Juries and Awards

Members of the juries of the competition sections of the 15th Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival will be introduced on October 1, 2011.

Jihlava IDFF presents the following awards:

• Best World Documentary - Opus Bonum
• Best Central and Eastern European Documentary Film - Between the Seas
• Best Czech Documentary Film - Czech Joy
• Best Experimental Documentary - Fascinations
• Doc Alliance Award
• Audience Award
• Contribution to World Cinema Award
• Respekt Award

OPUS BONUM section

selects an outstanding documentary film of the year from a diverse collection representing tendencies in world documentary; since all of the films are significant, the festival suggest the following game; a single juror picks a single film, a “brilliant” work.

BEST WORLD DOCUMENTARY 2011
Ztracená Lost Land / Territoire perdu, Belgium 2011 / Director Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd

BETWEEN THE SEAS section

is a competition section for the countries and nations of Central and Eastern Europe, including their historical, political, and cultural interrelationships.

BEST CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPEAN DOCUMENTARY FILM 2011
Bakhmaro / Bakhmaro, Georgia - Germany 2011 / Director Salome Jashi

CZECH JOY section

is a prestigious selection of Czech documentaries; rather than a mere competition for the best Czech documentary, it represents a celebration of the diverse range of new topics and the adventurous spirit of cinematic expression. The composition of the jury, too, is diverse; besides various personalities of Czech cultural and social life, it also includes the last year’s winner of the Czech Joy section as well as a citizen of Jihlava.

BEST CZECH DOCUMENTARY FILM 2011
Solar Eclipse / Pod sluncem tma, Czech Republic 2011 / Director Martin Mareček

SPECIAL MENTION
31 Endings/31 Beginnings / 31 konců/31 začátků, Czech Republic 2011 / Director Rafani

FASCINATIONS section

is a large factory for experimental filmmaking; stripping reality-based films of all that weighs them down, it significantly expands the possibilities of cinematic expression. The jury of the competition part of the Fascinations section is traditionally composed of members of a single film family.

BEST EXPERIMENTAL DOCUMENTARY FILM 2011
Endeavour / Endeavour, Austria 2010 / Director Johann Lurf

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DOC ALLIANCE AWARD 2011 (presented at CPH:DOX Copenhagen)
The Good Life / Det Gode Liv, Denmark 2010 / Director Eva Muvald

AUDIENCE AWARD 2011
Solar Eclipse / Pod sluncem tma, Czech Republic 2011 / Director Martin Mareček

CONTRIBUTION TO WORLD CINEMA AWARD 2011
Vittorio de Seta

RESPEKT AWARD 2011 for the best TV and video reportage
Reportage on the Prague road bypass tunnel / Czech Republic 2011 / Director Filip Černý

• Read more about another awards and juries verdicts at the Closing Ceremony of 15th Jihlava IDFF 2011.
• Learn more about their history through a database of juries and presented awards of the past years.

Juries of 15th Jihlava IDFF 2011

Opus bonum

James T. Hong (*1970)
This cosmopolitan Asian-American director originally studied philosophy before abandoning the field in 1997 and founding the Zukunftsmusik production company. His films look at philosophical and controversial subjects involving racial and social conflict in an attempt at tearing down the viewer’s pre-existing ideas and thus overcoming deeply rooted prejudices. Hong has explored the status of Asians within the pseudo-liberal United States (Behold the Asian: How One Becomes What One Is, 1999/2000), as well as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Iraq War. Last year, he completed his first feature-length documentary, Lessons of the Blood, which looks at Japan’s use of biological weapons during the Second World War. In 2007, Hong’s short film 731: Two Versions of Hell (2007) was awarded the main prize in the Opus Bonum section at the Ji.hlava IDFF.

Mezi moři

Paolo Benzi
Italian documentary producer Benzi (Guerra, dir. Pippo Delbono, 2003; Feltrinelli, dir. Alessandro Rossetto, 2006; I am not Me – Romeo, Juliet and the Others, dir. Paolo Santolini, 2011) is a leading figure at the independent production company Faber Film srl. In 2006, he participated in an Ateliers Varan documentary workshop in Paris, where he directed the short film Entre. Through his production company, he has helped produce Rumore Bianco (dir. Albert Fasulo, 2008) and Valentina Postika in attesa di partire (dir. Caterina Carone, 2009; prize for best Italian documentary at the Torino Film Festival). He also sat on this year’s “Cinema Suisse Jury” at the Vision du Réel festival in Nyon, Switzerland.

Pavel Jech (*1968)
Screenwriter and dramaturgist Pavel Jech was born in Prague, but at a young age emigrated with his parents to the United States, where he lived until 1990. While at New York’s Columbia University, he studied with Vojtěch Jasný. After returning to Czechoslovakia, he studied directing at FAMU, where he later taught as well. He wrote or co-wrote the screenplays to Act of War (dir. Robert Lee, 1997), Grandhotel (dir. David Ondříček, 2006) and The Muse is Terrible (2001), which he also directed. At FAMU International, he worked to increase foreign students’ interest in studying at the school. In 2008, he replaced Michal Bregant as the school’s dean.

Necati Sönmez
Sönmez is the director of a documentary film festival in Istanbul. After studying aeronautical engineering, he worked as a film critic, photographer, and journalist before starting to shoot and produce documentary films. His debut work, Theo’s Gaze (2003) looked at the work of Greek director Theo Angelopoulos. His award winning To Make an Example of (2007) explored the reasons behind the death of the hundreds of people executed since the founding of the Turkish republic. Sönmez is founder of DOCUMENTARIST – Istanbul Documentary Days, which presents films from the Arab world, ethnographic documentaries, and films exploring the post-communist era. The festival also raises the issue of human rights in Turkey.

Aida Vallejo
Film historian Aida Vallejo teaches at the Universidad del País Vasco’s Faculty of Fine Arts. Her specialization is on auteur documentaries, a field in which she has experience as a screenwriter, critic, researchers, and teacher. Vallejo graduated in Theory and Practice of Auteur Documentary Film from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, where she studied the narratology of contemporary documentary film and wrote her doctoral thesis in the Department of Film History. She spent seven years studying the aesthetics of contemporary documentary film and its distribution through the international film festival network, with a special emphasis on the eastern part of Europe. She publishes the blog researchondocumentaryfilm.blogspot.com.

Česká radost

Terezie Pokorná (*1965)
Graduated from theatre and film studies and participated in a whole range of independent cultural activities. In the early 1990s, she worked in the Independent Press Centre (Information Service, Respekt weekly), later in Revolver Revue, one of the leading magazines on the Czech cultural scene. From 1993, she has been chief editor of Revolver Revue and of the Revolver Revue book edition. In 1995, she co-founded the Revolver Revue Critical Supplement and became its chief editor. In the 1990s, she also worked in the Department for Czech Theatre Studies and in the Na zábradlí Theatre as dramatic adviser, cooperating primarily with Jan Grossman. She contributed to the publishing of numerous books; her studies and reviews have been published in the Literární noviny newspaper, Divadelní noviny newspaper and the Respekt weekly.

Jiří David (*1956)
Is a Czech painter, photographer and writer, who has been contributing to the character and atmosphere of Czech art since the mid1980s. He was a leading figure in the formation of Czech postmodernism, he has co-founded the Tvrdohlaví art group. He employs the sign, occasionally accompanied by text, as his basic visual information. His works further employ drawing, the object, installation and primarily photography; his diverse body of work is linked by a performative approach and a tendency to provoke. His much discussed works include the photographic cycles Hidden Image and My Hostage as well as the monumental neon installations The Glow, a crown of thorns above the Rudolfinum, and Heart on the Castle, a red heart above the Prague Castle. His Key Sculpture of 2010 symbolizes his polemic with the political development after the Velvet Revolution.

Josef Pazderka
Journalist, commentator, and Jihlava native Josef Pazderka studied history at Charles University’s Faculty of Arts and development studies at Oxford Brookes University. From 1999 to 2004, he worked for People in Need, spending two years at the head of a humanitarian mission to Chechnya. He was Czech Television’s Moscow correspondent from 2006 until his expulsion from the country in 2010. He is the editor of a book of interviews with Czech journalist Petra Procházková (A Journalist in the Wild East, 2008) and is a regular contributor to Respekt magazine and the Hospodářské noviny newspaper. While in Moscow, he filmed the documentary Invasion 1968. A Russian Perspective (2011), which looks at this central event in Czechoslovak history from the viewpoint of Russian citizens.

Ondřej Provazník (*1978)
Ondřej Provazník and Martin Dušek are the filmmakers behind two winning documentaries in the Czech Joy section: Poustevna, das ist Paradies (2007) which looks at the loss of identity of today’s Czech-German border region, and Coal in the Soul (2010), whose two main protagonists stand on opposing sides in the battle for expanding coal mining in northern Bohemia.

Ondřej Provazník is director, screenwriter, and journalist Ondřej Provazník studied journalism at Charles University’s Faculty of Social Sciences and screenwriting and dramaturgy at FAMU. He has worked for the culture section of the Lidové noviny newspaper, was a contributing editor for Czech Television’s Kosmopolis show, and has contributed as scriptwriter and dramaturgist to TV Prima’s Airport. In 2007, he shot the short fiction film Not Today, a moody look at one day in the life of one character.

Martin Dušek (*1978)
Director Martin Dušek hails from northern Bohemia. He studied television journalism at Charles University’s Faculty of Social Sciences and documentary film at FAMU. He has worked as a contributing editor for Czech Television, in particular programs focused on the former Sudetenland, and also works in television comedies and children’s programs. While at FAMU, he shot the documentary Letter of Invitation (2004), about the fuss caused in an out-of-the-way Czech town when it was discovered that it was the hometown of an ancestor of a candidate for president of the United States.

Fascinace

Alice Růžičková
Filmmaker, teacher, and projectionist Růžičková decided to study documentary film at FAMU only after receiving her degree from Charles University’s Faculty of Natural Sciences, which has left an indelible imprint on her subsequent film work. Since 1996, she has collaborated on experimental film projects with cinematographer and editor Martin Čihák (Netopýrolog and the hand-made film 60 Clocks). In 2002 and 2003, she created the festival spot and a five-projector Polyekran performance for the Jihlava festival, with which she is connected on several levels. She has spent several years as a moderator of discussions with experimental Czech filmmakers, and is also a projectionist. Růžičková is the author of numerous documentary and experimental films, publishes texts on auteur film, has interviewed Czech documentary and experimental filmmakers, and teaches at FAMU and Charles University’s Faculty of Humanities. Selected filmography: Funfair (1992), Biostructures (1997-8), Otto Placht: Painter of the Jungle (1999), EXPRMNTL KBH (2001), festival spots for the Respect Music Festival in Prague (1999-2002).

Jan Růžička
Entomologist Jan Růžička (husband of Alice Růžičková) has been interested in entomology since a young boy. His current scientific interest is the taxonomy and ecology of scavenger insects and related beetles in the Czech Republic and China. He teaches invertebrate zoology at the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague. Růžička has enjoyed going to the movies since high school, and enjoys French and British comedies (Les Charlots, Mr. Bean, Monty Python’s Flying Circus), Woody Allen, Terry Gilliam, the Russian classics, and the Czech New Wave.

Vítek Růžička
Vítek managed to graduate from high school in spite of the new exit exams, and is now in his first semester in Open Informatics at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague. Since an early age, he has been interested in computers and literature, in particular philosophical sci-fi and fantasy (Lukyanenko, Orson Scott Card). His favorite video game genre is RPG (Planescape). His favorite directors are Jim Jarmush, the Coen brothers, Lars von Trier, and Terry Gilliam. In recent years, he has worked as a projectionist at the Jihlava festival alongside his mother.

Kajetán Růžička
Kajetán was born on a lucky day – 13. 11. 2010 at 13 minutes before noon. He is currently growing steadily and discovering the world on all fours. He likes round objects that he can stick in his mouth.