The members of official jury of SEE a Paris 2017:
Patricia Corbett
Emmanuelle Galabru
Sacha Goldman
Hazis Vardar,
and Max Azoulay, president,
announced the winners of the film awards:

Best Actor: Yannis Stankoglu (Invisible) - Greece
Best Actress: Margita Gosheva (Glory) - Bulgaria
Best Director: Bojan Vuk Kosovcevic (Whirlpool) - Serbia
Best Screenplay: Zymber Kelmendi (Home Sweet Home) - Kosovo
Best Editing: Andrija Zafranovic and Aristid Filaktov  (Golden Five) - Macedonia
Best Directorial Debut: Pavle Simonovic (Lowdown) - Montenegro
Best Short Film: Aleksandat Vujovic (As Trains Go By) - Montenegro
Best Film: Golden Five by Goran Trenchovski - Macedonia


The students jury of SEE a Paris 2017 consisting of
Laura Perier, Christelle Cassan, Beanina Cardoso, Ulysse Heisert, Jelena Andrijevic and Estelle Delavennat,
announced their winners:

Best film: You carry me directed by Ivona Juka
Best cast: You carry me directed by Ivona Juka
Best performance: Helena Beljan (You carry me)
Best movie directors: Glory directed by Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov. 
Best photography: A comedy of tears directed by Marko Sošić. 

Congratulations!

Après des études de langues slaves (russe et serbo-croate) et d’Anthropologie des Balkans, émaillées de fréquents séjours  en ex Union soviétique dans les années 70, elle se consacre à la traduction d’auteurs de l’ex Yougoslavie, pays, auquel elle est très étroitement liée depuis 40 ans pour des raisons personnelles et professionnelles. Elle traduit en français l’œuvre de Danilo Kiš, plusieurs livres d’Ivo Andrić, de Mirko Kovač entre autres. Elle a travaillé aux missions de l’OSCE et de l’ONU au Kosovo, puis a été conseillère culturelle à l’ambassade de France à Pristina et à Belgrade. De 2013 à 2016, elle a dirigé l’Alliance française de Shanghai. Egalement interprète auprès du ministère des Affaires étrangères français, elle a aussi contribué à l’organisation de nombreux événements culturels liés à l’ex Yougoslavie. Elle a reçu le Prix Halpérine Kaminsky « Consécration » pour son travail de traduction. Elle est Chevalier des Arts et Lettres.

Dominique Dolmieu, né en 1966 en Occitanie, a suivi différentes formations, notamment à l’Institut d’Études Théâtrales, sous la direction de Georges Banu et Daniel Lemahieu, ainsi qu'à l’École supérieure d’art dramatique Pierre Debauche. D’abord musicien, il a travaillé à divers postes artistiques et techniques dans différentes structures de la culture et du spectacle, y compris dans le service public. C'est à Omër Kaleshi qu'il doit sa première rencontre véritable avec les cultures des Balkans.
Il a fondé la Maison d’Europe et d’Orient avec Céline Barcq et ils ont réalisé ensemble, avec également la collaboration d'Antony Smal, de nombreux projets collectifs et festivals internationaux tels que « Petits/Petits en Europe orientale », « Balkanisation générale », « Sud/Est », « Printemps de Paris », « l’Europe des Théâtres » et « Langues de cuisines ». Pendant plus d'une décennie ils ont accueilli et/ou collaboré avec un grand nombre d'artistes et de personnalités culturelles, de Jorge Semprun à Vaclav Havel, en passant par Irina Bokova, Danielle Mitterrand, Bernard Faivre d'Arcier ou les Pussy Riot. Il a ainsi présenté et/ou participé à diverses productions (rencontres, lectures, spectacles,..) aussi bien dans des lieux indépendants que des théâtres nationaux, dans l'espace francophone, de la Comédie-Française au festival d'Avignon, ainsi que dans une vingtaine de pays d’Europe, à Belgrade, Bucarest, Istanbul, Podgorica, Prishtina, Sarajevo, Skopje, Sofia, Tirana, Zagreb...
Metteur en scène, il a notamment signé avec le théâtre national de Syldavie différentes créations de textes d'Ilirjan Bezhani, Igor Bojovic, Hristo Boytchev, Dejan Dukovski, Minush Jero, Goran Stefanovski, Kasëm Trebeshina, Matéi Visniec, et prépare actuellement la création de Patriotic Hypermarket de Milena Bogavac et Jeton Neziraj. Editeur, il a publié avec l'Espace d'un instant plus de 300 textes de 200 auteurs européens, a été le premier éditeur français financé par l'Union européenne au titre de la traduction littéraire, et travaille actuellement à la publication de Kiril / Metodius de Jordan Plevnes. Producteur, il a été partenaire des institutions de 23 pays différents, du Canada à l'Ouzbékistan, ainsi que de l'UNESCO et des Nations-unies. Il a également fondé Eurodram, réseau européen de traduction théâtrale, qui fait circuler chaque plusieurs centaines de textes dans une trentaine de langues différentes auprès de ses 300 correspondants.
Il a participé à une conférence sur le droit coutumier albanais au Sénat français, collabore régulièrement avec le Centre d’études balkaniques de l’INALCO, et a largement participé au projet « Le Théâtre en Europe aujourd’hui » de la Convention théâtrale européenne ainsi qu'à l’Anthologie critique des auteurs dramatiques européens 1945-2000 de Michel Corvin (Théâtrales, 2007). Il a également réalisé avec Marianne Clévy le Cahier de la Maison Antoine-Vitez De l’Adriatique à la mer Noire, anthologie des écritures théâtrales des Balkans (Climats, 2001), avec Sedef Ecer et Zeynep Su Kasapoğlu Un oeil sur le bazar, anthologie des écritures théâtrales turques, et avec Nataša Govedić et Miloš Lazin Une parade de cirque, anthologie des écritures théâtrales contemporaines de Croatie (l'Espace d'un instant).
Il a été lauréat puis membre du jury de la Fondation de France, président du jury du Skupifest en Macédoine, et occupé diverses fonctions au sein d'organismes adhérents à l’UFISC - Union fédérale des structures d'intervention artistique.
 
 

Adelheid Feilcke (*1962) is Head of the Europe Department at Deutsche Welle since 2016 (Hauptabteilung Europa) and heads the Western Balkans Departement (Redaktion Westbalkan). She joined Deutsche Welle in 1992 and became the founding head of the Albanian Service. From 2005 to 2012 she was Head of the International Relation Department at DW, from 2012 to 2014 Head of Culture Department and from 2014 to 2016 she headed the department of Strategic Partnership at DW. She has worked as a trainer for DW Akademie since 1995.
She studied cultural anthropology and has been involved in media since 1981. After obtaining her high school diploma, she was an intern at the Schleswig-Holsteinischer Zeitungsverlag (Volontariat) and then worked until 1984 as an editor in Flensburg and on the island of Sylt. She subsequently studied musicology, science of theater, film and television as well as anthropology in Cologne and as a DAAD scholar in Tirana, Albania. She obtained her master's degree in ethnomusicology in 1990 (Topic: „Vocal polyphonic singing in Southern Albania“) and a second degree in cultural management at Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg in 1993 (Diplomarbeit: „Transformation of the media landscape in Albania“). During her time as a student, she worked as a freelance journalist and cultural manager for regional and national radio stations such as WDR and for the State Music Council of Schleswig-Holstein (Landesmusikrat).

Christian Voß is a Professor and Head of the Department for South Slavic Studies at Humboldt University in Berlin since 2006 . From 2008 until 2016 he was Vice Dean for Research at the Faculty of Philosophy II in Berlin.
His research addresses the interface of sociolinguistics, historiography and anthropology, and focuses on the South Slavic-Greek border region. His habilitation from 2004 „The Macedonian dialect/standard continuum“ was financed by the German Research Foundation (DFG). He is principal researcher in several projects, e.g. „Melting Borders“ on the small border traffic between the Republic of Macedonia and Greece, on identity issues among Balkan Muslims, on linguistic gender mainstreaming in Croatia, Serbia and Albania, and on the historical boundaries in the Albanian-Macedonian contact zone.
He has published extensively on issues of sociolinguistics  in the Balkans, especially on language decay and revitalization of Slavic varieties in Northern Greece. He edited several scientific volumes, among others „Minorities in Greece, Historical Issues and New Perspectives" (2003, with Sevasti Trubeta), „Marginal linguistic identities, Studies in Slavic contact and borderland varieties” (2006, with Dieter Stern), „Habsburg vs. Ottoman legacy in the Balkans: Language and religion to the north and to the south of the Danube” (2010), “Co-Ethnic Migrations Compared, Central and Eastern European Contexts“ (2010, with Jasna Čapo and Klaus Roth), and „Doing Gender – Doing the Balkans, Dynamics and Persistence of Gender Relationsin Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Successors or States“ (2012, with Simone Rajilić and Roswitha Kersten-Pejanić).
Since 2016, he is the director of the newly founded Interdisciplinary Center for transnational border research „Crossing Borders“ and supervisor of the emerging Competence Network „Liberal Arts in the Western Balkans“ (supported by ERASMUS+ and  DAAD).
He is the founder and editor of the book series „Studies on Language and Culture in Central and Eastern Europe“ and member of the editorial board of „Balkan Studies Library“, „Mediterranean Language Review“, „Südost-Forschungen“ and „Colloquia Humanistica“. Since 2012 he is member of the „Classe di Slavistica“ at „Academia Ambrosiana“ in Milan, and member of the scientific committee of „Centro Internazionale sul plurilinguismo“.

"Dear readers,
Let me express my gratitude for the great honor of having being selected as a winner of EUROPA PRIMA. Since the late 1980s I am traveling a lot throughout the Balkans, including a lot of field work among linguistic minorities in Northern Greece in the early 2000s. This Balkan experience was the best thing that happened in my life – and this is not meant in the sense it accelerated my academic career. Of course it is true that working with my informants – and many of them have become true friends – has given me the enthusiasm and strong motivation to continue my research, but more important here is the lesson Germans can learn in the Balkans: a more humorous and sophisticated attitude to life.
I am very lucky to work at Humboldt University – one of the best performing universities in Germany -, which is aware and even proud of its Eastern legacy and the intense contacts to the East and Southeast of Europe. My mission here is to contribute to the overcoming of the heterostereotypisation, alterization and even alienation of the Balkans in Western European and German public discourse.
It is our common task as scholars, artists and citizens to repeat again and again that there is no normative Europeanness separating populations into subjects and objects, but that Europe can be only perceived as an addition and in multiperspectivity. Our film festivals can contribute to introduce and integrate the Balkans in a cultural and emotional map of perceptual Europe, and I hope we can establish SEEFF in Berlin as a stable and highly visible label like is SEE à Paris.
So let me thank you once again!"

Christian Voß

The Artistic Council of SEE FF is pleased to announce that the winner of the SEE Film Legend award for 2017 is the distinguished Serbian director Dušan Makavejev.
Dusan Makavejev is the premier figure in Yugoslavian film history; his films are deeply rooted in his nation's painful postwar experiences and draw on important Yugoslavian cinematic and cultural models. Makavejev's work has violated many political and sexual taboos and invited censorship in dozens of nations. In the 1950s, after studying psychology at Belgrade University, Makavejev became involved in the activities of various film societies and festivals and studied direction at the Academy for Radio, Television and Film. As early as 1953, he began making short films and documentaries and would work in various capacities at both the Zagreb and Avala studios during the late 50s and early 60s. The documentary impulse remains powerful in Makavejev's work, as does the tendency to intercut undigested segments from other films into longer works.

Makavejev enjoyed great critical success with his first three features, Man Is Not a Bird (1965), "Love Affair" (1967) and Innocence Unprotected (1968). Highly allegorical and relying on techniques derived from Brecht and influenced by Godard, these films were sardonic and anarchistic views of Eastern European state socialist milieus.

Much of Makavejev's work has been uncompromisingly experimental as well as politically outrageous. WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) is the best example of this combination and is the director's most influential work to date. Much of the film is composed of a documentary Makavejev researched in the late 1960s while in the US on a Ford Foundation grant and which was eventually financed by German TV. A witty, passionate, and often rambling account of pioneering psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich and his American disciples, the material is intercut with a fictitious political-sexual allegory set in contemporary Belgrade. The film was instantly banned in Yugoslavia and made Makavejev persona non grata in his native country until the late 1980s.

Sweet Movie (1974) was made in Canadian exile, with some production resources furnished by the National Film Board of Canada. Also a disjointed, two-part narrative, it again focuses on radical techniques in sexual psychotherapy, here played out rather than verbalized. Intertwined is yet another acidic, allegorical fable of the decay of Yugoslavia's socialist legacy. Extremely violent and sexually explicit, "Sweet Movie" was dismissed (and censored) as pornography in many countries, and added to Makavejev's reputation as a "filmmaker maudit."

Montenegro (1981) has been Makavejev's greatest financial success to date. Political commentary and formal experimentation are subordinated to narrative drive in this story of a housewife (Susan Anspach) who grapples with sexual liberation and fails.

The Coca-Cola Kid (1985), Makavejev's second major international co-production, was marred by on-set squabbles between actors, and the rejection of Makavejev's intriguing plan to use a long reel of multilingual Coca-Cola commercials as a narrative structuring device. What emerged was a genuinely erotic film which takes a quirky, satiric view both of its Australian setting and the international business world.

Makavejev's long exile from his homeland ended in 1988 with the release of Manifesto (1988), a Ruritanian political farce mostly shot in Yugoslavia. Although the film marks the most disciplined, traditional storytelling of Makavejev's career, it has seen only limited bookings in the US. Also little seen was his follow-up Gorilla Bathes at Noon (1993), a political comedy based on the adventures of a Russian soldier as he wanders around Berlin. In 1994 he made Hole in the Soul, an autobiographical documentary about the changes of the society and his own life.

The Artistic Council of the SEE FF decided to give the prestigious award Grand Prix SEE ACTOR 2017 to the famous Romanian actor and detector Ion Caramirtu. 
Ion Horia Leonida Caramitru (born March 9, 1942) is a Romanian stage and film actor, stage director, as well as a political figure. He was Minister of Culture between 1996 and 2000.
Born to an Aromanian family in Bucharest, he graduated from the I. L. Caragiale Institute for Theater and Film Arts in 1964, having debuted on the stage a year earlier — with the title role in an acclaimed production of William Shakespeare's Hamlet for the Bulandra Theater. He continued his engagement for Bulandra while starring in plays at the National Theatre Bucharest and various other theaters.
Caramitru was a protagonist in a series of theatrical productions by directors such as Liviu Ciulei, Moni Ghelerter, Andrei Şerban, Liviu Purcărete, Sandra Manu, Cătălina Buzoianu, Alexandru Tocilescu, and Sică Alexandrescu (acting in plays such as Mihail Sebastian's Steaua fără nume, Georg Büchner's Danton's Death, Aeschylus' The Oresteia, Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, Carlo Goldoni's Il bugiardo, and in many of Shakespeare's works). As a director of theater, opera, and operetta productions, Caramitru notably staged works by Frederick Loewe (My Fair Lady), Marin Sorescu (The Third Stake), Benjamin Britten (The Little Sweep), Aleksei Nikolaevich Arbuzov (The Lie), and Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice); his adaptations of Peter Brook's La Tragédie de Carmen and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin were hosted by the Grand Opera House in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Caramitru starred in over 30 feature films, making his debut with a supporting role in Ciulei's Forest of the Hanged (1964). Among his best-known roles are Vive in Dimineţile unui băiat cuminte (1966), Gheorghidiu in Între oglinzi parallele (1978), Ştefan Luchian in Luchian (1981), and Socrate in the Liceenii series (1985–1987). Later in life, Caramitru has had minor roles in foreign films: he was an anarchist in the 1991 Kafka, Tatevsky in Citizen X (1995), Zozimov in Mission: Impossible (1996), Count Fontana in Amen. (2002), and a Bulgarian immigrant to Ireland in Adam & Paul (2004).
For his work in establishing British-Romanian cultural links, Caramitru was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. In 1997, the French Ministry of Culture awarded him the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.
In May 2005, he won the competition for the head office of the National Theatre Bucharest.  

 
Selection of the program for the South-East European Film Festival in Berlin, Paris and Ningbo is finished.
All details will be published on our web site next week.

Festival in Berlin (SEEFF à Berlin) will start on 26 May at Humboldt University. On the opening ceremony our exclusive guest as SEE Personality will be Mr. Siljan Micevski, CEO of "Pelister" Bitola and the prize "Europa Prima" will be awarded to Ms. Gudrun Steinacker, German Ambassador in Macedonia from 2011 and 2014 and current German Ambassador in Montenegro. On the opening we'll have honor to follow short performance of great pianist Pancho Vladigerov.

Festival in Paris (SEE a Paris) will start with Balkan Documentary Marathon on 31 May 2016 at INALCO, where our exclusive guest will be famous film director Zelimir Zilnik, who will also have workshops on 1 June 2016.
This year all official program of the SEE a Paris festival will take place in the prestigious Theatre Le Palace from 1 to 5 June 2016. The festival will start with the exhibition "Balkan Don Quixote in Europe", by famous painter Vladimir Gerogievski. The opening ceremony will include proclamation of honorary recognition:

• Mr. Veljko Bulaic - SEE Film Legend 2016
• Mr. Bane Popovic - SEE Actor 2016
• Mr. Trifun Kostovski - SEE Personality 2016
• Mr. Erhard Busek - Europa Prima Politics Award 2016
• Mr. Francis Combes - Europa Prima Literature Award 2016

After the screening of opening movie, audience will have chance to attend the concert of Alina Baba.
On the closing ceremony on 5 June 2016, we'll have one more honorary recognition

• Ms. Esma Redzepova  - SEE Music Legend 2016

Host of the opening and closing ceremony will be jazz singer Elina Duni.

Festival in Ningbo (CEE in Ningbo) will include 50 short films from 16 countries from Central and Eastern Europe and it will be organized in the same time with China-CEEC EXPO (China-Central and Eastern European Countries Investment and Trade EXPO 2016). Official guest of this presentation of the films from this region will be:
Mr. Jordan Plevnes, President of SEE Festival; Mr. Hazis Vardar, Director of Theatre Le Palace and SEE a Paris festival; Mr. Andro Martinovic, Film Director and General manager of Montenegrin Cinematheque; Ivona Juka, film director from Croatia and Marija Dzidzeva, film director from Macedonia.
In Ningbo we'll have symposium on the subject "From short film to film industry". Opening ceremony will be on 8 June 2016 in the Museum of City of Ningbo, during which will have proclamation for laureate:

• Mr. Pan Gongkai - Europa Prima Award 2016

International committee of South-East European Film Festival decided to award famous director Veljko Bulajic with prestigious recognition "SEE Film Legend 2016".
Veljko Bulajić has made motion pictures of exceptional value that have become integral components of the global cinematic heritage and testimony to the times in which they were made. The passage of time has shown that most of Bulajić’s films directly grappled with the most sensitive and turbulent social problems. Some of his individual films, besides depicting ground-breaking moments in European history with extraordinary artistic force, also have value as exceptional cinematic documents.
The best known personalities from the arts and culture have commented on the cinematic oeuvre of director Veljko Bulajić: writers, film historians, critics, other directors and journalists. Many of his films have won the highest awards and honours at both domestic and international venues. He is an original artist who has always been able to shoot epic scenes of the masses, while never losing sight of the individual and his or her fate under trying and pivotal historical circumstances. He incorporated emotion and a potent dramatic charge in all of these films, and he articulated female characters with particular sensitivity, which gives his films inescapable value and originality.
Bulajić’s films leave as strong an impression on viewers now as they did when they were first released. Stated succinctly, the line of films from Train Without a Timetable, which introduced the world to Croatian cinematography, to Libertas, round off a singular creative oeuvre, recognized not only locally but in the broader European and global contexts.
Just how long was the cinematic (but also human) journey of Veljko Bulajić from Train Without a Timetable to Libertas!? Ultimately, this was a journey in which every step was a move from one pertinent cinematic theme to another. The vestiges of Bulajić’s films run much deeper than his influence on Yugoslav motion picture trends.
His films will remain forever recorded in the cinematographic history of Yugoslavia. He loved his protagonists above all else and nurtured a gallant affinity for them. They were most often ordinary and simple people in search of their place under the sun.
Bulajić did not have any idols in Yugoslav cinematography, and there is some question as to whether others followed in his footsteps, either because they did not want to or simply could not. The latter instance is more likely, for they walked alongside one another and even occasionally came into conflict.