FILMMAKER OF THE MONTH OCTOBER - NILS LANE
Additional Information
Short bio:
After making his first short-film out of passion in 2005 at the age of 19, Nils Lane then devoted himself to his engineering studies and his professional career.
Fifteen years later, he decides to immerse himself entirely in the cinematographic universe he has liked so much since his earliest childhood. A multitasking man, he takes care of the screenwriting, the directing and all the other stages of his self-financed productions.
He likes to write and direct his films with one thing in mind "Nothing is what it seems". Indeed, there is one point where he makes no concessions : the story. This is the foundation for any movie and for him, if it is badly prepared, it will be felt throughout the rest of the film. This is why he spends a lot of time on the writing and especially on the part where he will surprise the viewers. This leads him to enjoy the science fiction and fantasy genres but he enjoys amazing the audience in drama or thriller as well.
Living in one of the most beautiful cities of the world, Paris, he thrives on its film sets to beautify his fictions. Yet, a good story and beautiful decors are not enough for Nils Lane. The acting is the part that gives life to his stories and he can be demanding with his cast. But one of the parts where he is the most uncompromising is without contest the post-production. Even if he is still a beginner at it, editing, sound mixing, color grading and all the other post-production parts are completely and strictly managed end to end by him.
His goal is to one day be the screenwriter and director of a produced feature-length motion picture. In the meantime, he is preparing many short films projects (drama, thriller and sci-fi) but also a web series about social and emotional relationships in our generation.
Filmography :
8 Loops (2020) - Writer, director, editor, cinematographer, producer
Sappho (2020) - Writer, director, editor, cinematographer, producer
Filmmaker of the month November - Nikola Bozadzhiev
Short Bio
Nikola Bozadzhiev is a young filmmaker in the beginning of his 20s known for his first career success in the field of cinema by his broadly awarded feature movie - Shibil to which he served as director and screenwriter.
He began as a juggler and spent a viable part of his life with this dream deep in his heart, headed to become the best in the genre with ambition to visit and participate in the Monte Caro circus festival. Eventually, as inciting as it could be in a movie, his life has been changed forever by entering the theatre and testing the boardelines of the visionary work.
Nikola made his first steps as a stenography student, then assistant scenographer and finally independent artist on his own, evidenced by his first short films – “The Muse” and “ When the rain stopped falling” . Those films marked his experimental period for less than two years before he undertook his next big jump in the deep waters of making a feature film.
Nikolas’ life was challenged again and his world shaped by his own movie Shibil.
Filmmaker of the month December - Albulena Shabani
Short Bio
Shabani is an Albanian from Macedonia that has been creating short films themed around the notion of women and voice. She often focuses work around marriage as a central anchoring point. She is motivated to tell stories from a different lens by asking “what if”, and inverting tradition. Her visual aesthetic is inspired by filmmakers such as David Lynch, Quintin Tarantino, Nuri Ceylan, and Nadine Labaki. Furthermore, she has experience working with female musicians in various capacities both in the US and in the Balkans, adding to the notion of women and voice. She holds a Masters in Cinema Art and Science from Columbia College Chicago and was a Fulbright Fellow in the arts. She is currently pitching her first feature film project titled “United” and has written a science fiction pilot.
FILMOGRAPHY
Short films
Knight in Passing (2011)
Salt (2012)
The Dowry (2020)
Arranged (2021)
Documentaries
Trebled Times (2014)
Music Videos
A River Doesn’t Struggle (2018)
Filmmaker of the month January- Lauren Z. Ray
Biography and Filmography
Director Lauren Z. Ray grew up in a small town called Logansport, Indiana.
She enjoyed making videos as a kid with their family videocamera and roping all her friends to be in them. After graduating High School, she moved to New York City to attend acting school at the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts.
After completing the program, she then moved to Los Angeles where she was an actress in several t.v. shows and commercials. Stepping behind the camera for the first time in her documentary film ‘Welcome to Monterey’, she returned to her home state of Indiana to follow her passion to document her family and the small town they are from.
She now travels the world full-time working as the director for a hit YouTube channel.
Filmography
This is her debut as a director in 'Welcome to Monterey'.
Links
INSTAGRAM @laurenzray
Filmmaker of the month February - Todor Tragmar
Biography
Todor Tragmar is a British Multi -Award Winner film director, based in London. His short criminal drama “The Prince of North West” has been in the official selection of 27 international film festivals and has won 11 awards from 10 different film festivals. "
He is graduated in Literature and Linguistics from the Plovdiv University and the Theatre directing from the City Lit College in London.
He started his career as a theatre director at the stages of Off-West End in London, directing the play “Enemies” by Floyd Dell, where he was also a producer. After that he directed the play, “Paper Flowers” by Egon Wolf.
As a film director he directed number of short films, documentaries, music videos and commercials. He also worked as a producer, line- producer, executive producer, associate producer, cinematographer, editor, camera operator and sound mixer in various projects. When Todor is not filming, he is busy doing workshops about film producing and screenwriting.
His visual aesthetic is inspired by Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, David Fincher, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger and Francois Truffaut
Currently he is working on his feature film project, the criminal drama - “The Last Summer Party”.
FILMOGRAPHY
- Instead of Silence (short) - director, screenwriter and producer
- Lily knows she’s not ill (short) - director, screenwriter and producer
- We can’t watch films together (short)- director, screenwriter and producer
- The only Wednesday (short) - director, screenwriter and producer
- I know you are here (short) - director, screenwriter and producer
- Love interest (short) - associate producer
- The Prince of North West (short) - director, producer, cinematographer, screenwriter and editor
- Artist: Crystal Fischetti (short documentary) - director, producer, cinematographer sound mixer and editor
- Artist: Anne McKenzie (short documentary) - director, producer, cinematographer, sound mixer and editor
Filmmaker of the month March -Gabriel Da Silva
Biography and Filmography
Gabriel Da Silva was born on November 17, 1988 in Zurich. Since his father is Brazilian and his mother is Swiss, he grew up bilingual with Swiss German and Portuguese. He lived in Zurich until he was 9 years old, after which his parents moved 1997 to Curitiba in Brazil, where he attended the International Swiss school in Curitiba for 4 years. In 2001 he returned to Switzerland.
From 2009 to 2012 he attended the Acting drama school in Zurich and then the Center for Development in Acting (ZES). In the meantime, he took several courses in "Method Acting" and "Camera Acting" between 2009 and 2013.
In 2013, da Silva played the young Paul Odermatt in the SRF crime series The Undertaker with Mike Müller in the flashback scene.
The actor had leading and supporting roles in various short films and was seen in movies and TV commercials.
In August 2013, on the occasion of the “One Hollywood Classic” competition within the “One Minute Film Festival” in Aarau, da Silva played the role of Don Vito Corleone from the literary film adaptation of The Godfather. He took second place out of eight applicants. [2] In 2015 he took part again and this time won the audience award.
In 2016, da Silva's first feature film script, The Silent Scream, was filmed. He played the main role and directed it. It deals about the subject of bullying in schools, as well as the possibility of a school rampage, as of result from the bullying.
Also he played a role in a Swiss-American cinema production called
“Transcending – The beginning of Josephine”. 2017 he played a Pimp in the swiss Drama Film “Through the night”.
2020 he finished his Diploma in Storytelling/Screenwriting for Film and TV in Germany.
Until today (2021) he made six short films and one feature film.
Da Silva has both Swiss and Brazilian citizenship. He lives today in Zurich.
FILMOGRAPHY
(Director & Writer)
2022 The silent scream
(Der lautlose Schrei) – Drama / Suspense (feature)
2021 Fake World – Drama (short)
2020 Milas Diary (Milas Tagebuch) – Drama (short)
2020 VIRUS – Drama (short)
2019 I hate Castings (Ich hasse Castings) - Comedy (short)
2018 – Lovely Money (Das liebe, böse Geld) – Comedy (short)
2016 – New Love (Neue Liebe) – Comedy (micro-short)
Filmmaker of the month April - Caroline Wloka
Biography
Caroline Wloka was born on 05th of July 1982 in Stadthagen/Schaumburg. 1996 she moved together with her parents to Egypt / Cairo and visited there the
"Deutsche Evangelische Oberschule".
Caroline Wloka graduated from high school in 2003 and studied theatre, film and media studies at the University of Vienna in 2004, majoring in directing. In 2008 Caroline Wloka completed her studies with distinction and worked from then on as a director, producer, author and editor for the UFA in Babelsberg. In 2009 Caroline Wloka obtained her doctorate in directing and media studies at the Film University of Babelsberg. Her research in the field of acting has not yet been completed.
In 2011 Caroline Wloka moved to Switzerland where she worked as a director and producer for Swiss Television, helping to create the largest entertainment show in Switzerland. Caroline Wloka worked there for a total of 4 years as editorial director. In 2014 Caroline Wloka published the book "Spielende Seelen" Untersuchungen zur Schauspielkunst in Theater und Film.
https://www.weltbild.ch/artikel/buch/spielende-seelen-untersuchungen-zur-schauspielkunst-in_19791094-1?ln=U3VjaGU6IFN1Y2hlcmdlYm5pcw===
In 2016 Caroline Wloka founded her own production company in Zurich, CINE ROYAL PRODUCTIONS GmbH. The production company produces feature films, documentaries, short films, image films, commercials and TV. In 2020/21 Caroline Wloka produced as producer and director the documentary "Hanging by a Thread" and produced and directed the feature film iCARUS in Switzerland in the Appenzell region.
FILMMAKER OF THE MONTH MAY - JUAN LUMÉ POBLETE
Biography
When I was a kid I used to play home movie making, I have always been a huge fan of cinema, photography and reading. Through reading I was able to develop a great imagination, in addition to having many references. In my teens, I often skipped class to go to the movies (I keep smiling when I remember those days). My first real approach to cinema as a director was in a fiction workshop organized in Balmaceda 1215 in Santiago de Chile. Later I took different acting and film courses, which led me to work for many years as a producer, consequently, directing films was a dream that I had to postpone for a few years.
Until, in collaboration with Ignacio Verdugo, we founded the production company Go.Films, where my first short film was "Free Fall." This short film starred Italo Spotorno, a very important actor in my works. «Free Fall» It was a great experience that allowed me to quickly approach the world of cinema to want to continue investigating this language with the short films Submerged, Invisible, and currently working on the pre-production of my first feature film ASEDIO, where he works as a producer and director of the project with Italo Spotorno as Actor and Ignacio Verdugo in the production. n.
FILMMAKER OF THE MONTH JUNE- ERIK BERGAMINI
Biography
Erik is a Norwegian-American director based in Los Angeles. With more than a decade of experience in the commercial world he is fully embracing the journey to the world of scripted content. He is a director who is often drawn to dark and grungy visuals, floating camera movements and raw emotional portrayals. As a person he is above averagely kind with a decent sense of humor. He likes coffee. A lot.
www.erikbergamini.com
FILMMAKER OF THE MONTH JULY- ANDREY LISYANSKIY
Biography
Born in 1972 in Moscow. He graduated from MTUCI (Radio engineering), AUBA (Marketing), IATRS (Film and television Director), Mitta film School (Film and television operator). Since 1990 in business. Since 1995, he has been shooting private, corporate and commercial videos. Including for: “ROSNO”, “NITEK” Corporation, JH “Samson”, “Akku-fertrib”, etc. Participated in the preparation of the opening of the "YEAR of CULTURE in Russia 2014" and other significant events.