DocNomads Academy and Alumni Event held in Budapest
The second DocNomads Academy Seminar and the fifth DocNomads Alumni Event were held in the 9, 10 and 11 of February at the conference hall of Premier Kultcafé in Budapest.
Aiming at extending the boundaries of the regular curricular programme of DocNomads by focusing in specific thematics within an intensive two-day format of lectures and workshops, the second seminar of DocNomads Academy was held under the overarching topic “The Thin Blue Line between Documentary and Fiction – When Documentary and Fiction Merge”.
The seminar was lectured by guest participants external to DocNomads staff, namely Filip Remunda a Czech director and producer, co-founder of the Institute of Documentary Film and one of the leading tutors at the Ex Oriente Film workshop, who presented his masterclass “The Docu-mentaly Trip from Czech Dream to Once Upon a Time in Poland”, and Sergey Dvortsevoy, a renowned Russian- Kazakh filmmaker working in both fiction and documentary film projects, who presented “The Art of Improvisation in Documentary and Fiction Film”, a masterclass to illustrate how reality and fiction collide in his filmmaking methods. Péter Kerekes, member of DocNomads Academic Board, served as the seminar moderator, and as film director and producer lectured his own masterclass titled “Using Documentary Methods in Fiction Film – Border between Reality and Reality in the Prison of Odessa”.
The Alumni Event, which already became a prominent feature amidst the thematic activities organized in Budapest at the moment of the gathering of the current enrolled classes in the transition between curricular semesters, also became a customary occasion for a reunion with the growing number of DocNomads alumni.
As one of the most participated Alumni Event since its inception in 2016, this year counted with the attendance of alumni representing the whole 8 classes of DocNomads programme up to date. Contributors to the event’s programme were Jola Wieczorek (DN1), Angie Obeid (DN5), Otilia Babara (DN2), Marko Sipka (DN1), Bronte Stahl (DN5), Cristina Hanes and Isabella Rinaldi (DN3), who presented the current state of development or production of the most recent feature-length documentaries they have been involved, thus sharing their professional experiences with the event’s audience congregating students, teachers, alumni, co-workers and friends.
Atsushi Kuwayama (DN4), Jamie Allan (DN2) and Cecília Bandeira (DN3) presented the upcoming 4th initiative of “Cinecaravan” a travelling cinema project led by a collective of Alumni that has been presenting screenings of short DocNomads documentary films and giving filmmaking workshops in geographically and socially remote communities across Europe.
