed at Sundance and Tribeca. In 2006, he co-directed and edited Mario’s Story (shown at SANFIC 2), which had its premiere at the Los Angeles Festival, where it received the Audience Award for best documentary. Other works of his include the edition of The Smith Family, chosen as Best Documentary at the Director’s Guild Awards and the Peabody Awards. In television, he directed two documentaries for HBO: Bloodlines and The Godfather Family, the latter of which was included on the DVD edition of Ford Coppola’s celebrated films.

Work in Progress

Valerie Cates

Producer and executive editor (United States). She is currently the executive editor for Random House Films. While she studied for her M.A. in English Literature at NYU, she worked as an assistant playwright for the Joseph Papp’s Public Theater, and then she produced the documentary Hip Hop Hope, premiered at the 2002 Tribeca Festival, and an award recipient in the best documentary category at The Bronx Museum of Arts’ H20 Film Festival. Later, this production was chosen by Dutch television to be broadcast as the official preview for Amsterdam’s Idfa.

Pablo Udenio

Journalist and film critic (Argentina). Founder and co-director of the important Argentinean magazine Haciendo Cine, through which he has promoted a series of valuable initiatives for the support of local cinema, such as the Bafici’s work in progress, the cycle of film pre-releases El Independiente, besides diverse courses, academic and communicative activities. In 2005 he began organizing the work in progress for the Berlin Festival’s European Film Market, open to Latin American movies. He is currently one of the organizers of Primer Corte, a work in progress for films of our region, which is done in the context of Ventana Sur, a meeting for filmic business that is developed conjointly in Buenos Aires by the INCAA and the Cannes Marché du Film.

Monika Wagenberg

Producer and curator (Colombia, 1969). Co-director and cofounder of Cinema Tropical, Director of the Latin Wave Festival, and Programmer for the Cartagena Festival. She received her BA in Comparative Literature and Economics at the University of Pennsylvania and she studied cinema at NYU. After working as an associate distributor at New Yorker Films, she co-founded Cinema Tropical, a nonprofit organization that promotes, programs and distributes Latin American films within the United States. She has worked in a wide array of festivals, including The New York Film Festival and the New York International Latino Film Festival.