FIPRESCI Warsaw Critics Project

10th FIPRESCI Warsaw Critics Projects – a training programme for young critics and film journalists from Central and Eastern Europe coordinated by the Warsaw Film Foundation and FIPRESCI, the International Federation of Film Critics.

This year’s workshop will be held during the 31st Warsaw Film Festival, including the 11th CentEast Film Market, between 9 and 18 October 2015. A group of young critics will be invited to the festival and have a unique opportunity to take part in one of the most prestigious film events in the region, meeting high-profile film professionals and contributing to the deliberation meeting that decides which film is awarded by the festival’s FIPRESCI jury.

Participants

Name: Elena Rubashevska
Age: 23
Location: Donetsk, Ukraine
Best film from the last two years: Birdman
Favorite director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Film book or essay that’s influenced you the most: Third Wave (1980) by Alvin Toffler
Film you’re anticipating most in Warsaw: The Documentary Competition
Why you’re participating in the Warsaw Critics Project: I’d like to see what it’s like to be a film critic and not to be an enemy to the cinema world (because in my country film critics always are).

Name: Janka Pozsonyi
Age: 25
Location: Budapest, Hungary
Best film from the last two years: Force Majeure
Favourite director: That’s a tough one, but let’s just say Spike Jonze
Film book that or essay influenced you the most: An almost 60-year-old old Hungarian film journal called Filmvilág (‘World of Film’), which is still getting published.
Film you’re anticipating most in Warsaw: Room by Lenny Abrahamson
Why you’re participating in the Warsaw Critics Project: I want to spend an intense 10 days amongst great people, work hard on my social and writing skills in English, and watch films until I literally go insane.

Name: Emilia Sieczka
Age: 24
Location: Currently living in Paris, generally based in Warsaw
Best film from the last two years: Ida – I wouldn’t necessary label it as the best, though certainly the biggest challenge to a reviewer
Favourite director: As a role model, Pasolini. In appreciation of cinematic mastery, Polanski
Film book or that’s influenced you the most: ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ by Laura Mulvey, served as a useful introduction to psychoanalysis in film theory
Film you’re anticipating most in Warsaw: The Apostate by Federico Veiroj
Why you’re participating in the Warsaw Critics Project: Because it’s an opportunity to share experiences with colleagues from the part of Europe that is the subject of my interests as a researcher.

Name: Saulius Kovalskas
Age: 22
Location: Lithuania
Best film from the last two years: Nymphomaniac
Favourite director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Film book or essay that’s influenced you the most: What is Cinema? by Andre Bazin
Film you’re anticipating most in Warsaw: Winter Song by Otar Iosseliani
Why you’re participating in the Warsaw Critics Project: I do not know. I can only hope that my participation will become the answer to this question.

Name: Kate Didenko
Age: 22
Location: Moscow, Russia
Best film from the last two years: Adieu au Langage or CitizenFour
Favourite director: Andrei Tarkovsky or Alfred Hitchcock
Film book or essay that’s influenced you the most: Against Interpretation (1966) and other essays on cinema by Susan Sontag, or The Haunted Screen (1952) by Lotte Eisner
Film you’re most anticipating in Warsaw: Winter Song by Otar Iosseliani, and the short film programmes
Why you’re participating in the Warsaw Critics Project: I was in my last year of university studying as a film historian and critic. One of the main activities in professional life today is as a promoting agent role for mostly independent or beginning filmmakers. Also, I wrote my MA thesis about Wladyslaw Starewicz, the brilliant cinema pioneer (I started to learn Polish language last autumn to translate certain materials regarding him). I’m participating to improve relations inside the festival movement and critical community, find opportunities to continue my development on international territory, make contacts specifically on my thesis theme and work sphere, and hone my writing skills. On the whole, I see Poland as one of the most important East European cultural territories to keep up.

Name: Marcin Sarna
Age: 27
Location: Warsaw
Best film from the last two years: Stations of the Cross
Favourite director: Stanley Kubrick
Film book or essay that’s influenced you the most: L’analyse des films by Jacques Aumont and Michel Marie
Film you’re anticipating most in Warsaw: Ma by Celia Rowlson-Hall
Why you’re participating in the Warsaw Critics Project: I’m participating in the Warsaw Critics Project to turn myself from someone who writes about films only for fun into a serious journalist. I hope to take part in various activities that are parts of film critic’s everyday work, to improve my writing skills and to learn from people who have much more professional experience than I do.

Name: Yuliya Malikova
Age: 28
Location: Odessa, Ukraine
Best film from the last two years: The Lobster
Favourite director: Wes Anderson
Film book or essay that’s influenced you the most: The Wes Anderson Collection (2013) by Matt Zoller Seitz
Film you’re anticipating most in Warsaw: Salvation (Ivan Vyrypaev)
Why you’re participating in the Warsaw Critics Project: I’d like to learn to analyse films professionally and combine the new knowledge with my own manner of storytelling. I dream to start writing about Ukrainian films for foreign magazines and I hope the project will bring me closer to that. And of course I’m very excited about watching festival films and meeting new people who share my love for cinema.

Tutors

Michael Pattison (b. 1987) currently divides his time between Gateshead, London and film festivals—which he attends as a critic, programmer, Q&A moderator, teacher and jury member. Michael’s writing has been published by Sight & Sound, Fandor, Indiewire, Vice, Playboy, The Guardian, Film Comment, Cineaste and others, and he has also reviewed films for BBC Radio. As a programming consultant and/or Q&A moderator, Michael has worked for the Viennale, Crossing Europe Linz, Bradford International Film Festival, Kino Otok Isola Cinema, IndieLisboa, CurtoCircuíto and Seville European Film Festival. In addition, he has tutored workshops for aspiring critics at Dokufest (Prizen), ZubrOFFka Short Film Festival (Bialystok) and Black Nights Film Festival (Tallinn). Michael has also appeared on juries at festivals in Cartagena de Indias, Ljubljana, Warsaw, Thessaloniki, Lisbon, Santiago de Compostela, Lecce, Lima and Bradford.

Carmen Gray, Born in New Zealand and now living in Berlin, Carmen Gray is the former Film Editor of Dazed & Confused magazine and a freelance critic and journalist for London-based publications Sight & Sound, The Guardian, Screen International, The Calvert Journal, and Estonian culture weekly Sirp. She also works as a consultant for European production companies and is part of the team launching independent cinema Wolf in Berlin. A member of FIPRESCI the International Federation of Film Critics, she has served on a number of juries at major festivals including Berlin, Toronto, Rotterdam and Locarno. She has a special interest in the cinema of central and eastern Europe, and has previously taught critics’ workshops in Poland, Estonia and Serbia.