One World Romania

CIVIL SOCIETY PITCH 2018 means 3 revolutionary days alloted exclusively to professionals at One World Romania 11, 6 months of development, mentoring & collaboration on a documentary project and a 4 000 EUR award offered to the best team with the most convincing project!

Civil Society Pitch is a unique development workshop dedicated to the documentary filmmaking industry in Romania and neighboring countries: Hungary, Bulgaria and Republic of Moldova. We live in the same region, we face the same dilemmas, we write and talk about the same challenges, but sometimes we simply forget to communicate directly. Civil Society Pitch is all about bringing at the same table filmmakers (documentary directors or producers) and human rights activists/organizations. Some call all this process facilitation, others matchmaking. Regardless of how we choose to call it, we’re preoccupied by one and only thing: we encourage the production of high quality documentaries in the region. Civil Society Pitch offers the perfect environment: foreign tutors with a vast experience in the field, a compact three days’ workshop, 6 months mentoring sessions for developing film ideas and a 4000 EUR award for the best documentary project.

Civil Society Pitch 3 will take place from March 16 to March 18, 2018 at ARCUB. The invited tutors of this year edition are Rada Šešic (documentary film director, programmer for the most important Dutch documentary film festivals – IDFA Amsterdam and IFFR Rotterdam, main programmer of Sarajevo Film Festival Documentary

CIVIL SOCIETY PITCH powered by ONE WORLD ROMANIA 3rd edition (started in March 2018) will end with a pitch session open to the teams who have completed all the stages of the project they began last year, have researched a topic related to human rights and have made a trailer to represent their work-in-progress documentary.

The 5 participating teams are made up of directors and NGOs who will be presenting their documentary projects to a jury composed of filmmakers Mona Nicoară and Alexandru Solomon. They will choose the winning project and One World Romania will be awarding the team with €4000 to help them develop their idea. The event will take place at 14:30 on Tuesday, the 19th of March, at POINT and is open both to Romanian and international filmmakers who are attending our festival, and to the general public.

Activists and NGOs are always searching for new and creative methods to raise the level of awareness of social issues among the general population and our public administration, while filmmakers find it difficult to approach socially relevant stories. One World Romania has tried to fill these needs and, for the first time in Romania, has brought together professionals from both fields with the intention to facilitate the development of creative documentary projects focused on local realities.

In the first stage from March 2018 we welcomed the participation of representatives from 13 NGOs and of 19 directors and visual artists from four partner countries: Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and the Republic of Moldova.

We live in the same part of the world, we face the same dilemmas, we write and speak of the same challenges but we forget to communicate directly with each other. Civil Society Pitch connects filmmakers (directors or producers of documentary films) with activists / organisations who fight to protect human rights. Some call it facilitating, others call it wooing. Regardless of its name, though, we are only interested in one thing: we encourage the emergence of new documentary films across our shared region. Civil Society Pitch is the ideal environment to get the ball rolling: international tutors with a high level of knowledge and experience in the field, mentorship and guidance towards the development of projects and a substantial prize to the winning team.

Dragoș Lumpan

Cineast

Ioana Trifu

Cineast

Ioana Țurcan

Cineast

Ion Gnatiuc

Cineast

Laurențiu Garofeanu

Cineast

Mirona Radu

Cineast

Ruxandra Gubernat

Cineast

Dragoș Lumpan

Ioana Trifu

Born and raised in Cluj Napoca, Romania, Ioana Trifu first became interested in visual arts in her early teens. Over the years, photography and filming turned from hobbies to passion, and later to academic pursuits. She holds a BA degree in Photography and Cinematography and a MA degree in documentary filmmaking from BabeȘ-Bolyai University. Her interest is both in traditional linear structures and the newer interactive and transmedia formats, with a strong belief in interdisciplinary collaboration. Refractara, her graduation short doc about a group of workers in a semi-abandoned brick factory was selected at DocuArt Film Festival 2017 and Cluj Shorts 2018. The short VR film she co-directed, A.I. Comrade was part of the official selection in the VR program at Astra Film Festival 2017. She is currently working as a photographer and video editor, and is in the research stage of her next documentary.

Ioana Țurcan

Ioana Turcan is a cinematic storyteller that currently lives and works in Bucharest, Romania; she has a background in choreography and contact sports and her portfolio it's built on interdisciplinary works. Koraci (director of photography) 2017; States Uprooted (15’ experimental documentary RO/USA – director, author); All You Lonely People, All You Lovely Beings (director of photography); WHEN THE GAME GOES TO HEAVEN (10’ fiction/USA – director, writer); An American Family (producer); THE OTHER LIFE OF CHARON (40’ documentary RO/USA, director) etc.

Ion Gnatiuc

Născut în Republica Moldova, Ion Gnatiuc a locuit și studiat pentru aproape 9 în România, unde a urmat cursurile masteratului de film documentar „Documentary Filmmaking” în cadrul Universității Babeș-Bolyai. A lucrat în calitate de jurnalist freelancer și operator de imagine în diferite proiecte de film documentar, în paralele participând la mai multe workshopuri de profil. În 2017 a revenit în Moldova, unde a fondat Niște Filme, o casă de producție dedicată filmului documentar. A regizat și produs două scurtmetraje în 2018, unul dintre ele participând la 9 festivaluri importante de film.

Laurențiu Garofeanu

Laurențiu Garofeanu is a senior video producer, director and photographer. His expertise spans the entire production process and includes script writing, producing, directing, shooting and editing. Laurentiu currently leads photo and video production for Mekanism Media in Bucharest, Romania. Laurențiu has been commissioned to film and photograph news coverage and human-interest stories for international news corporations and documentaries for leading television networks. His work spans over 50 countries and includes collaborations with broadcasters such as TLC, Discovery, National Geographic and CBS in the US and ITV, CH 5 and RTL in Europe. He has worked with renowned press agencies and production houses, such as Barcroft Media, Zigzag and TwoFour. His photographs have been published in The Guardian, Huffington Post, Times Magazine and The Independent UK. Laurențiu’s latest commissions include the new Animal Planet series Preposterous Pets, which premiered in 2014 and the documentary series Body Bizarre series 1, 2 and 3 for Discovery International, which aired on all continents in 2014 and 2015.

Mirona Radu

Mirona Radu was born in Bucharest, in 1986. She has a Master Degree in Film Production (2014-2016), a Bachelor Degree in Film Directing (2005-2009) and an Associate Degree in Art of Photography (2008-2010). She participated in film programmes such as Go Short Campus Nijmegen 2017, CineImpact Documentary Campus 2016, Looking China 2015, IDFA Academy 2012, Maia Workshops 2012 and Aristoteles Workshop 2011, proving a great interest in self and professional development, in cultural knowledge and intercultural interaction, in art and cinema. Her personal photography exhibition ”24 years in 24 expressions of solitude” was exhibited in Odessa (Ukraine), Kishinev (Moldavia), Moscow and Kolomna (Russia), Torino (Italy), Istanbul (Turkey), Cluj and Bucharest (Romania) (2012-2014).

Ruxandra Gubernat

Bucharest-based journalist, researcher and independent documentary filmmaker, Ruxandra Gubernat was born in Romania, in 1982. After working for seven years as a journalist in Bucharest, Ruxandra moved to Lyon, where she did her M.A. in Media Sociology. At the same time, she studied sociology and philosophy of film, at the Institute for Political Studies in Lyon. Recently, she obtained her Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Paris Nanterre. After living in France for six years, she came back to Bucharest, where she’s now working on bringing research and cinema together, focusing on documentaries which examine Romanian social realities. Her first documentary – Portavoce – tells the story of the development of a cultural scene favorable to political involvement in Romania. Ruxandra’s second documentary, Tchorba Nation (Nația Ciorbei) – currently in the pre-production phase – witnesses of her clear anthropological approach to cinema.

ActiveWatch

ActiveWatch is a human rights organization that advocates for free communication serving the public interest. Over more than 24 years of existence, ActiveWatch has been one of the best known and most respected Romanian organizations fighting for freedom of expression. Over the years we have served as a debate platform on sensitive topics and we have documented abuses on human rights. The proposed topic is about how in 2004, the Romanian Parliament passed the “whistleblower” act (no. 571). The new law was designed to function as a protection shield for those citizens who dared to publicly disclose information concerning deeds they considered illegal and happened in their professional environment. It was disappointing to see that the new law had not inspired enough trust in its first ten years of existence, very few whistleblowers stepping forward and making use of it. However, the last few years saw a rising number of citizens who denounced what they suspected to be morally and legally unacceptable in the public institutions they were working in. These cases have been included in monitoring mechanisms regarding the state of freedom of expression in Romania, the best known and most comprehensive being the FreeEx Report, published annually by ActiveWatch.

THE CENTRE FOR LEGAL RESOURCES

The Centre for Legal Resources (CLR) is a “watch dog” organization. We have been active for 20 years and, for the last 15, we have been the NGO to operate an independent monitoring mechanism to prevent inhuman treatment applied to institutionalized persons. Our model is based on unannounced visits and on the independence of members. We believe that there are three essential elements in ensuring the full protection of institutionalized children and adults with mental disabilities: the legal capacity, a complaint mechanism and an effective preventive monitoring mechanism of inhuman treatment. There are almost 24.000 children and adults with intellectual disabilities and mental health problems still living locked inside orphanages, small family type homes, psychiatric hospitals or rehabilitation centers. At least 1.000 of them die every year. The main cause is never knows as the authorities are not transparent in this respect. We have collected data and organize an online “death map” and according to this “one of the cause is still pneumonia, both in young people and in the elderly”. Throughout our years of monitoring, we have come to the conclusion that, tragically, the main way through which a person with disabilities leaves the institution and therefore becomes free, is through death. There are scientific studies that shows that the lack of interaction and communication with the community and contribute to the death of a person especially when the person was living for the all life between four walls at the disposal of the state’s authority.

The Center for Independent Journalism

The Center for Independent Journalism (CIJ) works to safeguard the media standards and foster an honest and responsible media environment. We act to safeguard the freedom of speech as a fundamental human right and a pre-requisite of democracy. We contribute to an inclusive social dialogue by increasing the accountability of the decision makers and encouraging an active civic participation. Topic they bring to the table starts from: Soros’s minions? The Illiberal Society and its Enemies The European Union is under stress. From its core to its borders, European values and structure are more and more put under question during the past years, especially after the economic and the migrant crisis. On EU’s Eastern borders, we can further observe strong anti-EU policies and anti-EU campaigning by national governments, concomitant with tendencies of authoritarianism in some of those countries. During their countries’ transition away from European ideals of democracy, civil society becomes the target of sustainable attacks by national governments and authorities, as they seem to constitute one of the last barriers to the constitutional reforms in these countries. The project’s approach is to show the hardship of independent civil society in these countries, as well as try to identify avenues for coping with these tendencies. We will focus on the vulnerability of the independent civil society, and on the mechanisms hampering its watchdog role and its contribution to defending inclusive democratic principles, through the limitation of access to funding in Romania, we will show and put in perspective the impact of the modification of the Fiscal Code which limits NGOs capacity of getting funding, as well as PSD’s Resolution against the illegitimate and parallel state, occupying the public discourse through biased media outlets.

Women’s Club “Inspiration”

Women’s Club “Inspiration” is a non-profit organization from Republic of Moldova whose mission is to identify and help resolve the problems facing rural women. This is accomplished by working closely with the local government and by promoting the issues the women face. Through the work of AO Women’s Club “Inspiration” a Collaboration Agreement has been signed with local authorities that has assisted in promoting women’s issues on a broader scale and has fostered collaborative ideas with the government. We want to propose for a documentary film the issue of domestic violence and the phenomenon of moral degradation of women in society. Here we are talking about increasing alcohol consumption, drug use among women, their irresponsibility to educate children, increasing cases of deprivation of the right to be mothers and the drama of children suffering from such cases.

Keystone Moldova

Keystone Moldova aims for the social inclusion of individuals living in difficult social situations, including persons with disabilities. Keystone Moldova is working to achieve this goal by contributing to the improvement of the legal and regulatory framework of the social protection system for persons with disabilities. Keystone Moldova has been actively involved in drafting and promoting a series of legislative and normative acts. About a year ago, Keystone Moldova, in partnership with other organizations, developed a hotline service for people with disabilities through which people living in residential institutions or community services call and report violations of their rights. Also, Keystone Moldova team helped the persons with disabilities to advocate for their rights and even to win some cases at the Court. For its work, organization received a series of important awards. For a documentary, they would want to propose the topic of the right to live in the community. Through their story, we would like to advocate for the right of people with disabilities to live in the community. In Moldova there are still a lot of people who won’t accept a person with disabilities as their neighbor. So, this film would be a statement that all persons have the right to live in a community and to become valuable members of the community.

Rada Šešić

regizor și membru al comitetului de selecție al Fundației Olandeze de Film Jan Vrijman

Maciej Nowicki

directorul Festivalului WatchDocs, Polonia

Rada Šešić

Maciej Nowicki

LOST AND FOUND

Laurențiu Garofeanu + Centrul de Resurse Juridice

LOST AND FOUND

Laurențiu Garofeanu + Centrul de Resurse Juridice

Lost and Found spune povestea lui Jessi Froud - o poveste despre două spații antitetice pe care o tânără de origine română, adoptată și crescută în Canada, încearcă să le reconcilieze, pornind la vârsta de 27 de ani într-o călătorie pentru a-și descoperi rădăcinile. În 1991, în România, Afize Mustafa, o fată de numai 15 ani, a născut o fetiță. Săracă și căsătorită cu un bărbat bețiv și violent, din dorința de a oferi pruncului său o viață mai bună decât a ei, semnează actele pentru adopție. Documentarul prezintă urmele și apăsarea acestei despărțiri. Proiectul analizează problematica adopțiilor internaționale din mai multe puncte de vedere, arătând trăirile copiilor care au scăpat dintr-un sistem de protecție ce le-a cauzat traume imense și care acum încearcă să-și înțeleagă originea și identitatea.O altă latură abordată în documentar este cea a părințiilor români care erau obișnuiți cu asuprirea din timpul regimului comunist și nu au reacționat în fața sistemul corupt de la începutul aniilor 90 - sistem care a facilitat „vânzarea” copiilor orfelinatului cu prețul cel mai mare. Povestea reflectă și visul occidentalilor care au văzut în România o cale de a cuprinde acei copii în brațele lor drept părinți adoptivi.