Morelia International Film Fest

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FICM 2009 JURY

Mexican Short Film Jury

Mihai Chirilov

Mihai Chirilov lives in Bucharest. He is a film critic and the artistic director of the Transylvania International Film Festival, which he co founded in 2002. In addition, Chirilov works as a curator for the Romanian Film Festival in New York, in partnership with TribecaCinemas. He has served as jury member at film festivals such as Hong Kong, Berlin, Gothenburg, Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco and Moscow, among others. He writes for several publications, runs a film and music website called Rekino, and is coauthor of a book about Lars von Trier, The Films, the Women, the Ghosts. He translated into Romanian two of Chuck Palahniuk’s novels, Choke and Diary.

Nick Roddick

Nick Roddick taught Film and Theatre at Trinity College, Dublin; the University of Manchester; and California State University, Long Beach, before becoming a journalist in the early eighties. He has edited a number of trade papers and journals, among them Stills Magazine in London (1983-1984), Cinema Papers in Australia (1985-1986, and Preview, a quarterly magazine on films in production (1993- 2007). He was also an editor of the weekly trade paper Screen International (1987-1988) and, in 1990, founding editor of Moving Pictures International. Roddick has written several books on British and American cinema, and currently runs Split Screen, a Brighton-based publishing and consultancy company specializing in the international film and television business. He is a contributor to a number of publications, most regularly Sight & Sound and The London Evening Standard. He is currently working on Film File Europe, a European film industry database that has received support from the UK Film Council and the MEDIA Programme.

Leo Soesanto

Leo Soesanto is a journalist, film critic, blogger and regular contributor to the French magazine Les Inrockuptibles, where he writes about film, television, Internet, and pop culture. He is a member of the selection committee for long feature films at the Critics’ Week at Cannes, and has been a regular member of the FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) jury at several festivals around the world. He studied political science, sociology and history at the Institut D’Etudies Politiques in Paris.

Mexican Documentary Jury

Bill Guttentag

In 1988, Bill Guttentag won an Oscar for Best Documentary with the HBO film about a boy’s battle with cancer, You Don’t Have to Die. He obtained three Oscar nominations before winning another Oscar for his 2003 documentary Twin Towers and is the recipient of numerous awards, among them two Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and a Robert Kennedy Journalism Award. His films have screened and garnered awards at numerous American and international film festivals, and have enjoyed special screenings internationally and in the U.S., including at the White House. He is the creator and executive producer (along with Dick Wolf ) of the NBC series Crime and Punishment, which ran from 2002-2004.

In 2007, Guttentag directed two films: Live!, which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival, starring Eva Mendes, Andre Braugher David Krumholtz, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Jay Hernandez; and Nanking, a documentary about the Rape of Nanking during World War II, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Nanking won awards at Sundance and other film festivals, earned Guttentag a Writers Guild of America Award nomination, and went on to become the highest grossing theatrical documentary in Chinese history. Guttentag’s most recent film is Soundtrack for a Revolution, a film about music and the Civil Rights Movement. The film had its international premiere at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and U.S. premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. Since 2001, Guttentag has taught a course on the film and television business at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. He recently completed his first novel, Boulevard, which will be published in 2010.

Nicolas Philibert

Nicolas Philibert began his artistic career at the age of 27, when he co-directed the film La Voix de son maitre in 1978 with Gérard Mordillat. He starred in Mordillat’s first films, Vive la sociale (1983) and Fucking Fernand (1987). But it was documentary filmmaking that especially appealed to him. His first feature documentary, Louvre City (1990), retraces the famous museum’s nocturnal activities. In the Land of the Deaf (1992) he examines the culture and daily life of deaf people. In 2002, he made the documentary To Be and To Have, this time taking his camera to a single-class school in rural France. The film won numerous prizes, including the César for Best Editing, and was widely acclaimed around the world. In 1975, he participated as an assistant on Moi, Pierre Rivère…, a film by René Allio, based on a true event that occurred in Normandy in 1835. The film tells the story of a 20-year-old peasant who slit the throats of several members of his family with a billhook. Most of the roles were played by the same farmers in the region. Thirty years later, Nicolas Philibert decided to return to Normandy, and find these people again, in order to evoke the adventure they shared so many years before, but also to film them in their present lives, in his recent film Retour en Normandie.

Eugenio Polgovsky

Eugenio Polgovsky (Mexico City, 1977). In 1994, he won the UNESCO-sponsored photography contest Living Together. He studied film directing and cinematography at the CCC film school. His thesis project and first documentary, Tropic of Cancer, won numerous awards around the world (Best Documentary at the Morelia International Film Festival 2004; Ariel for Best First Feature; Joris Ivens Prize at the Festival Cinéma du Réel; Best Documentary at DocuDays in Beirut, Corea and FICCO, and Golden Prize at the Al Jazeera Festival in Qatar). Tropic of Caner also had a screening during the International Critics’ Week at Cannes in 2005, and was included in the Frontier section at Sundance. It has been screened in over 100 festivals around the world.

In 2004, Polgovsky received the National Youth Award in Mexico. He has worked as a cinematographer in a number of documentary, narrative feature, and visual arts projects, collaborating with artist Jae Eu Choi and renowned butoh dancer Yuzhio Amagatzu in Japan, among others.

In 2008, with this production company Tecolote Films and the support of the Hubert Bals Boundation and Vision Sud Est in Switzerland, he directed, photographed and edited Los herederos (The Inheritors), a documentary about the children who work in the Mexican countryside. He spent three years working on the project, which premiered at the 65th Venice International Film Festival. Los herederos was the first documentary invited to participate in the competition section Generation Kplus at the Berlin Film Festival. It has garnered a number of awards, among these, two Ariel Awards (Best Documentary and Best Editing), the Coral at the 30th Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana, Best Documentary at FIDOCS, Chile, the Zapata Award at the Festival of Memory, and two awards from Amnesty International (Slovenia and Lisbon). In 2009, the documentary received the support of UNICEF for its distribution in Mexico and the world as part of an effort to raise awareness about child labor in the countryside.

Polgovsky is currently working on a documentary about children suffering from parasitic infections in Africa, which will be part of a campaign to combat this widespread health problem.

Jury for the Michoacán Section

Flavio González Mello

Flavio González Mello (Mexico City, Mexico, 1967). Mello has worked in film, television, theater, and narrative. He studied at the CCC and the CUEC film schools. His film, Domingo siete, which he wrote and directed, obtained the 1997 Ariel for Best Medium-Length Fiction Film from the Mexican Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He has also written and directed the short films: En vivo (2002), El número 23 (2002), Medalla al empeño (2004), and 40 grados a la sombra (Danzante Award Huesca Film Festival, Spain, 2009). He wrote the original screenplay for Pachito Rex, produced by the Mexican Film Institute (IMCINE) and the CCC Film School (Mexico, 2001). He has also written and directed a number of television programs, among them the documentary miniseries El Siglo de Oro de la Melancolía (TV-UNAM, 2004), hosted by Roger Bartra, which won the Crystal Award in 2004 for Best Documentary Screenplay, and authored a number of plays, including: 1822, el año que fuimos Imperio (2000), Lascuráin o la brevedad del poder (2005), Olimpia 68 (2008), and Edipo en Colofón (2009).

José Esteban Martínez

José Esteban Martínez is a renowned visual artist from the state of Zacatecas. He studied graphic design at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and received a Master’s degree in Education Technology and another in Education Communication. During the Miguel de la Madrid administration he was the coordinator of content and methods at the Public Education Secretariat (SEP) in the Free Textbook department. He also worked as the director of content at the National Education for Adults Institute. He was the executive producer of the educational television series Cuentos indígenas and Onda libros at the Latin American Institute of Educational Communication and later became an advisor to the director of television and radio at the same institute. He was the director of the central region of the National Anthropology and History Institute in the state of Guerrero. He also worked as director of the Zacatecas Cultural Institute (1998-2001) and advisor to the state cultural secretaries Rogelio Cárdenas and Flavio Campos. He created activities for the Technical Secretariat of the state DIF family development agency. As a graphic artist, Martínez has collaborated with the Vorpal Gallery in New York, Eleonor Yek in Arizona, and L’Oeil de Boeuf in Paris, among others. Since 2007, he has been the director of the Zacatecas “Fronteras Migrantes” Film Festival and film commissioner for the state of Zacatecas. He has also worked as a costume designer for various theatrical productions and television programs, including Carmina Burana for the University of New York and Cuatro X.

Carlos Taibo Mahojo

Born in Mexico City in 1965, Carlos Taibo Mahojo is a film enthusiast and a “logistic-motivator-facilitator” for the new generations of producers. He is both an active teacher and producer.

He was responsible for creating the production curriculum at the CCC film school, where he taught for more than six years. He is currently in charge of developing a special field of study in this area, and is working with Martha Orozco in adapting a textbook called Manual básico de producción and another on more advanced themes in executive production, Y, ¿después de la carpeta qué? Both projects are co-sponsored by IMCINE and CCC.

He was recently invited to teach a first year production class at the CUEC-UNAM film school. Taibo Mahojo has also given more than 15 workshops on project pitching, financing and budgeting from 2005 to the present.

In 2008 he traveled with the AMBULANTE documentary film festival to four different cities in Mexico teaching workshops on how to pitch and produce documentary projects.

He was executive producer of De noche vienes, Esmeralda and Recuerdos, a documentary filmed in six countries. He also produced the short film Aquí iba el himno and the feature film Club Eutanasia, which premiered in 2005. He was production director of Dust to Dust (Por la libre), Hijos del Viento, Ambar, Who the Hell is Juliette? (¿Quién diablos es Juliette?,) The Arrival (Second Unit), High Crimes (Mexico Unit) and Bandidas, for Europacorp.

Between February 2005 and June 2007, he worked at IMCINE (Mexican Institute for Cinematography) as director of the Production Support Division.

Mexican Feature Film Jury

Luis Mandoki

One of the most versatile directors in Hollywood, Luis Mandoki was born in Mexico City in 1954. He studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and at the London International Film School. In 1976 he gained international recognition with his prize-winning short film Silent Music. Mandoki received an Ariel in Mexico for his short El secreto in 1980. His cinematographic debut, Gaby: una historia verdadera (1987), was acclaimed for its script, direction and production. It was based on a true story that Mandoki read in the newspaper. Norma Aleandro was nominated for the Golden Globe and the Oscar for her performance in the film and Rachel Levin received a Golden Globe nomination as best supporting actress. Afterwards, Mandoki directed his first film for a U.S. audience, the adaptation of the novel White Palace (1990) by Glen Savan, with Susan Sarandon and James Spader. Then he directed When a Man Loves a Woman (1990), with Meg Ryan and Andy Garcia, and Message In a Bottle (1999), with Kevin Costner, Robin Wright Penn and Paul Newman. Mandoki continued demonstrating his versatility with Angel Eyes (2001), starring Jennifer Lopez and Jim Caviezel, as well as in his films Trapped (2002), Voces inocentes (2004) and the controversial documentaries ¿Quién es el señor López? (2006), Fraude: México 2006 (2007).

Gabriel Orozco

Born in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, in 1962. Studied at the National School of Fine Arts-UNAM, Mexico (1981-1984) and completed his academic studies at Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid (1986-87). He is currently preparing a retrospective exhibition to be inaugurated next December at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. This show will then tour through the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Kunstmuseum Basel (Switzerland) and Tate Modern (London). His most important exhibitions have been presented at the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City (2007); Palacio de Cristal, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2005); Serpentine Gallery, London (2004); Centro de Artes Visuais, Coimbra, Portugal (2003); Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City (2000); Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA (1999); Artangel, London (1997); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, USA (1994); Museum of Modern Art, MOMA - Projects 41, New York (1993). From 1987 to 1992 he conducted the Taller de los Viernes (Friday Workshop), a group of debate and artistic production in which some of the most important artists of the contemporary Mexican art scene participated. In 2007 he was guest curator of Il Quoitidiano Alterato presented at the 50 Venice Biennale. In 2005 he was a lecturer at the Cátedra Latinoamericana Julio Cortázar, and in 2007 was awarded the Orange Prize. He lives and works in New York, Paris and Mexico City.

José María Riba

José María Riba (Barcelona, 1951). Since the 1970s, José María Riba has worked in journalism, namely radio and print media, focusing on cinema and music. It was around this time that he completed his studies at the Escuela Normal, in Donostia San Sebastián. He also studied at the Complutense in Madrid and graduated from the Centre de Formation des Journalistes (CFJ) in Paris, where he worked professionally at Radio France Internationale (RFI). Later he worked for the French daily Libération, and was a correspondent for Spanish magazines and newspapers. In 1981, he became a writer for the publications department of the first Basque Parliament; since 1982, he has been a journalist for the France Presse news agency (AFP); and from 1988 to 2002, he was a host on the television station CineClassics.

In 1980, he joined the team that organizes the International Film Festival of San Sebastián, and was part of their Executive Committee until 2006. In 2007, he coordinated professional activities within the San Sebastián Festival, including Films in Progress and Cinema in Motion, both of which he initiated. In the 1990s, he worked half a dozen years for the Cannes Festival on the Critics’ Week selection committee, for which he was the general director in 2000 and 2001.

Currently, he assists the general director of the Festival, informing him of the films being produced in Spain and Latin America. Riba was a consultant for the European Film Academy, which offers awards within the European film industry and today he is a member of the Euromed Cinemas and Europa Cinémas expert committees. In 2005, he co-founded Espagnolas en París, a group of film professionals that promotes Spanish cinema in France and organizes the Différent! festival.

Paul Julian Smith

Paul Julian Smith is a specialist in cinema, television and visual culture of Spain and Latin America and has been a professor of Spanish Philology at the University of Cambridge since 1991. He is the author of 14 books and some 50 academic articles. He has been a visiting professor at numerous international universities, including Stanford and Berkeley in the United States and Universidad Carlos III in Madrid. He is currently a visiting professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He is a regular contributor to Sight and Sound, the magazine of the British Film Institute, and Film Quarterly, and a co-founder of the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies. Among his works translated into Spanish are: Laws of Desire: Questions of Homosexuality in Spanish Writing and Film (Las leyes del deseo: la homosexualidad en la literatura y el cine español, Barcelona, Tempestad, 1997) and Amores perros (Barcelona. Gedisa, 2005). In 2008, he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, the national academy for the humanities and social sciences.