SCREENWRITER’S WORKSHOP 2011
PARTICIPANTS
Alejo Crisóstomo (Guatemala)
Alejo Crisóstomo was born in Guatemala in 1975. He studied at the Film School of Chile and has attended several workshops on screenwriting, filmmaking and social documentary.
He was invited to the “Berlinale Talent Campus” at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2005 and 2009, to the “Visionary Campus” at the Guadalajara International Film Festival and to “IberTalent” at the Cinema Jove International Film Festival in Valencia, Spain, in 2008.
He edited the feature film Donde acaban los caminos (Where the roads end), by Carlos García Agraz, and has directed various short films, documentaries and television shows in Guatemala, Mexico and Chile, among which the short film Blanca and the documentary Qak’aslemal (Our Existence). Alejo is currently distributing his animation series Las Aventuras de Junajpu’ y Luna and post-producing his first feature film Fe (Faith), which has received the support of the French National Center for Filmmaking, the Fund for Audiovisual Development in Central America and the Caribbean (Cinergia), the Göteborg International Film Festival in Sweden and the Ibermedia Program.
La casa más grande del mundo (The Greatest House in the World) (co-written with Ana Virginia Bojórquez) — With freedom comes responsibility.
Ana Virginia Bojórquez (Guatemala)
Ana Virginia holds a B.A. in Communication by the Rafael Landívar University in Guatemala City. She attended the International Film and Television School of San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba, where she majored in Cinematography, and the Hochschule der Medien in Germany, where she studied Production.
She collaborated in the Central American Icaro Film and Video Festival from 2003 to 2009. She has produced, written and photographed short films, documentaries and TV shows since 1998. She is currently writing and producing her first feature film, La casa más grande del mundo (The Greatest House in the World).
La casa más grande del mundo (The Greatest House in the World) (co-written with Alejo Crisóstomo) — With freedom comes responsibility.
Armando Bautista (Mexico)
Armando Bautista García is a Ford Foundation Fellow. He holds an M.A. in Philosophy and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain.
He has written a variety of stories and theatre plays. For his work as a writer he was awarded several fellowships by the Mexican Endowment for Culture and the Arts (FONCA). He recently started writing short films and feature films. His first screenplay gained the immediate support of the Mexican Film Institute (IMCINE).
Donde descansa el cielo (Where the sky rests) (co-written with Itandehui Jansen) — Thirty years ago a young girl left her rural hometown to try her luck elsewhere and never returned home. Now, 18 year-old Angel travels from San Francisco to a small town in Mexico with his mother’s ashes.
Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt (USA)
Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt directed, shot, produced and edited Lumo, a documentary that won a Student Academy Award and was broadcast on the POV series on PBS. He served as the co-producer and additional editor of Control Room, and the associate editor of Valentino: The Last Emperor.
He wrote, directed, produced and edited Les vulnérables, the closing night short of the New York Film Festival and a grand jury prizewinner at AFI Dallas International Film Festival. He most recently edited and field-produced a documentary about a volcano expedition in the Congo for National Geographic, and is now co-directing and editing a documentary on fashion legend Diana Vreeland.
Perlmutt has also directed, produced and/or edited films for organizations including UNICEF, UNIFEM, AMC, MTV, Interview Magazine, the New York Academy of Medicine, HelpAge, HEAL Africa and Market Road Films. He is a member of the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Indie Film”, and a recipient of a Sundance/Sloan Commissioning Grant for his script On the Left.
He has taught at Columbia University and all over Africa for organizations including Mira Nair’s Maisha Film Lab and Peter Gabriel’s WITNESS. He holds a B.A. in English Literature from Brown University and an M.F.A. in Film Directing from Columbia University.
On the Left (Por La Izquierda) — A Cuban American teen accompanies his professor father on a study abroad program in Cuba and defies him by getting swept up in the romance of a youth movement.
Carmen Jiménez (Spain)
Carmen Jiménez was born in Seville, Spain. She majored in Communications at Seville University and was awarded an Erasmus grant to study one semester at Paris XIII University. While in her senior year at college, she created Saint Denis, a production company that produced several short films and theater plays, including an opera.
In 2004, she received a Master’s in Audiovisual Companies Management at the Media Business School in Spain. After that, she worked at the International Sales Department at Sogecine-Sogepaq, the biggest production and distribution company in Spain. At Sogepaq, she held different positions, such as International Marketing Coordinator and International Festivals Manager.
She was later promoted to Sales Executive. Films such as Mataharis (by Iciar Bollaín), Deficit (by Gael García Bernal) and Chaotic Ana (by Julio Medem) are some of the titles she handled during this period. At the same time she worked for Sogepaq, she produced and collaborated with independent filmmakers on several short films.
Awarded a full scholarship by laCaixa, Carmen moved to New York in 2008. She just finished her third year at Columbia University working towards an M.F.A. in Film Writing and Directing. Inés and Teresa is her second feature script, developed with La Claqueta, a production company based in Spain.
Inés and Teresa— Spain, 1903: When Inés decides to dress up as a man and marries her best friend Teresa to protect her from the shame of being a single mother, she ends up forever changed as she discovers a completely unknown side of her identity.
Charudutt Acharya (India)
Charudutt Acharya, 41, is a US-based Indian filmmaker. His main body of work has been as a writer for over twenty five Indian (Hindi) TV drama shows which have fetched him top Indian TV industry awards.
He has co-written two produced Hindi feature films and has two English-language features scripts under optioned development. He has worked as First Assistant Director, made shorts, worked in radio, written for children’s picture books and taught scriptwriting.
He has been a recipient of the Charles Wallace fellowship of the British Council, India. He is a graduate in Film Directing from the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) and holds an M.A. in Screenwriting from Royal Holloway, UK. He is represented by BFLA, London.
Naye Joote (New Shoes) — Humiliated for desiring fancy sneakers, a poor Mumbai family learns to live and love better in the countdown to Diwali (the festival of lights) of 1982.
Hilda Hidalgo (Costa Rica)
Hilda Hidalgo is a Costa Rican filmmaker who graduated as director at the International Film and Television School in San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba.
She has written and directed half a dozen short films and documentaries in Costa Rica and locations such as Italy, France, Bhutan, Benin and the Netherlands. Del amor y otros demonios (Of love and other demons), based on the novel by Gabriel García Márquez, is her first feature film.
She is currently developing the documentary Unos cuantos piquetitos and her second fiction film, Estación Violenta (Violent Season). Hilda works in Costa Rica as a scriptwriter, director and producer.
Estación Violenta (Violent Season) — Violeta, a 70-year old divorcée, is fighting to change her outlook on old age and to prevent the bank from auctioning her house; 20-year old Clara is struggling to find common ground between her career as a dancer and the complexities of her relationship with boyfriend Victor, two apparently irreconcilable passions. The two women’s destinies will secretly cross paths during the violent season of their lives.
Itandehui Jansen (the Netherlands)
Itandehui Jansen studied filmmaking at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy. Her documentary films have been shown at different international film festivals, among others in Amsterdam, Barcelona, New York and Mexico City.
She has participated in selective international workshops, such as the Binger Film Lab. She holds an M.A. in Comparative Literature and obtained a highly competitive grant by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) for her Ph.D. research on transnational cinema. She worked several years as a university lecturer at Utrecht University.
Donde descansa el cielo (Where the sky rests) (co-written with Armando Bautista) — Thirty years ago a young girl left her rural hometown to try her luck elsewhere and never returned home. Now, 18 year-old Angel travels from San Francisco to a small town in Mexico with his mother’s ashes.
Laurie Thomas (USA/ Jamaica)
Laurie Thomas is a first generation American writer/director born to Jamaican parents. After graduating with a B.A. in Film and Sociology from the University of California–Berkeley, Laurie worked for two years in social work in the California Department of Children and Family Services, where she gathered stories that would drive her passion to make films.
Laurie is currently completing her M.F.A. in Film at Columbia University, where she has written, directed and produced several short films that have played at film festivals internationally.
Her thesis film Prima Donna was a finalist for the 2010 HBO Young Filmmaker’s Grant and recipient of the 2011 Columbia Film Festival’s Best Short Film 12 Minutes and Under Award. Laurie was most recently chosen as a mentor for the Maisha Foundation collaborating with East African screenwriters.
Goat — Jillian is a 30 year-old recluse living in the poorest village in Jamaica and rumored to be a witch. After a rape and robbery leave her pregnant, she has to fight the village to keep her child.
Lorena Padilla (Mexico)
Lorena Padilla was born in 1978 in Guadalajara, Mexico. She graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Audiovisual Arts from the University of Guadalajara, and studied abroad one year at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. In Barcelona, she participated as a co-writer in the short film, “53,” which won the Best Script Award in the Nova Autoria Section at the Sitges Film Festival ‘02. Since then, she has been moving around the world and in the last seven years, has lived in Creel, Mexico; London, England; Madrid, Spain; Guayaquil, Ecuador and Lima, Peru.
In London, Lorena completed a course in Art Direction for Film at Central Saint Martin’s College for Art and Design, and in Madrid, she received a Scriptwriting Diploma and began to write her first feature “Celestial Objects.” This project has since been selected to participate in the Script Station at the Berlinale Talent Campus ’09, the Torino Film Lab ’10 and received the IMCINE Scriptwriters Grant ’11. As a grant recipient of the Incentive of the Artistic Creation SCJ/CONACULTA ‘09, she also finished her second feature, “Menu.” Her past and current projects deal with small everyday stories that pass unnoticed to most people.
Celestial Objects- A gift from a dead neighbor opens up a lonely man’s discovery of life as he starts a relationship with her through her old belongings.
Lucía Carreras (Mexico)
Lucía Carreras is currently at the postproduction stage of her first directorial feature film, Nos vemos, papá, featuring the Mexican actress Cecilia Suárez and produced by Machete Producciones.
With this script she received the support of the Mexican Film Institute’s Writing and Script Development Program and the Project Development Program in 2006.
She also received support from the Writing and Script Development Program in 2007 for her feature-length script Suerte de Eternidad, and would later be selected to participate at the Alejandro Galindo Workshop in 2009. During 2002 and 2003 her script Ofelia received the fellowship for Creation and Artistic Development by the State of Jalisco.
She was nominated under Best Screenplay for the 2011 Mexican Academy of Film Art and Science Ariel, along with Michael Rowe, for the script Año Bisiesto (Leap Year), winner of the Cannes Caméra d’Or 2010, first time awarded to a Mexican film. She is also co-writer of the feature-length script La Cama, along with director Rafael Montero, and has herself directed the short films Las Mujeres y el ¿Fútbol?, Guadalajara y la Noche, La Puerta, Emilio and Jacinto Pata Sagrada.
Tamara y la Catarina (Tamara and the Ladybug) is the tender story of a mentally handicapped woman, who grabs a baby from a newspaper stand without thinking about the consequences.
Ricardo Braojos (Zirahuén, Michoacán, Mexico)
Emerging Filmmaker from Michoacan
Ricardo Braojos is a filmmaker with more than 20 years of experience. He has worked as director, producer, editor, cameraman and scriptwriter in more than 15 fiction and documentary films.
He has a special interest in the myths and legends of traditional cultures, which he has developed particularly in his documentaries.
Serena is a feature film script that deals with several existential conflicts through the meeting of three mythical characters – a priestess, a magician and a fool…
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Rocío Lladó (Peru)
Rocío Lladó dealt with the executive production and directed the feature film Vidas paralelas (2008), one of the most successful films ever produced in Peru.
Her present project, Teresa, the Liberator’s Fiancée, has received the support of “La Unión Latina”, the Spanish Agency of International Cooperation for Development (AECID), the National Film Council of Peru (Conacine) and the Programa Ibermedia.
Teresa, la Novia del Libertador (Teresa, the Liberator’s Fiancée) — Preventing the destruction of a colonial mansion, a woman discovers the history of its former inhabitants who fought for the independence of Peru, and among whom she had also been living… in a former life.
Santiago Ortiz-Monasterio (Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico)
Emerging Filmmaker from Michoacan
Santiago Ortiz-Monasterio has participated in more than forty cinematic projects, mainly in the area of production, including seven feature-length films, five music videos and more than thirty short films, several of which have been shown in various national and international festivals.
He recently worked as Production Coordinator for a full length documentary and subsequently served as First Assistant Director for a full length fiction film produced in Guadalajara in 2010. He is currently involved in producing various cinematic projects and continues studying to become a film producer.
Enséñame a Seducir (Teach Me to Seduce) — Laura secretly hires a stripper to learn how to seduce her husband, but things get complicated when the woman ends up dating her son and living with her family.
Stefan Guzmán (Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico)
Emerging Filmmaker from Michoacan
Stefan Guzmán is a young filmmaker with experience in the film industry since the age of 14. He has worked in several feature films, short films and commercials in different capacities.
In 2009 he attended Eliseo Subiela’s Professional Film School in Argentina, wrote and directed two shorts –Papel and Viejos Tiempos– and participated in seven other short films. That same year he was awarded a grant for the screenwriting workshop “Story” conducted by Robert McKee.
In 2010 he returned to his hometown, worked as a Project Coordinator for the production company Congra Entertainment and participated in a documentary, a TV series, two feature films and several short films.
He co-directed a 1-minute short for the festivities of Mexico’s Bicentennial and won the first prize in the “Caminos de la Libertad” contest and the third prize in the “Un Minuto por los Derechos Humanos” contest. Stefan is currently at the postproduction stage of his first documentary short film, Cuanajillo: La Historia Sin Agua, and participates in independent projects.
Anónimos Suicidas (Anonymous Suicidal) — Omar makes a deal with his newlywed wife Karla to commit suicide, but he survives the poison dose and the police start looking for him for murder. Omar finds a support group called “Anonymous Suicidal” – a group of people who failed at committing suicide and who will help him hide from the police and, at the same time, find himself.