grand jury

Films in this category compete for the Minister of Culture Award for the best film and the Best Director Award. Members of the Grand Jury are acclaimed personalities in the world of documentary film. In 2005 they will be Don Edkins (Republic of South Africa), Nikolaus Geyrhalter (Austria), Anna Glogowski (France), Alena Müllerová (Czech Republic), and Anand Patwardhan (India).

Don Edkins (South Africa)

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Don Edkins was born in Cape Town in 1953. At the age of twenty-three he left the Republic of South Africa for political reasons and in 1994 returned to take part in his country’s first democratic elections. He completed his studies in development work and African languages. In Lesotho he published a popular educational magazine, and founded a mobile movie theater, which shows films in remote areas. He has filmed and produced a number of documentary films. His last project was the highly-lauded “Steps for the Future”, which sponsors 38 films from South Africa which deal with the problem of AIDS. The films from this project have been screened in 150 festivals throughout the world.

 

Nikolaus Geyrhalter (Austria)

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Producer, director and cameraman Nikolaus Geyrhalter was born in Vienna in 1972. At the age of twenty-two he founded his own production company (Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion). The award-winning Pripyat, to be screened this year at One World, is one of his most successful films. Another of his films deals with the Termelin nuclear power plant. In 2003 Nikolaus Geyrhalter received the Austrian State Award for Film Art.

 

Alena Müllerová (Czech Republic)

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Alena Müllerová completed her studies in dramaturgy and screenwriting at FAMU (Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague). She participated in a production or dramaturgic capacity in dozens of documentary films and journalistic programs, cooperating with leading Czech documentary filmmakers. As Program Director of Short Films, she devoted herself to the area of feature and animated films, about which a large number of articles were published in periodicals. She founded the Foundation of Film and Sociology and for several years was the Chair of the Editorial Board. She also participated in a number of International Film Festivals and the television market (MIPCOM, Cannnes, Cinéma du Reél in Paris, IDFA in Amsterdam etc.). In 1997, she was a member of the jury of documentary films at the International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary. From 1998 she has fully devoted herself to working with Czech Television, where she is currently Director for the Unit of Long-Term Program Strategy and Development.

 

Anand Patwardhan (India)

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In the 1970s, Anand Patwardhan completed his studies in English literature at Bombay University and in sociology at Brandeis University in the United States. In 1982 he completed a degree in media studies at McGill University in Canada. During the course of his studies he became involved in protests against the Vietnam War, worked on development projects in Central India, and actively participated in community life. For almost thirty years Anand Patwardhan has made documentaries in which he deals with controversial themes from social and political life in contemporary India. A number of his films were deemed unfit to be broadcast by Indian State Television, a move which eventually became the subject of a court case. In the case, Anand Patwardhan succeeded in having the censorship measures against his documentary films removed. Among his best-known films is We Are Not Your Monkeys and Ribbons for Peace.

 

Anna Glogowski (France)

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Anna Glogowski was born in Brazil. She completed her studies in sociology and psychology in Paris, where she still lives today. She has worked for the television station Canal Plus for eighteen years in the department of documentary films, where she has worked as Deputy Director and later as Director. Since 2003, she has been a member of the Selection Committee for the new festival Paris Cinema, whose President is filmmaker Costa-Gavras. She worked as a program coordinator in the documentary film section at the Festival of Latin American Films and Culture in Barritz-La Cita, as an advisor at the festival ‘It’s All True’ in Brazil, and at the International Documentary Film Festival Hot Docs in Toronto. From 2005, she has been a member of the Selection Committee of the Jan Vrijman Fund for documentary films. She has also worked as a jury member or advisor on a number of film festivals throughout the world. She has participated in the production of the documentary films Terra de Abril (1977) and Mozambican Mothers (1978).