Contributors of Nisimazine

Adrien Lenoir is a student at the HEC Paris Business School, specilized in the management of cultural activities. He directed a short film in 2008. He also writes reviews for a blog site he and some of his friends created : http://neufruedeshalles.blogspot.com. Adrien lives and studies in Paris.

Studied Publishing in Vilnius University and Audiovisual Media in the Baltic Film and Media School in Tallinn. Participant of many international film workshops, among them - "Interaction" in Serbia, Berlinale Talent Campus in Germany and "Cine-boat" in Finland. Focusing on documentary film, currently working on 2 creative documentaries - a short and a full-length one. Have a hobby of working as a photographer for contemporary circus festivals across Europe.

Conception and making of the website.

Ali Shujaa is a media student, aiming to continue his career in directing and producing. For the last two years he has been writing on a website which eventually led to his articles being published in a magazine. Still eager to grasp any chance to learn new skills in his field.

I am currently a student in the Psychology department of the University of Bucharest. In 2007, I participated in Let’s Go Digital !, a filmmaking workshop for teenagers, which was a first chance to literally put a finger on the issue. Since then, I also got familiar with Photography and Scriptwriting through informal courses or workshops. And what matters the most, I developed my skills in the only sport I like : keeping eyes glued to the big screen. I started writing reviews for an alternative cultural website and I am participating in the 2010 NISI MASA Film Journalism workshop in Cannes. I live and don’t work in Bucharest.

Andris Feldmanis has a degree in history. He has worked as a journalist/editor for a daily newspaper, later as a freelance film critic contributing to different magazines and weeklies. Currently he is working as a scriptwriter for a TV-series. In recent years he has also been more involved in photography.

Anne-Sophie Meusburger studied theatre, movie and media sciences in Vienna. She voluntarily worked for kino5, an organization for young, independent movie makers, was involved in several small movie projects and has done internships in film production and children´s theatre.

I am a fresh freelancing journalist/photographer from Finland. Currently located in Estonia. Aiming to study photography further in Tallinn and hopefully making it to my life´s career. Films and movie world walk hand in hand with my main trade, so it is not a hard step to take when needed.

Atso Pärnänen is a producer and director. He has written, directed and/or produced various short films, story edited, developed and written feature films. He has been active in film festival organizations especially in the United Kingdom and Finland having for the past few years divided his time between them and recently also France and Italy.

I was born and raised in Brazil, where I got a Licence degree in cinema, mostly for all the technique and the practical aspects of distribution and film production. Because of the lack of real reflexion on movies and cinema itself, I’ve been in France since 2007, where I did my Masters on sociology of film criticism (and the formation of aesthetic taste in particular). Now I’m doing a doctors on film criticism again, but this time on the philosophy of aesthetic taste.

Giovanni Vimercati (Italy) founded the CLF_Project on the 1st of May 2008. Celluloid Liberation Front is a multi-use ( r ) name, an "open reputation" informally adopted and shared by a desiring multitude of insurgent cinephiles, formal saboteurs, aesthetic dynamyters and random deviants. For reasons that remain unknown, the name was borrowed from a collective of anti-imperialist blind filmmakers from the Cayman Islands whose films have rarely been unseen.

Claudio Sánchez Castro is an anthropology student at UMSA in La Paz, Bolivia. He has worked since 2005 as a journalist in Radio Cristal. In 2008 he started hosting and producing Cine con Cristal, a radio show specialized in film criticism and information about movies. Since 2008 he has published film reviews in the newspaper La Prensa. In 2009 he began working as a film critic for the magazine La Esquina de la Cinemateca of the Fundación Cinemateca Boliviana.

Cristina is in her 4th year studying cinematography and television in Cluj-Napoca, Babes Bolyai University. Until now, she has worked on a number of short films, doing cinematography or directing. She is very keen on photography, and has been working as a freelance photographer. She has also been photoblogging for the past five years.

Damien Rayuela graduated in International Relations and lives in Paris. He holds the title ’Most interesting guy of the year’ for two consecutive years now and has illusions of once winning an Oscar. Please be sure not to tell this to his face though.

Dominika Uhríková is a student of translation and interpretation at the English and Italian departments of the Comenius University in Bratislava and at the French department of the University of Prešov, Slovakia. In 2005, she released a book of poetry entitled “Ten Decagrams of Decadence” and since December 2007, she has been a part-time reporter at The Slovak Spectator, the country’s only English-language newspaper. She covers culture, her main focus being cinema and music.

Dominika has been regularly publishing translations of various literary works and she has translated into Slovak several movies screened at the Košice French Film Festival, which she co-organises as a member of the Alliance française de Košice administrative council. Her interest in cinema, however, is not limited to the linguistic level. She has taken part in various film events both in her homeland and abroad, including the “60 in Cannes” workshop at the Cannes International Film Festival in 2008. Dominika lives alternately in Košice and in Bratislava.

I am a French aspiring screenwriter and filmmaker. Born in 1987, I studied cinema at the University Paris Diderot from Licence to Master from 2004 to 2010.

I have been writing movie reviews since 2005 for several periodicals. In 2007, I was chosen to participate to the Paris Cinema Festival as a member of a jury only made of students. I now write regular reviews for the online magazine Acmé. After the Abu Dhabi Nisimazine adventure, I will direct my second short movie.

I am obsessed with American cinema, especially the Coppola’s family masterpieces.

Erzsébet Plájás studied film, photography and media at the Sapientia – Hungarian University of Transylvania in Romania, and is about to graduate in 2010 as a director. She has been writing film reviews, festival reports for Filmtett – Transylvanian Film Portal (www.filmtett.ro) since December 2007 in Hungarian language. She participated at the Berlinale Talent Campus in 2010 as a film journalist, where she wrote in English for the Talent Press website (www.talentpress.org). Recently Erzsébet started working as a freelance journalist in temporary projects. She is also an amateur photographer, several of her photos won awards on national and international photo contests, and she had her first individual photo exhibition : Human.space in March 2010. Her mother tongue is Hungarian, but she speaks fluently and writes easily in Romanian and English, she speaks a bit of French and German and she is learning Japanese.

Eva Kincsei has been working as an economic journalist since she graduated in 2009 after following media studies and business communication. That’s the official line. And there’s the ‘guerrilla’ one to get away from sovereign debt and mortgage loans which is writing about movies originating from times when she was attending screenplay-writing, photography and assistant director courses and taking entrance exams– unsuccessfully – to the Film Academy while doing her official university studies. Beyond all these official categories, there’s a lot more, of course.

I am a Portuguese journalist and film critic. I currently work as press officer for FEST- International Youth Film Festival in Portugal. I produced and directed a documentary and a short film when I was a student.

Filippo Zambon (1981) studied Art History at the University of Florence and he is nowadays finishing his master at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. His photographic work has been published in many international magazines and exhibited in several exhibition around the world.

Geoffrey Crété came to Paris to study cinema. He graduated from the ESEC (Ecole Supérieure d’Etudes Cinématographiques) where he specialized in Assistant directing. After several experiences on television sets, he decided to focus on what really matters to him : writing and directing. Beside, he began to write about films and TV series on Excessif.com, Condordia and NISIMASA’s blog.

After finishing a degree in semiotics and cultural studies in University of Tartu I went on to study wellness and spa service design and management. But my passion for movies and TV-shows has never left my side, no matter where my education takes me. Taking part in film festivals or helping on the sidelines in movie sets I plan to make movies my life.

Gilles studied in Strasbourg and Paris, finishing with a degree of assistant director at the Conservatoire Libre du Cinéma Français. He worked several years as an assistant unit manager on feature films and TV movies. Today, he is currently in the process of reconversion as a scriptwriter.

Helka Heinonen has studied fine arts and is now studying education, literature and film studies in the University of Helsinki. In the near future she is acting in a short film and starting a video project that combines drawn and filmed material.

Janka Barkóczi studied film and history at the Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest. She works as a journalist both off and online for different magazines and newspapers. She teaches film and participates in various trainee projects including the coordination of a high school program in media education. She is a member of the Titanic International Film Festival’s organizer team since 2005.

I studied poltical sciences and German literature (focus on media culture) at the universities of Freiburg, Gothenburg and Hamburg. After graduating, I started to work in the practical field of cinema culture, as a curator of fiction and documentary films in cinemas and at festivals.

Study of Philosophy, Comparative Literature and Film Studies (BA) at Frankfurt am Main, Berlin and Paris. Currently I am attending to the Masters program at the University of Potsdam in European Media Studies. In my Master I am doing academic research mainly about the complicated division between "fact and fiction" and work in the field of the image-, film- as well as media-theory. In the context of my Master at the moment I realize a short film as well as a curatorial project. I attended Nisimazine Bratislava at the Openworld Filmfestival in 2011 for the first time.

Jorge is from Lima, Peru and is currently studying Filmmaking at the Universidad de Lima. He has taken some courses at NYU shool of Arts Tisch. He has written articles for his high school and his college newspaper. At the moment he is as a film critic for a local radio and has his own blog where he publishes movie articles. He has made two short films in college and assisted in the making of a Peruvian film called "Mañana te cuento 2".

Studying Journalism in Vilnius University since 2010, writing about cinema since 2009, finished the course of Film Theory and Analysis in "Skalvija" Film Academy (Lithuania) at 2010.

From the North of England, my wanderlust first took me to university in Edinburgh. After graduation in Modern European Languages and enthusiastic volunteer stints for several UK film festivals, two of my main interests came together in a move across the channel to work in NISI MASA’s Paris headquarters. Since 2007 I’ve been a regular fixture in the Nisimazine workshops as project coordinator, editor-in-chief, translator, webmaster, and occasional writer. So far it’s taken me across three different continents !

I have studied film in Finland and UK. I have worked for feature films since 2007 mainly in Finland and Estonia. I usually work as an assistant director and I have been involved in many international filmprojects.

Kerli Adov. In other words a lady, whose articles never expose truth. Well, that’s because she simply doesn’t believe in one. She prefers to be a semiotic minefield, a film curator, giving not only for viewers and readers, but also for film-makers a full experience of meanings in films. In other words, I said, a film-poet.

I make films and write a lot about them. Im working on my PHD on Lebanese cinema and I care a lot about anything related to Arab Cinema D’auteur. I’m working now on my film about a Palestinian artist, thanks to a grant from Arab Fund for Arts and Culture and Sundance Doc.

Laslo Rojas graduated from the Computer Science Deparment of the Catholic University of Peru, and now works as a web editor in Lima. He is one of the founders of Cinencuentro, a group of cinephiles that, since 2003, bring together their love for movies with personal and professional interests. In 2005 they created Cinencuentro.com, a movie blog that has become one of the referents for the region’s film community. He has covered several editions of film festivals in Lima, and once in Buenos Aires, at BAFICI 2008.

Levente Czehelszki graduated in Hungarian literature, journalism and aesthetics from the College of Nyíregyháza and from Pázmány Péter Catholic University. Right now he’s a master student in film from Eötvös Loránd University. He’s writing articles about movies since 2004, and can be easily found at a Hungarian film festival, or maybe in one of those small pubs nearby. If not there, maybe he’s working for another newspaper concerning different topics than film, for example national security or domestic policy.

I’m from Tartu, Estonia and currently studying photography at Tartu Art College and doing my final project to get my bachelor’s degree. Overthe years I’ve had one personal exhibition and participated in some group exhibitions in Estonia and France.

Ľuboš Bišto – 21 years – Košice, Slovakia

Bachelor degree – British and American studies, University of P. J. Šafárik, Košice

Student -. Film studies, Masaryk University, Brno

Founder – DOCsk – festival of documentary films Košice

Founder – Biograf – art house cinema, Košice

Cannes – my first major festival – symbol

Motivation – to learn from others

Dream – to make a good movie

Lucie Boucek is a German/Czech creative Videomaker. She studied Conceptual Arts and Design (Media) at the Central StMartins College, London, England. In 2005 she successfully completed the course with a first class degree. In 2008 she graduated with distinction from a postgraduate course in Film Design at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

Lucie has worked for various media companies : plan.net Digital Agency, MEDIA European Commission, EACEA Executive Agency, Brussels / Fabrica United Colours of Benetton, Communication Research Centre, Treviso / Kabel Eins TV Broadcast, Munich / Tate Modern Art Institution, London / TBWA Communication Agency, Munich / Designguide, 089 Publishing House, Munich

French-argentine photographer and cinematographer.

Lukas Traber is a film and media student at the University of Vienna in Austria. In 2008 he joined the multimedia design company “3 Tapes”. He worked as a screenwriter for several Austrian independent short movies. Currently Lukas and his brother are working on an Austrian web-series called “ALL YOU CAN TAKE”, which will debut 2011.

Born and raised in Málaga (Spain), I have lived in Paris since 2002. After getting my cinema studies degree at the Sorbonne, I work today as graphic designer for an International Documentaries Distribution and Production company. Besides my job, I build on my love for fiction films by directing shorts.

Maartje (born in Holland in 1983) was once pulled across the ocean to study art on the american Great Plains. After this first quest, she returned to her home country to study Sociology, Archaeology and Cinema, in which she graduated in 2008. Now based in Paris working fulltime for NISI MASA as project manager and graphic designer, she is also developing as a photographer working on an international project called ’Flakes of Identity’, making a photo diary.

In 2009 Maria Dicieanu graduated from the Master Course of Film Studies provided by the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. Her close encounter with the film’s world started however a few years earlier, in 2004, when she was accepted as a student in the Multimedia : Sound and Image Editing department at the National University of the Arts of Theater and Cinema, Bucharest, Romania. Although her bachelor studies gave her the opportunity to work as a film-maker for several short-movies, Maria wanted to explore the theoretical dimension of cinema as well. This not only led her to a film analysis based master, but also to participate as a young journalist in Nisimazine Cannes. At the moment Maria works as a free-lance visual artist in Amsterdam, but is looking forward to having film related projects take her all over the world.

Maria Ulfsak studied journalism and public relations at the University of Tartu (Estonia) and she has a Master’s degree from the University of Warwick (UK) in Film and Television studies. She lives in Tallinn, Estonia and works as a freelance film journalist. Since 2010 she also works for the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival as a part of the progamme selection committee.

Martha Cotoret studied journalism at the Santa Rosa University, in Caracas. In 2005 she began her career in the editorial group “Bloque Dearmas”, where she worked as editor of fashion health and beauty magazines. Two years later, Martha joined TalCual, a daily newspaper of national circulation, where she is currently working as a journalist in the cultural section. There she writes criticism, reviews and interviews on national and international cinema.

Mary Carmen Molina Ergueta (La Paz, 1987) is a Literature student at UMSA in La Paz, Bolivia. Since 2008, she works in Cine con Cristal, a radial show specialized in information about movies and film criticism. She works in projects of investigation on Bolivian contemporary literature and in the development of cinema clubs projects. She is one of the members of the Publishing Council of digital magazine Cinemas Cinema.

Michael O’Regan was born and raised in the West of Ireland. After a politically focused adolescence, he discovered cinema in his undergraduate days, when he developed a near religious devotion to Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski. He also acquired an intense interest in film history, which prompted him to read for an MA in the discipline. In recent years he has been caring for his disabled brother. During this period he has variously grown and shaved a beard, pretended to write a screenplay about Mai ’68, and drunkenly defended the artistic value of post-‘Festen’ Vinterberg. He intends to start a PhD this autumn. A committed devotee of print, he remains reluctant to actively engage with online media. He does, however, maintain an affectedly downbeat twitter presence.

Michaela Pňačeková is currently writing her dissertation on language, gender and identity. She graduated in English and American Studies and Theatre Studies at Masaryk University, Czech Republic and sometimes regrets she didn’t study something more practical. Throughout her studies, she also lived in Finland and Canada. She now lives in Berlin, Germany, where she also works as a film festival organizer. She has worked for IFF Berlinale, Film Festival Cottbus, Slovak Film Festival Artfilmfest, and the Czech Queer Film Festival Mezipatra.

Miguel Fernández is a Mexican multimedia journalist working in Spain for lainformacion.com, a general news site. As a journalist, he has produced over 500 videos, covering a wide range of subjects from sports to politics, and has tried to tell those stories in a different and compelling way. Since 2009, he’s been trying to make innovative content as the in-house videoblogger at Madrids’ experimental music festival. Also, he teaches multimedia making at the Universitat de Barcelona, and is very fond of such activity.

In a past life Miguel was a lawyer, and got to meet the devil himself, Beelzebub, front-row. This is when he switched to telling stories as a mean of life, meeting other minor demons along the way.

Miklós has been involved in arts - drawing and painting - since a very young age but about 10 years ago while looking for new ways of self-expression he fell in love with photography that is a massive obsession for him ever since. He graduated as a photographer in 2010 at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest, Hungary where he is still attending a visual communication teacher faculty as a second degree and he will graduate this summer. In 2008 he completed one term at the University of Art and Design in Cluj Napoca, Romania through CEEPUS scholarship and gained further technical experience during an internship at one of the most advanced photo studios in Central Europe. Involved in magazine, fashion and advertisement photography he was responsible for providing a smooth technical assistance covering every aspect from lighting to photo equipments. He is also managing his own projects attempting to visualize experimental thoughts/themes.

Mirona Nicola is in her 2nd year of studying Audiovizual Communication at the National Theatre and Cinematography University in Bucharest, Romania. She writes for Film Menu, the cinema magazine edited by the University’s Film Faculty. Nisimazine Cannes 2010 is her first collaboration with NISI MASA.

Miruna has a degree in Screenwriting and Film Criticism. During college she wrote for many film festival newspapers and some national film magazines. In Romania, she writes and does PR for a non-profit film magazine, made by film students and distributed for free. Also, she is part of a team that puts together a fanzine - a more underground, friendly and spaced-out urban culture magazine. She works in the film industry - currently in developing - and writes screenplays as often as she gets the chance. She’ll co-direct a medium-length horror movie in March and, meanwhile, she organizes parties and plans a music festival.

Mohamed Beshir is studying for his masters in filmmaking at the RSICA in Aqaba, Jordan ; he has worked as a subtitler, editor, cinematographer and director between Egypt and Jordan.

I’m a Palestinian Hungarian journalist based in Syria. I write for a number of Arab and (occasionally) international publications mainly about art and women rights issues.

After graduating as a Bachelor of Arts, Nino Klingler now follows the master program of cinema studies at the Free University of Berlin. As part of his academic career, he spent one year at the Istanbul Bilgi University learning practical filmmaking, lightning and directing skills. He writes critiques for the German webpage critic.de.

I graduated literary studies in Klaipeda University. Since 2008 I write essays to cultural weekly. At this moment I have a position as a non-commercial cinema coordinator in Lithuania.

Patricia is from Budapest, Hungary. She is a graduate student at the Department of Film Studies at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. She is currently doing a major in English and a teacher trainer’s course simultaneously. During her university years she taught media and English to secondary school students and shot short films under the surveillance of acclaimed Hungarian film directors. She also took part in the Hungarian Film Week, Titanic Festival and the Far East Film Festival in Udine as a journalist. Since 3 years she is writing reviews for a Hungarian Web Media.

Pierre – Anthony Canovas is a French freelance journalist now based in Paris. After a double B.A in Law and Political Studies, he recently graduated with a master’s degree in European studies. His passion for cinema has begun early on when he used to spend hours watching movies in the theatre next to his mother’s work. Moviegoer, he has been among others things, the co-producer of a short American documentary on World War II consciousness objectors and has directed a few making of and video reports in France and abroad.

A freelance translator turned cinephile who has an MA in English language and literature from Tartu, Estonia, and who also owns another similar document from the University of Kent, UK, in the ontologically restless field of film studies.

Romain is a director and screenwriter living around Paris. After art studies at the university Paris VII, where he started by writing film reviews for his local campus mag, he took a pen and a camera and went out making movies. New projects at : www.griphe.com

In 2007 Ruben Jacobs graduated from the Utrecht school of the Arts where he specialised himself in cultural policy in the Netherlands. After this he proceeded his studies in cultural sociology at the University of Amsterdam. Currently he’s writing his MA thesis on the role of social-political engagement in documentary tradition of the VPRO (Dutch public broadcast company). Next to his studies he works as freelance writer/filmmaker for the VPRO and online arts & journalism magazine Hard//Hoofd.

Sabrina Fidalgo is a Brazilian filmmaker, screen writer and producer and has collaborated with several Brazilian and European magazines and websites writing articles about cinema and music. She lives between her hometown Rio de Janeiro and Berlin, Germany.

I started learning about journalism in 1995. After getting the best grade for a video report about the Universal Zulu Nation in Harlem, New York, I left Paris to spend more than 2 years in the Big Apple and studied film & media at Hunter College. I graduated in 2001 from the Paris VIII University, in information & communication studies.

Soon after, I decided to go back to my old acting dream and studied the methods of Stavinslasky, Brecht and Actor Studio at the Conservatoire of Paris and the Studio Pygmalion. After working in theatre and cinema, I lived in the UAE and freelanced for the biggest publications of the Gulf.

Sara Ishaq is a Scottish-Yemeni, pursuing an MFA in film directing at the Edinburgh College of Art, while teaching Ashtanga Yoga in the city. Combining her interests in travel, social sciences, current affairs and film, she spent some time in the past few years volunteering in the occupied Palestinian territories and radio reporting from Yemen, while documenting her experiences through video-blogs. She has been involved in several BBC productions set in the Middle East and recently finished directing a film about the Yemeni revolution. She also participated in the judge’s panel of the EdinDocs documentary film festival in Edinburgh in 2010.

Silviu Pavel is a photographer from Romania. His photographic experience began in 2005 after his graduation in computer programming, as a result from a childhood passion for visual arts that was not fulfilled. Since then he graduated from two Romanian photography schools and has been involved till now more into cultural projects for documenting the life of Romanian communities around the country. Some of these projects were finalized with exhibitions in Bucharest and others are still on going. He is more oriented towards street photography and photojournalism than commercial photography and intends to develop more projects into cultural environments.

With an academic background in Media and Photography, I work across a wide range of creative platforms : I draw, photograph, film and write… record, capture and edit, create and play… I just don’t sing, really !

Brought up in Latvia (a country which looks like a bird if you find it on the map of Europe), I currently live in the capital of the Perfidious Albion.

Toprak Coskun Deniz graduated from the Department of Translation Studies of the University of Istanbul. He works as a freelance translator and as a coordinator in a contemporary art gallery in Istanbul. He has a personal blog site where he publishes his film reviews. As a member of NISI MASA Turkey, he was the manager of NISI MASA 8th European Script Contest. He also participated in NISI MASA Film Journalism workshops in Istanbul and Lima in 2009. Toprak lives and works in Istanbul.

Vivian Murcia studied Journalism and Sociology at Universidad Mayor del Rosario in Bogota, Colombia. During her university years, she was part of several film critic groups and started to write reviews, especially of Colombian films. Nowadays, she is working as cultural editor in Journal El Nuevo Siglo of Colombia, in which she has published various articles concerning cinema. She has been an active participant in the film festivals of Cartagena and Lima.

Viviane Saglier (born in 1988) is a student in Art Philosophy and Art History in Paris, and has already achieved a double B.A in Literature and Cinema. She selected films for the French Film Festival Premiers Plans, dedicated to European First Short and Feature Films, and also edited the daily newspaper of the International Film Festival of La Rochelle, in France. She writes whenever she can, and nourishes an unlimited desire to travel.

Zsuzsanna Kiràly, born 1985 in Szèkelyudvarhely/Transylvania ; studies : communication sciences in Vienna/Austria and Berlin/Germany ; work : Public Relations, film festivals and film production with X Filme and currently Komplizen Film in Berlin/Germany.