Lectures and Masterclasses

In this seminar, Dado Valentic will take the audience through Colour Managed Workflow that has become a standard for all major film productions, Netflix, Amazon and recently the biggest TV channels. As an introduction, Dado will cover fundamentals of digital cinematography and give inside knowledge that will help cinematographers improve their image quality. As a leading developer in the area of colour science for digital film cameras, Dado recently launched a unique software for Look Development and On-Set grading – Colourlab.

Dado Valentic is an award winning master colourist with over 17 years of industry experience. Working on some of the biggest feature films, TV series and commercials across the world, he is today one of the most sought after colourists. Dado Valentic’s approach to communicating colour science has won him a wide audience as a leading instructor for the ICA (International Colourist Academy), Reducation, International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam, National Broadcasting Convention in Las Vegas, British Society of Cinematographers Expo, BAFTA, Creative Week in London and ACES. He is commonly engaged as spokesperson for the leading software companies. He is a regular lecturer at the Dutch Film Academy, London International Film School, Moscow International Film School, SAE Oxford and Edinburgh University of Arts and Berlin Deutshe Film und Fernsehakademie -UP.GRADE. He has brought his method of teaching to TV GLOBO in Brazil and South Korean National Television Foundation.

A lecture by the Mediterranean Film Institute on the characters and the plot, the importance of observation and abstraction, the scriptwriting style and the film’s concept.

Born in Athens, in 1961, Demetrios Yatzouzakis moved to Venice in 1980 where he studied Sculpture and Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1983 he won a scholarship from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, where he studied film directing under Gianni Amelio and Marco Leto, and scriptwriting with Furio Scarpelli and Nicola Badalucco. He then worked as a documentary filmmaker until 1991, when he got local and international recognition with his film Saint Phanourios’ Pie, a feature about a little girl and a pie that ends up in the teeth of some mongrels. In 1996 he completed his second feature, titled Touch Me Not. These two films and some of his documentaries got prizes and distinctions in Greece and abroad like Bergamo, Brussels, Rotterdam, Thessaloniki and Toronto. He teaches film theory and practice in professional film schools in Athens and he is a script analyst at MICROFILM, the annual shorts workshop of the Greek public television since 1999. In 2001 he started working as an assistant trainer to Lewis Cole, Nick Proferis and Milena Jelinek in “MFI Script2Film Workshops”. During the past eight years, he has been working as a senior trainer at the same workshop under the umbrella of MEDIA-Creative Europe programme.

Critically acclaimed film director Abel Ferrara will discuss aspects of his creative process.

Born in the Bronx, in 1951 Abel Ferrara started making films on Super 8 in his teens, in upstate New York with Nicholas St. John – writer of Ms.45, King Of New York, The Addiction as well as The Funeral – and John Mcintyre – creative consultant and key crew member. His career moved to downtown New York City in the mid ‘70s with the movies Driller Killer and Ms. 45. When Ms.45 found distribution at Warner Bros., with the help of William Friedkin, the reviews and international circulation lead to a cult reputation, larger budgets, studio funding and ‘name’ actors – Christopher Walken, Harvey Keitel, Melanie Griffith and Juliette Binoche. King of New York in the beginning of the ‘90s followed by Bad Lieutenant, The Funeral, The Addiction and New Rose Hotel consolidated his position as a director of controversial cinema. His career combines larger budget with no budget features and documentaries, from New York City to Napoli, Alabama, Jerusalem, Los Angeles and back to Roma. The 21st century began with R’Xmas, Mary and his documentary on the Chelsea hotel, Chelsea On The Rocks, continuing into the present decade with 4:44 – Last Day On Earth, his third feature with Willem Dafoe, Welcome To New-York, starring Gérard Depardieu and Jacqueline Bisset and with Pasolini, again starring Willem Dafoe in 2014, about the last days of the Italian director. His new documentary work includes Padre Pio and Piazza Vittorio. Abel Ferrara directs Alive in France, a documentary, also a self-portrait, that follows him and his family actress Cristina Chiriac, daughter Anna and friends and long-time collaborators composer Joe Delia and actor/composer Paul Hipp during a film Retrospective/music tour in France.

Renowned film director, writer and cinematographer Steven Bernstein will discuss creative aspects of his work followed by a screening of Dominion (2016), Bernstein’s second feature film as a director starring John Malkovich and Rhys Ifans.

Steven Bernstein was born in Buffalo, New York, but grew up in the UK. Although first trained as a writer and director, he became known as a cinematographer in the early 1980s. After winning several awards for his work in commercials, including the prestigious Cannes Golden Lion and the DA&D award, he began shooting independent films as a cinematographer. He was commissioned in 1988 to write a book about film production methods, which became the best seller on the subject for ten years and was translated into many languages. Bernstein’s success naturally meant that Hollywood became interested and after he shot the beautiful landmark film Like Water for Chocolate Bernstein moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1990s. His subsequent body of work includes an extraordinarily eclectic range of narrative film credits, including Monster (which won an Oscar for Charlize Theron), huge action films like Swat and Murder at 1600, important studio films like Dolores Claiborne, independent art films like future Oscar nominee’s Noah Baumbach’s first three films and comedies. He also lectured widely giving talks at Cambridge University, Columbia University, The University of Southern California and many more. He also designed entire training programmes, including the famous Crosswind School in London. In 2016, Bernstein directed the script of Dominion, which received critical acclaim. Today, he lives and works in London and Los Angeles.