workshop

The workshop will take place in CEU Auditorium, Nádor utca 9.

VISIONS MATTER:
HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES IN DOCUMENTARY CINEMA

The workshop includes presentations of filmmakers, sociologists, film historians, and media scholars on the issues of human rights in documentary cinema.

Panel 1
Friday, December 3, 9.30-13.30
VERSIONS AND IMAGES
Workshop on the representation of Roma culture and identity in documentary cinema

The presentations will address a wide range of issues related to the representation of minorities in documentary cinema. The issues at the core of the debate are: disadvantaged and marginalized sectors of society, multicultural acceptance, and the cultural impact of economic and political change. Speakers will discuss the correlation of Roma situations in Eastern Europe as well as their representation in documentaries.

9.30-10.00: Andrea Pócsik (film critic, VERSION Filmfestival) Roma Culture in Documentary Film: Organising Roma Film Program
10.15- 10.45: Elisabetta Amalfitano (lecturer, producer, IlGigante Cooperativa, Florence) Without Judgement:Adisa or a Thousand Years Old Story
11.00-11.30 Coffee Break
11.30 - 12.00 Márta Elbert (film director, lecturer,Black Box Foundation, Roma Media School) Roma Media School: Teaching Experiences and the Students' Roma Image
12.15 - 12.45 Péter Szuhay (ethnographer, Ethnographic Museum of Hungary): The Influence of Films about Romas on Society and the Construction of Roma National Culture
13.00 - 13.30 Lajos Puporka (journalist, editor) Roma representation in Hungarian Electronic Media
14.30 Screening of the documentary Adisa or a Thousand Years Old Story by Massimo D. D'orzi in Pooper Room

Workshop of Péter Forgács:

Everything we see could also be otherwise.
Everything we can describe at all could also be otherwise.

December 3, Friday at 4 pm. Central European University, Popper Room

Péter Forgács is a media artist and independent filmmaker based in Budapest. Since 1978 he has made more than thirty films. In 1983, Forgács established the Private Photo & Film Archives Foundation (PPFA) in Budapest, a unique collection of amateur film footage and has made this material the raw data for his unique re-orchestrations of history. His international debut came with the Bartos Family (1988), which was awarded the Grand Prix at the World Wide Video Festival in The Hague. Since then he has received several international festival awards--in Budapest, Lisbon, Marseilles, San Francisco and Berlin, where he won the Prix Europe for Free Fall. In 2002 the Getty Research Institute held an exhibit of his installation The Danube Exodus: Rippling Currents of the River. In the last decade, Forgács exhibited in Antwerp, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Prague, Bochum, Sao Paolo, New York, Rome, Graz, Fellbach, Warsaw, Krakow, Amsterdam, Newcastle, Ostrava, Madrid, Barcelona, Karlsruhe, Brugge, Los Angeles, Den Hague and Vienna.

Panel 2
December 4, Saturday at 9.30 am. Central European University, Auditorium
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS:
USES AND ABUSES OF THE PAST IN DOCUMENTARY CINEMA

9.30-10.00 Péter Bokor “Interview in Documentary Film”. Péter Bokor works in film industry since 1947. He authored over 100 documentaries and is interested mainly in the history of 20th century. He is currently a researcher in the Collection of Historical Interviews of Széchényi National Library. His presentation focuses on documentary film in historical research and will draw on the exampls of the interview with one of the generals of Szalasi, recorded in 1976 in Munich, about Horthy’s attempt to break-up with the Nazis in 1944.
10.00-10.30 Gábor Zsigmond Papp, The life of an Agent in the making: public and private history on the cutting table. Gábor Zsigmond Papp is a documentary filmmaker with degree in history, literature and filmmaking. Among his films are The Legend (1994); Tandori (1996); The Last Days of the College - History of the Eötvös College - (1996); Kazo (1997), Budapest Retro (1998); Supper with Péter Esterházy (2000); In My Adolescence - The History of the Gorkij High School (2000); Göncz I-II - Portrait of the ex-president (2001-2002); Budapest retro 2 (2003); The School of the Empire - The History of the German Empire School (2003); The Life of the Agent - from the Archives of the Communist Secret Police (2004). Gábor Zsigmond Papp will speak on the use of archival footage previously classified as ‘state secret’ in contemporary documentary using his latest film The Life of the Agent made on the basis of archival footage from the Hungarian Secret Police, 1958-1988.
10.30-11.00 Discussion
11.00-11.30 Break
11.30-12.00 Pavol Korec, This is the track: research behind his documentary film This is the Track on Roma forced labor camps in Slovakia during the WWII. Pavil Korec filmmaker, graduated from the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University and from the Film School of the Academy of Arts (VŠMU) in Bratislava. Among his films are False hitchhiking (1992), A trip to Eden (1994), Insolation (1995), Seconds of happiness (2000), Under the surface (2001), Propeller (2003).
12.20-13.00 Oksana Sarkisova, „As it really happened…”. Archival footage in the service of fiction and non-fiction cinema Oksana Sarkisova received her doctoral degree in history at Central European University and currently works as an audio-visual archivist at the Open Society Archives at CEU. The presentation draws attention to a variety of visual strategies used for conferring historical ‘credibility’ in cinema, particularly emphasizing the appropriation of archival footage. The selected film fragments exemplify the blurred borderline between fiction and non-fiction, questioning their sharp conceptual division. Providing an overview ranging from early silent cinema including the Soviet classics to contemporary ‘docu-fictions,’ the presentation addresses the limits of cinematographic representation and the morphology of ‘invented traditions’ in our region.
13.00-13.30 Discussion

Panel 3
December 5, Sunday, 9.30-13.30
MEDIA AS OPINION-FORMING TOOL:
PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF DOCUMENTARY FILMS

9.30-10.00 Igor Blaževic, Festival director of One World Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, Prague, Czech Republic, Founder of People in Need Foundation. Igor Blaževic will speak about the promotion of human rights issues through documentary festivals as well as about his experience of building a regional festival network.
10.00-10.30 Jeno Hartyándi, Director of International Festival for Visual Arts MEDIAWAVE-Gyor, Hungary. Mr. Hartyandi will speak on the production and distribution of documentary films from a perspective of a festival organizer with special attention to the category of ‘minority films’, and the efforts to build cultural bridges between ethnic groups of the East-Central Europe.
10.30-11.00 Discussion
11.00-11.30 Break
11.30-12.00 Harry Wu, the foremost US campaigner against the human rights violations committed by the Chinese forced labor camps, the Laogai. Harry Wu personally experienced the horrors of the Laogai system, having served 19 years in the Laogai for criticizing the policies of the Communist Party. Since his release he has taken it upon himself to expose human rights abuses. He has authored three books on the Laogai, including: The Chinese Gulag (1992), Bitter Winds - A Memoir of my years in China's Gulag (1994), and Troublemaker - one Man's Crusade against China's Cruelty (1996).
12.00-12.30 László Hartai, ELTE Film Theory and History, University Professor. László Hartai will compare television journalism to documentary films as ‘opinion-making’ tools, pointing out that the television programming rarely includes ‘traditional’ documentary films due to its different “uses and gratification” functions.
12.30-13.00 Discussion

The workshop will take place in CEU Auditorium, Nádor utca 9.