Berlin. Five Filipino filmmakers participated in this year’s Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) Talent Campus. Three-hundred (300) young and upcoming international filmmakers were selected from 4,443 applicants from 137 countries to join the 11th edition of the Berlinale Talent Campus on the theme “Some Like It Hot – Filmmakers as Entertainer.”
The Filipino filmmakers who made it to the Talent Campus this year are Joenathann Alandy, producer; Paul Sta. Ana, director; Alemberg Ang, producer; Hannah Tabitha Espia, director; and Ian Dean Loreños, screenwriter.
The officers and staff of the Philippine Embassy welcomed the Philippine talents at a dinner hosted by the Embassy.
This year, a new initiative was included in the Berlinale Talent Campus program. Selected participants had the opportunity to present their ideas, screenplays, films, and projects in the Berlin House of Representatives and find partners and industry representatives from festival visitors. Filipino talent, Ian Loreños, was chosen to present his project at the Berlin House of Representatives which is the venue for the Berlinale co-production market located across the European Film Market.
Sound design is also highlighted at this year’s Campus through the new Sound Studio hands-on training program. Acclaimed and multiple Oscar-winning editor and sound designer Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The English Patient) joined the Campus for a master class on his groundbreaking work in connecting sound and narrative in film. The Sound Studio is a collaboration with Dolby Labs, the University of Film and Television “Konrad Wolf” in Potsdam-Babelsberg, the Fraunhofer/Heinrich-Hertz Institute in Berlin, and the Berlin-based post-production company “The Post Republic.”
The participants attended the lectures and filmmaking experiences of Dutch-American filmmaker Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct, Black Book), New Zealand’s Jane Campion (Top of the Lake), Britain’s Ken Loach (Spirit of ’45), Austrian Director Ulrich Seidl (Paradise: Hope), leading German actress Nina Hoss (Gold), and French distributor and producer Hengameh Panahi (Celluloid Dream).
The Berlinale Talent Campus is an initiative of the Berlin International Film Festival, a business division of the Cultural Events of the Federal Government funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, in cooperation with MEDIA – training programme of the European Union, Robert Bosch Foundation, Media Board Berlin-Brandenburg and Canon. END