“Contemporary Documentary Filmmaking in the Era of COVID-19” Roundtable.

MODERATOR:

ELENA ULANOVSKI is the festival coordinator working with jury; coordinator of the interactive festival programs. She is a film producer, novelist, screenwriter, and playwright. Her documentary films “Russian is a Hard Language”, “From Russia with Math”, “New Zion Protocols” were screened at the international film festivals in the US, Israel, and Russia. Her plays were staged in the US and Israel. She is a co-founder of producers’ company Weekend Movie Productions, LLC. She is a member of the Organizing Committee of the RUSDOCFILMFEST-3W.

PARTICIPANTS:

JON ALPERT is an award-winning documentary journalist; film director, producer. He has won three Primetime Emmy Awards, eleven News & Documentary Emmy Awards, one National Emmy for Sports Programming, four Columbia DuPont Awards and a Peabody Award; two Overseas Press Club Awards; he is a nominee for two Academy Awards for the Best Short Documentary (2010, 2013). Alpert began contributing to NBC in 1979 with his coverage of the Vietnam-China Border Wars. Over the next dozen years Alpert’s investigative reporting, editing, and camera work earned an impressive string of awards and scoops. From the Soviet Union, Alpert brought back some of the first reports about Glasnost and Perestroika. He also won many honors for his reporting in Angola and Korea. Alpert has reported extensively about environmental problems, economic issues, cowboys, Indians, turkey callers, whistle blowers, boxers, and breakdancers. Alpert has worked with HBO to produce a series of investigative documentaries. On September 11, 2001, Alpert was one of the only reporters to film the first night of rescue efforts at ground zero. His footage appeared on CBS’s Early Show and in HBO’s documentary In Memoriam. He is the Co-Founder/Co-Executive Director of the Downtown Community Television Center, America’s largest and most honored non-profit community media center (New York). For over the past 40 years DCTV has taught over 50,000 students, most of them members of low-income and minority communities, the basics and finer points of television production.

ANNA TCHEREPNINE – is a filmmaker, film distributor, and an avid promoter of innovation in documentary film. At the RusDocFilmFest 2019, Anna was recognized for curating a Virtual Reality session showcasing VR  contemporary documentaries from 12 Eastern European countries spanning from cultural heritage and folk traditions to fantasy and animation. This year, Anna has taken over the creative direction of the RusDocFilmFest 2020 and has led the digital transformation of the Festival to enable online access to the films for viewers around the world. In addition, Anna has launched new partnerships with the audiences worldwide to give global exposure to the Festival and to promote cultural exchange through cinematography.

MARTICHKA BOZHILOVA is a Bulgarian producer, Agitprop company; jurist, theologian, art manager, curator. She is the producer of over 40 documentaries. Her films are mainly creative documentaries in Bulgaria with an international potential and a strong author’s style. She is a winner of the International Trailblazer Award at MIPDOC 2006, Cannes. Martichka is co-founder and director of the Balkan Documentary Center, an initiative of the team behind AGITPROP, with a focus on catalyzing the creation and distribution of critical minded documentaries and social campaigns in the Balkans. In 2012 Martichka was ranked in the prestigious selection “100 Most Influential Women in Bulgaria” and in top 7 of the most influential Bulgarian creative visionaries, according to “Forbes”. In 2013 she was nominated as “Woman of the Year”.

ITAMAR ROSE is a film director from Israel; also he is an actor, video creator and a social journalist. He makes short films & sketches on the topic of contemporary Israel. Participant of several film festivals including the XIII international independent documentary film festival in New York presenting “100 million views,” a satirical-documentary film.

MARINA ADAMOVITCH – culturologist, essayist; founder and curator of the RUSDOCFILMFEST-3W, member of the Board of Directors of the New Review Inc., Editor-in-chief of The New Review, the oldest Russian-language intellectual journal of the multi-ethnic Russian-speaking Diaspora.

A House Made of Splinters
2022  
•  Co-production: Denmark, Ukraine, Sweden, and Finland  
•  1:27h  
•  Ukrainian, Russian, with English subtitles
Author/Director(s): Simon Lereng Wilmont
Producer(s): Monica Hillström

This documentary had its world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and was the Academy Award nominee for Best documentary film in 2023. The film is about children from a special orphanage in Eastern Ukraine. A small group of social workers is taking care of children who lost their parents in the war. They are trying to create a safe space for children near the front line. The filming of the documentary lasted for more than two years in the Donbas region.

Simon Lereng Wilmont’s “Distance Barking of Docs” received the Grand Prix at the 12th RUSDOCFILMFEST in 2019.

Fri, March 24