4 February 2020

14th Academy Discussion
What Are Film Festivals For?
Andreas Kilb in discussion with Carlo Chatrian, Karel Och, Eva Sangiorgi and Jeanine Meerapfel
Wednesday, 12 February, 8 pm
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin

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Too big, too small, too political, too superficial ... The opinions on current film festivals are manifold and controversial. On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Berlinale, Akademie president and filmmaker Jeanine Meerapfel discusses new ideas and future developments with the artistic directors of important international film festivals.

In discussion:
Carlo Chatrian, artistic director of the Berlinale – Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin
Jeanine Meerapfel, film director and president of the Akademie der Künste
Karel Och, artistic director of the Mezinárodní filmový festival Karlovy Vary
Eva Sangiorgi, artistic director of the Viennale – Vienna International Film Festival
Moderator: Andreas Kilb, film critic

Carlo Chatrian (born in Turin in 1971) studied literature and philosophy and completed his film studies with a thesis on the films of Jacques Rivette. His work in programming began at the Alba Film Festival and continued at the Festival dei Popoli and Visions du Réel. In the late 1990s he focused on the documentary as a genre. He organized workshops with filmmakers like Johan van der Keuken, Frederick Wiseman and Errol Morris. In 2003 he began working with the film festival in Locarno, where he curated retrospectives on Japanese animated film, Ernst Lubitsch, Vincente Minnelli and Otto Preminger. From 2013 until 2018 he was artistic director of the Locarno International Film Festival. He has been the artistic director of the Berlinale since June 2019.

Andreas Kilb (born in Frankfurt am Main in 1961) studied German, Romance philology, journalism and philosophy in Mainz and Frankfurt. Beginning in 1982 he wrote film and television reviews for the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In 1987 he left for Hamburg to be a film critic for the newspaper Zeit and reported for their culture section from Los Angeles for one year in 1998/99. He has been a culture correspondent in Berlin for the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung since April 2000. Selected film reviews and essays on cinema are published in the anthologies Was von den Bildern blieb (1997) and Kinoblicke (2008).

Jeanine Meerapfel (born in Buenos Aires in 1943) is a film director and has been president of the Akademie der Künste since 2015. Her first feature film, Malou (1981), was shown in the Berlinale's Retrospective section in 2019. Her numerous award-winning documentaries and feature films include In the Country of my Parents (1981) and The German Friend (2012). The audiovisual essays Confusion / Diffusion (2015) and Moving Sand / Topos (2019) were created in collaboration with Floros Floridis. She was a member of the Berlinale's international jury as early as 1984. In December 2019 she was the jury president of the Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana. Since 2018 Jeanine Meerapfel has hosted debates on film-related issues in her series of academy discussions in the run-up to the Berlinale.

Karel Och (born in the Czech Republic in 1974) studied law and completed his studies in the theory and history of film at the Univerzita Karlova in Prague. Since 2001 he has worked for the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) as a member of the selection committee. He has programmed KVIFF's documentary film competition and curated homages and retrospectives on the work of Sam Peckinpah, John Huston, Michael Powell and Emerich Pressburger, Jean-Pierre Melville, Sam Fuller, Elio Petri and Otto Preminger, among others. He was appointed artistic director of the KVIFF in 2010.

Eva Sangiorgi (born in Faenza, Italy, in 1978) studied communications theory at the Università di Bologna and art history at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She has worked as a curator and programmer at international festivals in Mexico and Europe since 2003. In April of 2010 she founded the international film festival FICUNAM in Mexico City, whose artistic and commercial direction she held until 2018. Since 2012 she has served on juries at international film festivals in Mexico, South America, Israel, Portugal, Italy, France, Spain and Germany, including FIDMarseille, Doclisboa and Mar del Plata. Appointed Viennale director in January 2018.

On the occasion of the Berlin International Film Festival's 70th anniversary.

Event dates
14th Academy Discussion
What Are Film Festivals For?
Wednesday, 12 February 2020, 8 pm
Talk in English with running translation in German and French
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin
Tickets € 6/4, free admission for under 19s
Ticket reservation: (030) 200 57-1000 or ticket@adk.de 
Tickets can be purchased in the webshop at www.adk.de/tickets