BERLIN — Cannuck filmmaker Atom Egoyan will be presiding over this year’s Berlin Int’l Film Festival jury, which will also include fellow North Americans Kathryn Bigelow (“K-19: The Widowmaker”) and Sundance Film Festival director Geoffrey Gilmore.
Additional members include French producer Humbert Balsan (“Divine Intervention”), Italian actress Anna Galiena, German Film Award winning thesp Martina Gedeck (“Mostly Martha) and helmer Idrissa Ouedraogo (“Yaaba”) from Burkina Faso.
Three jurors are Berlinale veterans: Egoyan (“Ararat”) picked up an honorable mention in 1988 for his pic “Family Viewing,” which screened in the Berlinale’s Int’l Forum of New Cinema section while Bigelow’s cop drama “Blue Steel,” starring Jamie Lee Curtis, was shown in the Panorama art house sidebar in 1990. Ouedraogo picked up a Silver Bear for his “Samba Traore” in 1993.
The fest jury will select the winners for the Golden and Silver Bears in the competition section. The award ceremony of the 53rd Berlinale will be held at the Berlinale Palast on Feb. 15.
Meanwhile, this year’s first annual Berlinale Talent Campus has attracted some 500 filmmakers from around the globe.
The new educational addition aims to bring together young filmmakers and professionals and get young people interested in film fests. The Campus also invites members of the public and industry to screenings and discussions with international filmmakers.
Organized by the Berlinale with state subsidy org Filmboard Berlin-Brandenburg and the U.K.’s Film Council, the Campus will include workshops, screenings, discussions and case studies led by industry professionals.
Among the 28 scheduled public events:
Former Kinowelt topper Rainer Koelmel, Serbian producer Cedomir Kolar and U.K. producer Nik Powell will hold a lesson in damage control: “Bankruptcy and Resurrection.” Koelmel’s leading distribution and production company Kinowelt declared insolvency in 2001 after a meteoric rise on the German stock market; Kolar and Powell both produced Oscar-winning films, and both went bankrupt with them.
“Markets & Sales: Now Comes the Hard Part”: a discussion with the market directors of Rotterdam, Toronto, Berlin, IFP New York and Pusan, who will seek to elucidate the sales aspect of the commercial film business, including market strategies and world-wide distribution.
Variety and Screen Digest present “The A-Z of E-Cinema,” an overview of digital filmmaking and a technological revolution in the making.
A panel discussion with director Wim Wenders and actor/director Dennis Hopper, who will be talking about the ups and downs of the business.
