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All • Cases Studies • Trainers • Participants • Projects

2019

Trainers • 2019

Benjamin Magnin

Expert
After graduating in Communication, Film and Art History from the University in Zurich and Paris he became journalist at Cinébulletin; Media Analyst and Producer for fiction at RTS in Geneva, where he coproduced TV-Web series, short and long feature films. From 2015 to 2017 he worked as a Producer and Script Consultant at CAB Production in Geneva. Among others, he was involved in the development of the TV series “Double Vie” by RTS. Since 2018 he is Editor for the fiction department at the SRF in Zürich.

Trainers • 2019

Federico Dini

Expert and Development Lab mentor
Federico Dini is a Berlin-based producer and art director exploring the borders between interaction and participation in cross-platform storytelling. His experience spans from film and TV to web and mobile applications. After winning a year funding from the EXIST Programme and the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology he founded Honig Studios to produce story-driven experiences that are playful and memorable across multiple platforms. With Honig Studios, Federico co-created the transmedia design of the "The Spiral" - a participative TV series and online social game broadcasted simultaneously in eight European countries. The project was nominated at the International Digital Emmy Awards for “Best TV fiction” and in the Prix Europa Awards for “Best online Project”. He is currently developing “Milli”, an extensive story universe for 3-6 years old kids told through animated series, playful applications and learning mini-games. Parallel to that, he's working on “The Great Depression”, a participative feature film about the separation and collapse of near future Europe. Prior to Honig Studios, Federico produced the controversial webseries “Notruf Deutschland” and interactive projects for clients such as Warner Group and Universal Music.

Trainers • 2019

Karim Ben Khelifa

Expert
Karim Ben Khelifa, 45, is an award winning photojournalist who has freelanced regularly for Time, Vanity Fair, Le Monde, Stern, The New York Times Magazine and dozens of others. He is the director of the breakthrough VR and AR journalism project “The Enemy” which premiered in Paris in 2017.

Karim is widely known for his coverage of the Middle East conflicts and troubles, especially the Iraq and Afghan wars, where he covered the insurgent sides. He has worked in more than 80 countries and territories and has had exhibition on four continents.

Ben Khelifa was in 2012 Fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism where he has given talks and lectures in different schools of Harvard University. In 2013/2014 he has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Open Documentary Lab at MIT. In the academic years of 2015/2017, he was a visiting Artist at the Center for Art, Science and Technology as well as a fellow at the Imagination, Computation and Expression Lab, both at MIT in Cambridge.

Trainers • 2019

Mathias Noschis

Expert
Mathias Noschis is a film marketing strategist specialised in social media. He is the founder of Alphapanda, a film marketing agency with team members in Berlin, Warsaw and Geneva. Before founding Alphapanda, Mathias ran online promotional campaigns in several European territories for films such as “Toy Story 3”, “Black Swan”, “The A-Team” and “Piranha 3D”. He also used to work for the Swiss national film promotion agency. Alphapanda’s client list includes 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., the European Film Awards, Festival Scope and several independent producers, distributors and sales agents. Alphapanda’s recent projects span from fiction films “A Colony” (Berlinale ’19), “The Guest” (Locarno ’18), “Another Day of Life” (Cannes ’18), “Touch Me Not” (Berlinale ’18 Golden Bear) and “God’s Own Country” (Sundance ’17) to documentaries “Lemebel” (Berlinale ’19), “Hamada” (IDFA ’18), “Heartbound” (TIFF ’18) or Hollywood titles “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Isle of Dogs” (Berlinale ’18) and “Shape of Water” (Academy Award '18). Mathias is also a consultant for Creative Europe MEDIA and a marketing expert and tutor for organisations such as FOCAL, Marché du Film de Cannes, Proimagenes Colombia and IFFR.

Trainers • 2019

Michael Brönnimann

Expert
Michael Brönnimann has been working in different positions for Swiss Radio and Television (SRF) for 12 years, during and after graduating in communication, film and art history from the University of Zurich. He is currently a buyer and programming executive for fictional content as well as a commissioning editor for new media projects entered in the «pacte the l’audiovisuel», the film fund of the SRG SSR. Additionally, he coordinates various collaborations in the field of storytelling innovation between SRF and the Zurich University of the Arts and the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

Trainers • 2019

Pierre Cattan

Development Lab expert panel
Pierre Cattan, transmedia producer, CEO of Small Bang studio. Pierre began his career with the creation of several French magazines such as “TOC” and “Usbek & Rica”. He also created and runned several production companies such as Otoko Films and 5ème Étage Production. In 2012 he founded the transmedia studio, Small Bang, which develops hybrid interactive projects. The products range from film productions (interactive or otherwise), to print and digital work, as well as sound production, event planning, product conception, application and game designing. Furthermore, Pierre produces and designs live shows for "L'émission dessinée" and "Mediapart". He also co-produced with Upian the online 30 minute hyper-video experience “Happy world: Burma, the dictatorship of the absurd” for which he received the Orson Welles Prize for Best Documentary at the California Film Awards in 2012. Pierre produced and show-runned the transmedia experience "Cinemacity" with Arte, released in July 2013. Most recently, he produced "BirdLab", a free participatory science game with the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Paris (MHNM) Seasons: Morphosis, the companion app’ of the last Jacques Perrin’s feature lengh movie Seasons, and Phallaina, a scrolling grafic novel’s app, both of them in co-production with France télévisions Nouvelles écritures. Pierre is also co-founder of the association Open Bidouille Camp and Coworking space Superbelleville.

Trainers • 2019

Susanna Lotz

Development Lab mentor
After graduating in Art History, she continued her university research by integrating the Dance Lab in Paris 8, working on motion capture in contemporary dance choreographies. Susanna coedited two issues of “Anomalie”, a bilingual review exploring different themes in the fields of arts and digital technologies. Her work included Anomalie #2 “Digital Performance” and Anomalie #3 “Interfaces”. She also contributed to the CD-ROM “Le Centre Georges Pompidou: La collection” and “Yves Saint-Laurent: 40 ans de création”.

Since 2002 Susanna has worked for the Web Department of Arte, where she was recruited to create innovative content for the web. Her teamwork with the commissioning broadcast editors resulted in the project “Gaza-Sderot – Life in spite of everything”, or “Farewell Comrades!”. Today Susanna Lotz lives in Berlin, where she collaborates on international transmedia projects. Susanna Lotz coordinates the Development Lab of the interactive documentary workshop: a project development programme for expanded documentaries, promoted by the Laboratory of Visual Culture (SUPSI) and Visions du Réel.

2018

Trainers • 2018

Camille Kaiser

Development Lab expert panel
Camille Kaiser studied Fine Arts at the ECAV in Sierre and later graduated from the MA program in Critical, Curatorial and Cybermedia studies at HEAD-Geneva, where she led a research project on the film collective Abounaddara. Parallel to her studies, she ran the independent art space TOPIC in Geneva for two years, and exhibited her artistic work at the Athens Biennale, Kunsthaus Kreuzlingen, Haus für elektronische Künste Basel, Centre d’art Contemporain d’Yverdon and Stadgalerie Bern, among others. Since 2017, she collaborates with the program department of film festivals Visions du Réel in Nyon and the Geneva International Film Festival, where she is currently the Digital and Professional programs coordinator.

Trainers • 2018

Javier Bello Ruiz

Expert
Born in Spain, MSc in Computer Science Engineering by the University of Zaragoza (2010) with focus in HCI and business management, later lab manager at the Laboratory for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (2013-2017). 

Previously managing VR projects for cognitive neuroscience research about brain mechanisms of body perception, body awareness and self- consciousness, he co-founded Imverse SA in 2017. 

Trainers • 2018

John-Paul Marin

Development Lab mentor
John-Paul is a highly experienced digital executive who, over the past 15 years, has combined technology with story to produce dozens of interactive experiences across the web, VR and TV. His work has won numerous awards including a Webby, SXSW Interactive Innovation and Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism. He currently heads up the SBS Digital Creative Labs in Sydney.

Trainers • 2018

Karim Ben Khelifa

Expert

Karim Ben Khelifa, 45, is an award winning photojournalist who has freelanced regularly for Time, Vanity Fair, Le Monde, Stern, The New York Times Magazine and dozens of others. He is the director of the breakthrough VR and AR journalism project “The Enemy” which premiered in Paris in 2017.

Karim is widely known for his coverage of the Middle East conflicts and troubles, especially the Iraq and Afghan wars, where he covered the insurgent sides. He has worked in more than 80 countries and territories and has had exhibition on four continents.

Ben Khelifa was in 2012 Fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism where he has given talks and lectures in different schools of Harvard University. In 2013/2014 he has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Open Documentary Lab at MIT. In the academic years of 2015/2017, he was a visiting Artist at the Center for Art, Science and Technology as well as a fellow at the Imagination, Computation and Expression Lab, both at MIT in Cambridge.

Trainers • 2018

Lina Srivastava

Development Lab mentor
Lina Srivastava is a social innovation strategist and the founder of CIEL | Creative Impact and Experience Lab, a cultural innovation strategy group. Lina has worked on engagement campaigns documentaries including Born into Brothels, The Devil Came on Horseback, Inocente, and Who Is Dayani Cristal? The former Executive Director of Kids with Cameras, and Association of Video and Filmmakers, Lina founded the Transformational Change Leadership project, and has worked with social impact organizations including UNICEF, UNESCO, the World Bank, and FilmAid. She is on faculty in the MFA Program in Design and Social Innovation at the School of Visual Arts. Lina is a Fulbright Specialist candidate, on the US State Department’s American Film Showcase roster, Rockwood Institute/ JustFilms Fellow, recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation leadership grant, Civic Hall Labs Fellow, Boehm Media Fellow, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Lina is a graduate of New York University School of Law.

Trainers • 2018

Mark Boulos

Expert
Mark Boulos is a filmmaker and artist working across documentary film, photography, video art, interactive installations, and virtual reality. 

He is Assistant Professor of Film at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts (VCU Arts) in Richmond, Virginia, USA. 

His first artist monograph was published in 2017 Hatje Cantz, Germany. In 2015, he received the Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. His solo shows include LAXART, Los Angeles; FACT, Liverpool; MoMA New York; Perez Miami Art Museum; and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. His group exhibitions include the Geneva Biennale of the Moving Image (2015), the Berlin Biennale (2010), and the Sydney Biennale (2008). 

He is represented by Galerie Stigter van Doesburg, Amsterdam. 

Trainers • 2018

Michael Kaschner

Development Lab expert panel
Michael Kaschner, born in 1975, has been working as a freelance content creator, screenwriter and director in the field of factual entertainment for the public-law broadcasters (amongst other things for TerraX, TerraXpress, ZDF Info, ARTE, Andreas Kieling, and show teasers for Thomas Gottschalk). Since October 2013, he is the Senior Producer at ZDF Digital Medienproduktion GmbH where he initially manages the set-up of an editorial office for the series TerraXpress. By now, he has also been supervising a network consisting of more than 100 freelance authors for various formats. In parallel to his commitment in the field of interactive VR, Michael Kaschner is setting up a new fiction department at ZDF Digital, which develops new formats for the crime film genre and web series, as well as horizontal, episode-spanning series for streaming services and Pay TV. Michael Kaschner is a guest lecturer at the center for media competences, ZFM, at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen, as well as at the Film Academy in Ludwigsburg and for the study program Serial Storytelling at the International Film School in Cologne (IFS).

Trainers • 2018

Robin Mange

Expert

Starting to code at the age of 11, Swiss computer graphics enthusiast and expert, Robin has more than 10 years’ experience in volumetric rendering and has been working on virtual and mixed reality for the past 5 years.
MSc in Communication Systems by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (2008). Previously at the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience at EPFL as a mixed reality engineer in 2013, just before co-founding Imverse SA in 2017. 

Trainers • 2018

Sabine Bubeck-Paaz

Development Lab expert panel
Sabine Bubeck-Paaz is a commissioning editor at ZDF (German public broadcaster) for various documentary slots on ARTE, the European Culture Channel. The ZDF department “Thema”, where she is deputy head of, is dealing with One Offs, Season programming, Theme Evenings, the documentary series “ARTE Discovery” and Cross Media Projects. The investigative and creative documentary projects she is involved in are mostly international coproductions. The topics range from Culture, Science and History to Current Affairs, Human Interest and socio-political issues – always wishing to discover strong and surprising stories. Lately, she has been involved in the Oscar nominated coproductions “The Act of Killing”, “The Look of Silence”, “Claude Lanzmann – Spectres of the Shoah” and other award winning documentaries and cross media productions like “Drone”, “netwars”, “I am Ingrid Bergman”, “The Queen of Silence”, “Sugar Coated” etc. As a tutor, she has been participating in international pitching and training workshops. Since 2015, Sabine Bubeck-Paaz is also Head of Studies of ESoDoc - European Social Documentary (www.esodoc.eu).

Trainers • 2018

Sandra Gaudenzi

Expert
Sandra Gaudenzi started her career as a television producer and then moved into interactive television, to finally specialize in the field of digital interactive narrative. She has taught interactive media theory at the London College of Communication (University of the Arts London) during thirteen years, completed a PhD about interactive documentary at Goldsmiths, and is now Visiting Research Fellow at the University of the West of England. She co-convenes the i-Docs conference and is Creative Director of its website. She also mentors projects, organises trainings, curates conferences such as WebDox, blogs, researches and runs a monthly meet-up in London about factual interactive narrative. Her latest adventure is !F Lab, a new training scheme opened to interactive storytellers, where their projects can be incubated during a period of six months. !F Lab is a Creative Europe initiative.

Trainers • 2018

Sönke Kirchhof

Development Lab mentor
Sönke Kirchhof is CEO and executive producer of award-winning VR Full Service Studio INVR.SPACE GmbH. He studied political science in Hamburg and Film – and TV Production at Filmuniversität Babelsberg. He works in the fields of VR, stereoscopic filmmaking, VFX and CGI Postproduction as well as Research and Development in arts and technology since more than 15 years. He is also founder of reallifefilm international GmbH, working as Producer and Stereographer in all kind of projects. At INVR.SPACE he is in charge of all business- related operations as well as deciding on creative and technologic approaches. With INVR.SPACE and reallifefilm international he is involved in international projects with customers and partners such as Samsung, Unicef, BMW, Harman and Porsche, as well as Arte and ZDF.

Trainers • 2018

Susanna Lotz

Development Lab mentor
After graduating in Art History, she continued her university research by integrating the Dance Lab in Paris 8, working on motion capture in contemporary dance choreographies. Susanna coedited two issues of “Anomalie”, a bilingual review exploring different themes in the fields of arts and digital technologies. Her work included Anomalie #2 “Digital Performance” and Anomalie #3 “Interfaces”. She also contributed to the CD-ROM “Le Centre Georges Pompidou: La collection” and “Yves Saint-Laurent: 40 ans de création”.

Since 2002 Susanna has worked for the Web Department of Arte, where she was recruited to create innovative content for the web. Her teamwork with the commissioning broadcast editors resulted in the project “Gaza-Sderot – Life in spite of everything”, or “Farewell Comrades!”. Today Susanna Lotz lives in Berlin, where she collaborates on international transmedia projects. Susanna Lotz coordinates the Development Lab of the interactive documentary workshop: a project development programme for expanded documentaries, promoted by the Laboratory of Visual Culture (SUPSI) and Visions du Réel.

2017

Trainers • 2017

Elie Levasseur

Development Lab expert panel
Elie Levasseur is a French event organizer with a focus on interactive and immersive content. In 2016, he has been appointed programming director of Cross Video Days. With 378 projects received from 51 countries in 2015, Cross Video Days is the Leading European Digital Content Market and one of the best place to capture market trends and discover the very finest of the International digital-first creation. Supported by Creative Europe, the Content Market hosted 500 pre-arranged one-to-one business meetings between 60 selected projects and 60 Commissioners among the most emblematic TV, web broadcasters, MCNs or Funding bodies. Elie previously served as International Relations & General Coordinator Assistant for Sunny Side of The Doc and moved digital with eYeka, a global co-creation community that enables leading brands to activate online communities and drive crowdsourced innovation by tapping into creative power of user-generated content. 

Trainers • 2017

Federico Dini

Expert and Development Lab mentor
Federico Dini is a Berlin-based producer and art director exploring the borders between interaction and participation in cross-platform storytelling. His experience spans from film and TV to web and mobile applications. After winning a year funding from the EXIST Programme and the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology he founded Honig Studios to produce story-driven experiences that are playful and memorable across multiple platforms. With Honig Studios, Federico co-created the transmedia design of the "The Spiral" - a participative TV series and online social game broadcasted simultaneously in eight European countries. The project was nominated at the International Digital Emmy Awards for “Best TV fiction” and in the Prix Europa Awards for “Best online Project”. He is currently developing “Milli”, an extensive story universe for 3-6 years old kids told through animated series, playful applications and learning mini-games. Parallel to that, he's working on “The Great Depression”, a participative feature film about the separation and collapse of near future Europe. Prior to Honig Studios, Federico produced the controversial webseries “Notruf Deutschland” and interactive projects for clients such as Warner Group and Universal Music.

Trainers • 2017

Jiannis Sotiropoulos

Expert and Development Lab mentor
Jiannis Sotiropoulos is a Berlin-based producer and technical director exploring the borders between interaction and participation in cross-platform storytelling. After graduating from the film school of Potsdam Germany in 2008, he won an one year innovation grant from the German Ministry of Technology and established Honig Studios to produce story-driven experiences that are playful and memorable across multiple platforms. Currently he is the producer of “Milli”, a series of interactive stories and games for children from 3-6 years old and the technical director of “The Great Depression”, a participative feature film about a father’s pledge for a tiny coffin for his firstborn son. In 2012 he co-developed the transmedia design of “The Spiral” a participative TV series and online social game broadcasted simultaneously in eight european countries. The project was nominated at the International Digital Emmy Awards for ‘Best TV fiction” and in the Prix Europa Awards for “Best online Project”. Prior to that and among other projects, he created interactive campaign for Jessie J and Universal Music. The application reached over 10.000 unique players in the first week. After its success, it was translated into eight languages and was distributed in over thirty countries.

Trainers • 2017

Lili Blumers

Expert and Development Lab mentor
Lili works as a commissioning editor in ARTE France’s web department. She is in charge of interactive programmes (fiction, documentaries and games). She has been working for ARTE since 2005, where she was previously in charge of programming within the Programme Direction. Prior to ARTE, she was in charge of international development and programming for Multithématiques/Canal+. She holds a Master in Political Sciences.

Trainers • 2017

Michael Kaschner

Development Lab expert panel
Michael Kaschner, born in 1975, has been working as a freelance content creator, screenwriter and director in the field of factual entertainment for the public-law broadcasters (amongst other things for TerraX, TerraXpress, ZDF Info, ARTE, Andreas Kieling, and show teasers for Thomas Gottschalk). Since October 2013, he is the Senior Producer at ZDF Digital Medienproduktion GmbH where he initially manages the set-up of an editorial office for the series TerraXpress. By now, he has also been supervising a network consisting of more than 100 freelance authors for various formats. In parallel to his commitment in the field of interactive VR, Michael Kaschner is setting up a new fiction department at ZDF Digital, which develops new formats for the crime film genre and web series, as well as horizontal, episode-spanning series for streaming services and Pay TV. Michael Kaschner is a guest lecturer at the center for media competences, ZFM, at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen, as well as at the Film Academy in Ludwigsburg.

Trainers • 2017

Pierre Cattan

Development Lab expert panel
Pierre Cattan, transmedia producer, CEO of Small Bang studio. Pierre began his career with the creation of several French magazines such as “TOC” and “Usbek & Rica”. He also created and runned several production companies such as Otoko Films and 5ème Étage Production. In 2012 he founded the transmedia studio, Small Bang, which develops hybrid interactive projects. The products range from film productions (interactive or otherwise), to print and digital work, as well as sound production, event planning, product conception, application and game designing. Furthermore, Pierre produces and designs live shows for "L'émission dessinée" and "Mediapart". He also co-produced with Upian the online 30 minute hyper-video experience “Happy world: Burma, the dictatorship of the absurd” for which he received the Orson Welles Prize for Best Documentary at the California Film Awards in 2012. Pierre produced and show-runned the transmedia experience "Cinemacity" with Arte, released in July 2013. Most recently, he produced "BirdLab", a free participatory science game with the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Paris (MHNM) Seasons: Morphosis, the companion app’ of the last Jacques Perrin’s feature lengh movie Seasons, and Phallaina, a scrolling grafic novel’s app, both of them in co-production with France télévisions Nouvelles écritures. Pierre is also co-founder of the association Open Bidouille Camp and Coworking space Superbelleville.

Trainers • 2017

Sandra Gaudenzi

Expert
Sandra Gaudenzi started her career as a television producer and then moved into interactive television, to finally specialize in the field of digital interactive narrative. She has taught interactive media theory at the London College of Communication (University of the Arts London) during thirteen years, completed a PhD about interactive documentary at Goldsmiths, and is now Visiting Research Fellow at the University of the West of England. She co-convenes the i-Docs conference and is Creative Director of its website. She also mentors projects, organises trainings, curates conferences such as WebDox, blogs, researches and runs a monthly meet-up in London about factual interactive narrative. Her latest adventure is !F Lab, a new training scheme opened to interactive storytellers, where their projects can be incubated during a period of six months. !F Lab is a Creative Europe initiative.

Trainers • 2017

Susanna Lotz

Development Lab mentor
After graduating in Art History, she continued her university research by integrating the Dance Lab in Paris 8, working on motion capture in contemporary dance choreographies. Susanna coedited two issues of “Anomalie”, a bilingual review exploring different themes in the fields of arts and digital technologies. Her work included Anomalie #2 “Digital Performance” and Anomalie #3 “Interfaces”. She also contributed to the CD-ROM “Le Centre Georges Pompidou: La collection” and “Yves Saint-Laurent: 40 ans de création”.

Since 2002 Susanna has worked for the Web Department of Arte, where she was recruited to create innovative content for the web. Her teamwork with the commissioning broadcast editors resulted in the project “Gaza-Sderot – Life in spite of everything”, or “Farewell Comrades!”. Today Susanna Lotz lives in Berlin, where she collaborates on international transmedia projects. Susanna Lotz coordinates the Development Lab of the interactive documentary workshop: a project development programme for expanded documentaries, promoted by the Laboratory of Visual Culture (SUPSI) and Visions du Réel.

Trainers • 2017

William D. McMaster

Expert
Will McMaster is a Cannes award-winning documentary filmmaker and Head of VR at Visualise. Since joining Visualise, he has directed over 25 VR experiences, and oversaw the creation of dozens more. William became heavily involved in the VR scene in 2012, and began building software and hardware to facilitate 360 video creation and viewing in VR. In 2013, His experimental 360 film, Experience Japan, was the first 360 film available on the Oculus Rift. Since then, William has gone on to direct narrative VR experiences for The Economist, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), the BBC, and has worked with brands such as HSBC, Ford, and Samsung. 

William is a world renowned thought leader in VR and narrative. He is regularly invited to speak at international events and has contributed to, and been interviewed by: The Guardian, Wired, the Evening Standard, and TechRadar. 

Trainers • 2017

Wojciech Pazdur

Expert
Wojciech Pazdur, working in video game industry for 18 years already, for most of the time was focused on creating photorealistic 3D content. Had a participation in the first “Witcher”, now as head of the studio The Farm 51, responsible, among others, for “NecroVisioN” and “Painkiller Hell & Damnation”. Currently focused on “Get Even” and involved into research and development on 3D graphics and interactive storytelling.

2016

Trainers • 2016

Angad Singh Bhalla

Expert

Angad Singh Bhalla uses film to call attention to voices we rarely hear. His short films told the stories of Indian communities left behind by so-called development. U.A.I.L Go Back became a widely used organizing tool that helped pressure Alcan into ending its involvement in the project in a controversial mining project while Writings on the Wall was broadcast internationally by Al-Jazeera English. Passionate about using media as a means of fostering political change, Angad co-founded the production co-operative Time of Day Media. While working as a community organizer for immigrant rights, he produced videos for groups including the Service Employees International Union, Working America and the Center for Constitutional Rights. 


His debut feature documentary, Herman’s House, screened at more than 40 festivals, was distributed theatrically in the US and Canada and received an Emmy award following its 2013 PBS broadcast.  His first foray into interactive storytelling, The Deeper They Bury Me: A Call from Herman Wallace, has been presented at the New York Film Festival and IDFA. A production of the National Film Board of Canada, it was named one 2015’s 12 most creative examples of digitally enabled storytelling by the Columbia Digital Storytelling Lab.

Trainers • 2016

Bruno Choinière

akufen.ca

Expert and Development Lab mentor
With more than seven years of experience in the field, Bruno Choiniere is the head of the creative web department at Akufen. 

Throughout the course of his career, his work has consistently stood out. His most notable creations include the interactive documentary Trou Story (NFB); Les Enfants de la Bolduc (Lusio Films); and most recently A journal of Insomnia (NFB), official selection at the IDFA Festival in Amsterdam and at the Storyscapes 2013 competition during the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. Bruno Choiniere is also responsible for the artistic direction of the interactive fiction Émilie (Radio-Canada), finalist at the prestigious SXSW festival in the film / TV category. His expertise and the uniqueness of his projects have been recognized repeatedly by his peers internationally.

Over the past three years, Bruno Choiniere has given lectures and training sessions at numerous conferences, including the Filmgate festival in Miami, RDV Design Infopresse, and Digicamp NFB. His last collaboration work DAda-DAta is a digital project composed by a storm of interactive Dada events (“Dada Hacktions”) and an online anti-museum.

Trainers • 2016

Elie Levasseur

Development Lab expert panel
Elie Levasseur is a French event organizer with a focus on interactive and immersive content. 
In 2016, he has been appointed programming director of Cross Video Days. With 378 projects received from 51 countries in 2015, Cross Video Days is the Leading European Digital Content Market and one of the best place to capture market trends and discover the very finest of the International digital-first creation. Supported by Creative Europe, the Content Market hosted 500 pre-arranged one-to-one business meetings between 60 selected projects and 60 Commissioners among the most emblematic TV, web broadcasters, MCNs or Funding bodies. Elie previously served as International Relations & General Coordinator Assistant for Sunny Side of The Doc and moved digital with eYeka, a global co-creation community that enables leading brands to activate online communities and drive crowdsourced innovation by tapping into creative power of user-generated content. 

Trainers • 2016

Federico Dini

www.honigstudios.com

Development Lab mentor

Federico Dini is a Berlin-based producer and art director exploring the borders between interaction and participation in cross-platform storytelling. His experience spans from film and TV to web and mobile applications. After winning a year funding from the EXIST Programme and the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology he founded Honig Studios to produce story-driven experiences that are playful and memorable across multiple platforms. With Honig Studios, Federico co-created the transmedia design of the "The Spiral" - a participative TV series and online social game broadcasted simultaneously in eight European countries. The project was nominated at the International Digital Emmy Awards for “Best TV fiction” and in the Prix Europa Awards for “Best online Project”. He is currently developing “Milli”, an extensive story universe for 3-6 years old kids told through animated series, playful applications and learning mini-games. Parallel to that, he's working on “The Great Depression”, a participative feature film about the separation and collapse of near future Europe. Prior to Honig Studios, Federico produced the controversial webseries “Notruf Deutschland” and interactive projects for clients such as Warner Group and Universal Music.

Trainers • 2016

Ivan Venturi

Expert
Ivan Venturi was born in 1970 in Bologna, Italy. He began developing video games in the early ’80s and published his first C64 videogame in 1987. Venturi co-founded the first Italian video game software house (Simulmondo) where he has acted as Production Director until 1993. He then founded his own video game company (Colors Arti Multimediali) in 1994, producing dozens of PC videogames, and began began working as a video game producer and business developer. In 2003 he founded Ticonblu (formerly Koala Games), part of Gruppo Armonia. With Ticonblu he produced several serious games, edutainment games, and the adventures of Nicolas Eymerich, Inquisitor, published by Microids. In 2013 Ivan Venturi started an independent videogame development company, IV Productions, focused on PC/MAC/MOBILE/CONSOLE video games for the worldwide market.

Trainers • 2016

Maria Grau Stenzel

www.honigstudios.com

Development Lab mentor
Maria Grau Stenzel is a producer and production manager at Honig Studios in Berlin. She creates interactive experiences from games to mobile apps. Maria's strongest passion lies in creating educational children's contents, she thus joined Honig Studios in 2013 where she co-developed "Milli", an extensive story universe for children. Currently, Maria is working on a mobile game for the animation feature "Richard the Stork". Furthermore, she coordinates and creatively contributes to the production of the children's app "Jazzoo" (focus on Jazz music) and the "Berlin Unterwelten" app (an app about Berlin Bunkers). She is also part of the team developing the non violent stealth game “El Hijo”. Prior to Honig Studios, Maria gained a broad experience in the film and television industry working for Bavaria Film Interactive as a Production Coordinator and at the Erich Pommer Institute as a Project Coordinator, organizing the institute's international training projects for the film and television industry. She produced several short animations for the Internet learning platform Sofatutor and worked with Interfilm, coordinating and leading workshops for children and teenagers, introducing them to documentary making. Maria studied Media and Communication and International Studies at the University of Technology Sydney and at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Trainers • 2016

Mauro Salvador

Expert
Mauro Salvador holds a PhD in Communication Culture at the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Milan and a M.A. in Cinema, television and multimedia production at University of Bologna. He has written various academic essays and books on game studies, on gamification processes and on the spreading influence of games in media environments. He teaches Multimedia Production and Web contents Production as Adjunct Professor at the University of Bologna and at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. Mauro Salvador is co-founder of the academic online journal G|A|M|E - Game as Art, Media, Entertainment – The Italian Journal of Game Studies where he is now member of the Editorial Board. He also works as an urban game designer with the Dotventi Collective, and as a digital game designer with GAME-S Association and with IV Productions.

Trainers • 2016

Milica Zec

milicazec.com

Expert
Milica Zec is a NYC-based virtual reality and film director. Raised in war-torn Serbia, Milica’s work is deeply rooted in issues of conflict, identity and the human struggle. In addition to her own creative and client work, Milica has parlayed her artistic experience into a 9-year collaboration with performance artist Marina Abramovic. Highlights of her directorial work include the short film, “Christina” (Cannes Film Festival 2012) and “Marina Abramovic Presents MACCOC” (Venice Biennale 2011). Milica’s work has appeared in The New York Times, MSNBC, Art Forum, The Huffington Post and many other media outlets. 

Trainers • 2016

Pierre Cattan

smallbang.fr

Phallaina.fr

cinemacity.arte.tv

happy-world.com

Development Lab expert panel
Pierre Cattan, transmedia producer, CEO of Small Bang studio.

Pierre began his career with the creation of several French magazines such as “TOC” and “Usbek & Rica”. He also created and runned several production companies such as Otoko Films and 5ème Étage Production.

In 2012 he founded the transmedia studio, Small Bang, which develops hybrid interactive projects. The products range from film productions (interactive or otherwise), to print and digital work, as well as sound production, event planning, product conception, application and game designing.

Furthermore, Pierre produces and designs live shows for "L'émission dessinée" and "Mediapart". There have been fifty evening shows since December 2011, amounting to 3 millions views during live sessions and more than 3 million online replays. 

He also co-produced with Upian the online 30 minute hyper-video experience “Happy world: Burma, the dictatorship of the absurd” for which he received the Orson Welles Prize for Best Documentary at the California Film Awards in 2012.

Pierre produced and show-runned the transmedia experience "Cinemacity" with Arte, released in July 2013. Most recently, he produced "BirdLab", a free participatory science game with the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Paris (MHNM) Seasons:Morphosis, the companion app’ of the last Jacques Perrin’s feature lengh movie Seasons, and Phallaina, a scrolling grafic novel’s app, both of them in co-production with France télévisions Nouvelles écritures.

Pierre is also co-founder of the association Open Bidouille Camp and Coworking space Superbelleville.

Trainers • 2016

Sabine Bubeck-Paaz

Development Lab expert panel
Sabine Bubeck-Paaz is a commissioning editor at ZDF (German public broadcaster) for various documentary slots on ARTE, the European Culture Channel. The ZDF department “Thema”, where she is deputy head of, is dealing with One Offs, Season programming, Theme Evenings, the documentary series “ARTE Discovery” and Cross Media Projects. The investigative and creative documentary projects she is involved in are mostly international coproductions. The topics range from Culture, Science and History to Current Affairs, Human Interest and socio-political issues – always wishing to discover strong and surprising stories. Lately, she has been involved in the Oscar nominated coproductions “The Act of Killing”, “The Look of Silence”, “Claude Lanzmann – Spectres of the Shoah” and other award winning documentaries and cross media productions like “Drone”, “netwars”, “I am Ingrid Bergman”, “The Queen of Silence”, “Sugar Coated” etc. As a tutor, she has been participating in international pitching and training workshops. Since 2015, Sabine Bubeck-Paaz is also Head of Studies of ESoDoc - European Social Documentary (www.esodoc.eu).

Trainers • 2016

Sandra Gaudenzi

Expert
Sandra Gaudenzi started her career as a television producer and then moved into interactive television, to finally specialize in the field of digital interactive narrative.
She has taught interactive media theory at the London College of Communication (University of the Arts London) during thirteen years, completed a PhD about interactive documentary at Goldsmiths, and is now Visiting Research Fellow at the University of the West of England. She co-convenes the i-Docs conference and is Creative Director of its website. She also mentors projects, organises trainings, curates conferences such as WebDox, blogs, researches and runs a monthly meet-up in London about factual interactive narrative. Her latest adventure is !F Lab, a new training scheme opened to interactive storytellers, where their projects can be incubated during a period of six months. !F Lab is a Creative Europe initiative.

Trainers • 2016

Susanna Lotz

Expert and Development Lab mentor
After graduating in Art History, she continued her university research by integrating the Dance Lab in Paris 8, working on motion capture in contemporary dance choreographies. Susanna coedited two issues of “Anomalie”, a bilingual review exploring different themes in the fields of arts and digital technologies.

Her work included Anomalie #2 “Digital Performance” and Anomalie #3 “Interfaces”. She also contributed to the CD-ROM “Le Centre Georges Pompidou: La collection” and “Yves Saint-Laurent: 40 ans de création”.

Since 2002 Susanna has worked for the Web Department of Arte, where she was recruited to create innovative content for the web. Her teamwork with the commissioning broadcast editors resulted in the project “Gaza-Sderot – Life in spite of everything”, or “Farewell Comrades!”.

Today Susanna Lotz lives in Berlin, where she collaborates on international transmedia projects. Susanna Lotz coordinates the Development Lab of the interactive documentary workshop: a project development programme for expanded documentaries, promoted by the Laboratory of Visual Culture (SUPSI) and Visions du Réel.

Trainers • 2016

Winslow Turner Porter III

carbonpictures.com

Expert
Winslow Porter is a Brooklyn based director, creative technologist and producer who has always been fascinated with the possibilities of how the intersection of art and technology can elevate storytelling. With over five years of experiential and digital agency experience, he has created experiences for TED, Google, Delta, Diesel and Merrell as well as worked with the who’s who of creative coders, having produced Tribeca Film Festival Transmedia award-winning virtual reality documentary CLOUDS among other internationally acclaimed projects.

2015

Trainers • 2015

Alexandre Brachet

Expert
Alexandre Brachet, e-producer and CEO of “web producer” Upian, is one of the world’s major players in the area of web documentary and the intersection of documentary cinema and digital storytelling.
Founded in 1998, Upian has been producing webdocumentaries since 2005 with its first creation, lacitedesmortes.net. Over the last few years, Upian has produced some of the most notorious webdocumentaries among which: thanatorama.com (2007); gaza-sderot.arte.tv (2008 – Prix Europa); prisonvalley.arte.tv (2010 – World Press Photo first prize of the interactive category for the multimedia contest); happy-world.com (2011) and Alma A Tale Of Violence (2012 IDFA Doclab award, World Press Photo, Sheffield Doc Fest innovation award, Grimme online award, Etoile de la Scam). Among Upian’s last production, together with Yami2 and France Television, Génération Quoi: a successful documentary experience about the state of the youth in France (website recorded 20 million page views and over 22.5 million answers to individual questions). Lately, Upian produced 24h Jerusalem, a second screen experience using Vine videos was created to go with an exceptional 24 hours documentary produced by ARTE and BR. “Documentary Narration on the Internet. Webdoc Development and Perspectives”, 19.4.2015 (Grande Salle de la Colombière, Nyon). FOCAL event, in collaboration with Visions du Reél. With the support of ARF/FDS.

Trainers • 2015

Christian Popp

Expert
Christian Popp has since 1991 worked as a journalist and film director. From 1998-2003 he was commissioning editor for ARTE in Strasbourg and in Berlin.
From 2005 to 2010 he worked as producer, author and editor in chief in Paris and Berlin for interscience film, an independent French-German production company. In 2011 he established in Berlin DOCDAYS Productions where he produced documentaries and transmedia projects until the end of 2014. In 2012 he co-founded with Fabrice Estève the Paris based productions company YUZU Productions where he is currently producing. Christian is mentoring and moderating at various documentary events (Thessaloniki Documentary Forum, LisbonDocs, Vision du Réel, Doc Ouest, IDFA Academy, Diagonale, interactive documentary workshop). He attended the Pixel Lab in 2011 and was part of the Swiss Transmedia Projects jury in 2014.

Trainers • 2015

Elie Levasseur

Development Lab expert panel
Elie Levasseur is a French event organizer with a focus on interactive and immersive content. 

In 2016, he has been appointed programming director of Cross Video Days. With 378 projects received from 51 countries in 2015, Cross Video Days is the Leading European Digital Content Market and one of the best place to capture market trends and discover the very finest of the International digital-first creation. Supported by Creative Europe, the Content Market hosted 500 pre-arranged one-to-one business meetings between 60 selected projects and 60 Commissioners among the most emblematic TV, web broadcasters, MCNs or Funding bodies. Elie previously served as International Relations & General Coordinator Assistant for Sunny Side of The Doc and moved digital with eYeka, a global co-creation community that enables leading brands to activate online communities and drive crowdsourced innovation by tapping into creative power of user-generated content. 

Trainers • 2015

Ewa Przybylak

Expert
Ewa is account director and co-founder of BrightMedia, the digital studio from Poland, which provides unique style of design and interactive realisations.
She gathered marketing experience in well-known companies, such as McCann Erickson, L’Oreal and media house MEC Global. She has been lucky enough to work with some of the best talents in the industry and some of the greatest brands, including: Mercedes Benz, Nestle, Rimmel, Orange, Maybelline New York. After few years of working in corporations she decided to quit and run BrightMedia with Lukasz Gorka and Pawel Rebisz in 2014. It seems that it was a great decision because only after one year BrightMedia was nominated for The Agency of The year 2014 by AWWWARS.com and had got several international awards. Now Ewa works with clients and manage crucial projects to achieve always the best results. The most famous realisation of BrightMedia is Warswarising.eu website.

Trainers • 2015

James Pallot

Expert
Jamie Pallot is a co-founder of Emblematic Group, pioneers in the production of immersive, virtual reality journalism (“Project Syria”, Nonny de la Peña).
He was formerly Editorial Director of Conde Nast Digital, where he won a National Magazine Award for General Excellence and oversaw web sites including style.com,epicurious.com, and concierge.com. Pallot has led major digital initiatives at Time Inc., Microsoft, and NewsCorp, as well as editing The Virgin Film Guide in the U.K. He is a Contributing Editor at Vanity Fair and has written for The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and Harper’s Bazaar.

Trainers • 2015

Jiannis Sotiropoulos

Expert and Development Lab mentor
Jiannis Sotiropoulos is a Berlin-based producer and technical director exploring the borders between interaction and participation in cross-platform storytelling.
After graduating from the film school of Potsdam Germany in 2008, he won an one year innovation grant from the German Ministry of Technology and established Honig Studios to produce story-driven experiences that are playful and memorable across multiple platforms. Currently he is the producer of “Milli”, a series of interactive stories and games for children from 3-6 years old and the technical director of “The Great Depression”, a participative feature film about a father’s pledge for a tiny coffin for his firstborn son. In 2012 he co-developed the transmedia design of “The Spiral” a participative TV series and online social game broadcasted simultaneously in eight european countries. The project was nominated at the International Digital Emmy Awards for ‘Best TV fiction” and in the Prix Europa Awards for “Best online Project”. Prior to that and among other projects, he created interactive campaign for Jessie J and Universal Music. The application reached over 10.000 unique players in the first week. After its success, it was translated into eight languages and was distributed in over thirty countries.

Trainers • 2015

Johanna Strodt

Expert and Development Lab mentor
Johanna Strodt is a producer and production manager, living and working in Berlin.
Her speciality lies in cross media productions. After studying European Media Studies in Potsdam, she worked several years as production manager in a publishing house for educational media in Berlin. At Honig Studios she produces interactive experiences from games to mobile apps. She develops visual styles, leads the creative team in the design process and coordinates the productions to follow the artistic guidelines. Currently, Johanna is working on a mobile game for teenagers and a community application for hobby cooks.

Trainers • 2015

Łukasz Górka

Expert
Lukasz is production director and co-founder of BrightMedia, the brand new digital studio. He is responsible for technical, interactive and emotional part of realizations.
Ten years ago he was fascinated with flash technology which brought him to the digital industry. Since then he has worked for many well-known brands and best digital agencies in Poland. During that whole time his skills, predispositions, interests and requirements have evaluated. He always wanted to do outstanding projects and work with the best talents. This is why he decided to start brand new studio with his friends in 2014. Lukasz pays a lot of attention to every single detail to reach very emotional and memorable realizations. He has a great passion for new technologies and creative coding. This year he is a member of prestigious jury at AWWWARDS.com.

Trainers • 2015

Navid Khonsari

Expert and Development Lab mentor
Founder of the independent studio iNK Stories, The Space calls Navid Khonsari one of the five top digital artists of our time.
Known for having developed the cinematic look and feel for groundbreaking AAA video games such as Grand Theft Auto/Vice City/San Andreas, Max Payne, The Warriors, Midnight Club, Manhunt, Red Dead Revolver, Alan Wake, Homefront and more. The Contract, Pindemonium and Pulling John are among his film titles while the soon to be released Infidel is his debut graphic novel. 1979 Revolution is Khonsari’s most innovative and latest coup, the highly anticipated narrative adventure video game based on the real events of the revolution in Iran. A fellow of the Sundance Institute and recipient of support from the Doris Duke Foundation, Khonsari often speaks on the convergence of documentary and video games and the new media approach to incite empathy through innovative storytelling. The art installation based on his game, 1979 Revolution, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival ’15, and continues to exhibit at Film Festivals and museums around the world with upcoming events including SXSW, IndieBo, and more.

Trainers • 2015

Sandra Gaudenzi

Expert
Sandra Gaudenzi started her career as a television producer and then moved into interactive television, to finally specialize in the field of digital interactive narrative.
She has taught interactive media theory at the London College of Communication (University of the Arts London) during thirteen years, completed a PhD about interactive documentary at Goldsmiths, and is now Visiting Research Fellow at the University of the West of England. She co-convenes the i-Docs conference and is Creative Director of its website. She also mentors projects, organises trainings, curates conferences such as WebDox, blogs, researches and runs a monthly meet-up in London about factual interactive narrative. Her latest adventure is !F Lab, a new training scheme opened to interactive storytellers, where their projects can be incubated during a period of six months. !F Lab is a Creative Europe initiative.

Trainers • 2015

Susanna Lotz

Expert and Development Lab mentor

After graduating in Art History, she continued her university research by integrating the Dance Lab in Paris 8, working on motion capture in contemporary dance choreographies. Susanna coedited two issues of “Anomalie”, a bilingual review exploring different themes in the fields of arts and digital technologies.

Her work included Anomalie #2 “Digital Performance” and Anomalie #3 “Interfaces”. She also contributed to the CD-ROM “Le Centre Georges Pompidou: La collection” and “Yves Saint-Laurent: 40 ans de création”.

Since 2002 Susanna has worked for the Web Department of Arte, where she was recruited to create innovative content for the web. Her teamwork with the commissioning broadcast editors resulted in the project “Gaza-Sderot – Life in spite of everything”, or “Farewell Comrades!”.

Today Susanna Lotz lives in Berlin, where she collaborates on international transmedia projects. Susanna Lotz coordinates the Development Lab of the interactive documentary workshop: a project development programme for expanded documentaries, promoted by the Laboratory of Visual Culture (SUPSI) and Visions du Réel.

Trainers • 2015

Tobias Büchner

Development Lab expert panel
Tobias Büchner studied Visual Communication at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg.
In 2001 he graduated at EAVE. From 2000-2006 he worked at Peter Stockhaus Filmproduction in Hamburg as a producer for feature films and documentaries. From 2005-2006, he acted as executive producer of the weekly TV-format "Kurzschluss" on ARTE. As an independent producer he produced several

documentaries, short-films and commercials. He has been working for zero one film as managing director since 2007 and is in charge of licensing, fundraising, development and production of New Media and cross platform projects. 2011 he participated in the Pixel lab and won the Pixel lab Prize for "turning points" (www.aera-magazin.de). 2013 he was in charge of the second screen format for the tv fiction series "time of heroes" (SWR, ARTE, www.zeitderhelden.de) and 2014 he produced in co-production with Alegria and Upian the second screen program for 24 h Jerusalem (BR, ARTE, www.24hjerusalem.tv)

Trainers • 2015

Vassiliki Khonsari

Expert and Development Lab mentor
In 2006 Vassiliki Khonsari co-founded the New York City based studio, iNK Stories.
With a background in Visual Anthropology and a specialization in verite storytelling, Khonsari Produced/Directed and often shot a variety of shows that aired on Vh1, TLC, Discovery, ESPN, Oxygen, and more. Khonsari’s independent feature documentary titles include Our House (Prod: 20+ awards), Pindemonium (Prod: Sundance Channel) and the award winning Pulling John(Dir: SXSW). At iNK Stories Khonsari oversees production on the various projects that range from commercial to social awareness to independent original content across mediums. A fellow at the Sundance Institute, Vassiliki attended the New Frontier story lab to incubate iNK’s latest project, the narrative adventurevideo game, 1979 Revolution. A video game that converges documentary narrative with critical decision making, 1979 Revolution has become a much anticipated, critically heralded game due to release in 2015. The art installation based on1979 Revolution, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival ’15, and continues to exhibit at Film Festivals and museums around the world with upcoming events including SXSW, IndieBo, and more.

2014

Trainers • 2014

Adam Sigel

Expert and Development Lab mentor
Writer, producer and content strategist working across multiple platforms.
He has work in film and TV (scripted and documentary) for Alcon Entertainment, NBC/Universal, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Hearst Entertainment, and PBS. He was story editor for Steven Spielberg on his video game project for Electronic Arts and writer/producer of the award-winning cross-platform series “Afterworld” for Sony TV. He has developed content and digital strategy for Disney, Microsoft, Activision, Cisco, Sony/Columbia Tri-Star, Fox Searchlight, Suzuki and GE.

He has been a speaker and/or expert for Nordisk Film and TV, Screen Australia, Torino Film Lab, Power to the Pixel, Independent Filmmaker Project, Berlinale Talent Campus, Atlantic Film Festival, Canadian Media Fund, Merging+Media, Distrito Cinema of Columbia, Forum Brazil, and the National Film Board of Canada.

Adam is now writing and producing an action series for John Woo “The Red Book” and an interactive film “Social Media Kills” with the National Film Board of Canada. He is working on a new integrated game and TV documentary series entitled “Sequence”, which he developed in the Torino Film Lab’s Writer’s Room program. Adam studied film production at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and graduated with high honors from Wesleyan University (film and history). He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.

Trainers • 2014

Bruno Choinière

Expert and Development Lab mentor
With more than seven years of experience in the field, Bruno Choiniere is the head of the creative web department at Akufen.

Throughout the course of his career, his work has consistently stood out. His most notable creations include the interactive documentary Trou Story (NFB); Les Enfants de la Bolduc (Lusio Films); and most recently A journal of Insomnia (NFB), official selection at the IDFA Festival in Amsterdam and at the Storyscapes 2013 competition during the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. Bruno Choiniere is also responsible for the artistic direction of the interactive fiction Émilie (Radio-Canada), finalist at the prestigious SXSW festival in the film / TV category. His expertise and the uniqueness of his projects have been recognized repeatedly by his peers internationally.

Over the past three years, Bruno Choiniere has given lectures and training sessions at numerous conferences, including the Filmgate festival in Miami, RDV Design Infopresse, and Digicamp NFB.

Trainers • 2014

Christian Popp

Development Lab mentor
Christian Popp has since 1991 worked as a journalist and film director. From 1998-2003 he was commissioning editor for ARTE in Strasbourg and in Berlin.
From 2005 to 2010 he worked as producer, author and editor in chief in Paris and Berlin for interscience film, an independent French-German production company. In 2011 he established in Berlin DOCDAYS Productions where he produced documentaries and transmedia projects until the end of 2014. In 2012 he co-founded with Fabrice Estève the Paris based productions company YUZU Productions where he is currently producing. Christian is mentoring and moderating at various documentary events (Thessaloniki Documentary Forum, LisbonDocs, Vision du Réel, Doc Ouest, IDFA Academy, Diagonale, interactive documentary workshop). He attended the Pixel Lab in 2011 and was part of the Swiss Transmedia Projects jury in 2014.

Trainers • 2014

Dan Wechsler

Expert
A graduate in Business Management from Lausanne’s School of Economics, Dan Wechsler worked as a manager for several companies before enrolling at the Media Business School in 2003 (Madrid, Spain).
A year later, he joined forces with film director Laurent Nègre to establish the Geneva-based production company Bord Cadre films Sàrl (Switzerland).

Producer on the Move during the Cannes Int’l Film Festival in 2011, Dan produced Nègre’s debut feature fragile (2006) and Operation Casablanca (2010). He also produced the Romanian filmmaker Cristi Puiu’s Aurora (Official Selection’s Un Certain Regard, Cannes, 2010) and Los Pasos Dobles, by Isaki Lacuesta (Winner of the San Sebastian Int’l Film Festival Great Prize, 2011).

Trainers • 2014

David Dufresne

Expert and Development Lab mentor
David Dufresne is an independent writer and filmmaker.

Fort McMoney is his new film, an interactive game documentary, produced by ONF/Arte and Toxa and acclaimed by the NY Times as the “wedding of the film and the video game”. In 2010, he authored and co-directed Prison Valley, a web documentary, with Philippe Brault (Upian/Arte), which won a host of international awards: World Press Photo 2011 (Best interactive non-linear work of the year), Visa pour l’image 2010 (Best web documentary, Perpignan, France), Sheffield Doc/Fest (England, special mention from the jury), best cross-media production (AIB, London), 2010 Cross-media Award in Bellaria (Italy) and the Prix Italia (Turin, Italy). David Dufresne also crafted the film Quand la France s’embrasse (France 2, in 2007, with Christophe Bouquet). He was a long-time reporter for Libération and managing editor of iTélé, France’s 24-hour newscast. He has also published a dozen investigation books. He was also one of the first Internet players in France (he published the first webzine, La Rafale, in 1995). Today, David lives in Montreal.

Trainers • 2014

Elaine McMillion

Expert
Elaine McMillion is an award-winning documentary storyteller and visual journalist.
She is the project director of Hollow, an interactive documentary that examines the issues of rural America, as well as the director and producer of short and feature films that have screened nationally and internationally. McMillion’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Filmmaker Magazine and Huffington Post. She has presented the Hollow case study on panels and discussions at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Open Documentary Lab, Harvard University’s Berkman Center, Camden International Film Festival, New York Film Festival at the Museum of Moving Image and IFP Conference. In the summer of 2013, Filmmaker Magazine named McMillion one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film. Most recently, Hollow was selected for the International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam’s DocLab Competition. McMillion holds a B.S. in Journalism and a M.F.A. in Visual and Media Arts.

Trainers • 2014

Emmanuel Cuénod

Development Lab expert panel
Emmanuel Cuénod, journalist and producer by training, was co-editor-in-chief of the professional review Ciné-Bulletin for several years.

A film critic and cultural writer for Tribune de Genève for ten years, he also worked as producer for the French-speaking Swiss production company Rita Productions, and regularly appeared as reporter on the Radio Télévision Suisse airwaves. He is also the founder of In utero, a production organisation specialising in the development of radical projects. In 2013 Emmanuel Cuénod was appointed new Executive and Artistic Director of the Festival Tous Ecrans in Geneva. The programme of the Festival Tous Ecrans explores areas on the borderlines between cinema, television and digital formats (transmedia, crossmedia, webdocs etc.), video games, web series and video-clips. As a lover of cinema and audio-visual creations, Emmanuel Cuénod hopes to continue making this event a working part of contemporary creation, and in particular to closely keep up with the narrative methods emerging from the digital screen

Trainers • 2014

Guillaume Braun

Expert and Development Lab mentor
A key player in the design industry for over 10 years, Guillaume Braun began his career working for companies such as Sid Lee, Les Évadés, BOS, and Revolver 3.
He worked with a range of international clients including Cirque du Soleil, Adidas, Tourisme Montreal and Redbull. In 2007, he went on to establish his own agency, Akufen, convinced that his vision could offer an alternative to the agency-freelance relationships that dominated the industry at the time. His training in both design and marketing are two key elements that have allowed Akufen to excel as an interactive agency in Quebec, as well as internationally.

Guillaume Braun specializes particularly in interactive web. As creative director, he played an important role in the conception and realization of projects such as the interactive documentary Trou Story (ONF) and Les Enfants de la Bolduc (Lusio Films). More recently, A journal of Insomnia (NFB), was recognized at the IDFA Festival in Amsterdam, and in the Storyscapes 2013 competition during the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. In addition, the interactive fiction Emilie (Radio-Canada), which added to Akufen’s list of major interactive projects, was named as a finalist in the film / TV category at the prestigious SXSW festival.

Today, Guillaume Braun regularly lectures on graphic design, most recently giving talks at l’Uqam, Sherbrooke College and RDV Design Infopresse. He also teaches interactive design at Salette College.

Trainers • 2014

Judith Aston

Expert
Judith Aston is co-director of i-Docs, the web-hub and international symposia for discussion and debate on the rapidly evolving genre of interactive documentary.
She holds a PhD in Interaction Design from the Royal College of Art in London and a Masters Degree in the Social Sciences from the University of Cambridge. She was a pioneer in the UK’s emergent multimedia industry, working on videodisc and CD-ROM projects with the BBC Interactive Television and Apple Computing in the mid-1980s and has retained her involvement in this area ever since. As a documentary maker with a specialist interest in cross cultural communication, her work has brought her into contact with a wide variety of people including Tibetan monks, Tuareg nomads, museum archivists and factory workers. She is an associate lecturer in multiplatform production at the University of the West of England and is actively developing i-Docs related projects through her affiliation with the University’s Digital Cultures Research Centre.

Trainers • 2014

Lena Thiele

Expert
Creative Director and Author Lena Thiele designs and produces media formats in the field of film, online, mobile and games since 2003
2008 she co-founded a Berlin based games studio. Since 2010 she is focusing on international transmedia productions in the field of documentary and fiction. Her last interactive documentary FAREWELL COMRADES! INTERACTIVE, produced by Gebrueder Beetz Filmproduktion, in coproduction with Artline Films, ARTE France, ARTE G.E.I.E. and ZDF Germany, has been awarded the FOCAL INTERNATIONAL AWARD 2012 and nominated for international awards like the DEUTSCH-FRANZÖSISCHER JOURNALISTENPREIS or PRIX EUROPA.

In addition she works as a lecturer at international workshops and universities like INTERNATIONAL FILMSCHOOL COLOGNE, the TORINO FILM LAB, DOKLAB or HFF MÜNCHEN, and as consultant for the media industry.

Lena Thiele holds a Master of Arts Degree from the University of Arts, Berlin in Communication in Social and Economic Contexts with focus on experimental media design and cinema studies. Furthermore she was juror in the digital program (non-fiction category) for the 2012 International Digital Emmy® Award and obtained her coaching certificate last year.

Trainers • 2014

Serge Gordey

Development Lab expert panel
Serge Gordey is a documentary producer mostly involved in international coproduction, both on television and online.
From 2001 to 2007, he was executive producer and head of current affairs at Point du Jour (Paris). He then joined Bo Travail (Paris) where he headed creative documentaries. In 2009, he joined Alegria Productions, a French company specialized in high end international documentaries: he produced among others Sundance awarded, International Emmy awarded and Oscar nominated “Five broken cameras” by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi). In Cannes 2010, he was acclaimed “international world trailblazer” for his innovative work on the web (“Gaza-Sderot: life in spite of everything”, “Havana-Miami: times are changing”). He is currently producing “24 hour Jerusalem on line”. In the nineties, he headed Internews Yugoslavia, where he coproduced “Balkan Bridges”, a series aimed at creating a dialogue through the innovative use of videoconferencing techniques for documentary production.

Trainers • 2014

Susanna Lotz

Development Lab mentor
Susanna Lotz is an online editor at the Web Department of Arte.
After graduating in Art History, she continued her university research by integrating the Dance Lab in Paris 8, working on motion capture in contemporary dance choreographies. Susanna coedited two issues of “Anomalie”, a bilingual review exploring different themes in the fields of arts and digital technologies.

Her work included Anomalie #2 “Digital Performance” and Anomalie #3 “Interfaces”. She also contributed to the CD-ROM “Le Centre Georges Pompidou: La collection” and “Yves Saint-Laurent: 40 ans de création”.

Since 2002 Susanna has worked for the Web Department of Arte, where she was recruited to create innovative content for the web. Her teamwork with the commissioning broadcast editors resulted in the project “Gaza-Sderot – Life in spite of everything”, or “Farewell Comrades!”.

Today Susanna Lotz lives in Berlin, where she collaborates on international transmedia projects. Susanna Lotz coordinates the Development Lab of the interactive documentary workshop: a project development programme for expanded documentaries, promoted by the Laboratory of Visual Culture (SUPSI) and Visions du Réel.

Trainers • 2014

Ulrich Fischer

Expert
Since 1994, Ulrich Fischer is creating film and video projects, realizes installations or performances and works with new media interactivity.
He graduated from the Geneva Art School, the E.S.A.V. in 2000. He founded two companies: C-Side Productions (cinema production & postproduction) in 2007 and Memoways (software development) in 2011. His latest project, Walking the Edit, is a transmedia project initiated in 2008, allowing users of a mobile app to “walk movies” in an audio-guide style experience. This project was showcased in several festivals and is in use in European cities (Paris, Brussels, Geneva etc.). Next to consulting work for cultural institutions, he is giving theoretical and technical curses in various schools, events or institutions.

2013

Trainers • 2013

Alexandre Brachet

Expert
Alexandre Brachet founded Upian in 1998. Upian is a creative agency specialized in webdesign and in the development of media websites (Rue 89, France Inter, AFP, Lesinrocks etc.).
Founded in 1998, Upian has been producing webdocumentaries since 2005 with its first creation, lacitedesmortes.net. Over the last few years, Upian has produced some of the most notorious webdocumentaries among which: thanatorama.com (2007); gaza-sderot.arte.tv (2008 – Prix Europa); prisonvalley.arte.tv (2010 – World Press Photo first prize of the interactive category for the multimedia contest); happy-world.com (2011) and Alma A Tale Of Violence (2012 IDFA Doclab award, World Press Photo, Sheffield Doc Fest innovation award, Grimme online award, Etoile de la Scam). Among Upian’s last production, together with Yami2 and France Television, Génération Quoi: a successful documentary experience about the state of the youth in France (website recorded 20 million page views and over 22.5 million answers to individual questions). Lately, Upian produced 24h Jerusalem, a second screen experience using Vine videos was created to go with an exceptional 24 hours documentary produced by ARTE and BR. “Documentary Narration on the Internet. Webdoc Development and Perspectives”, 19.4.2015 (Grande Salle de la Colombière, Nyon). FOCAL event, in collaboration with Visions du Reél. With the support of ARF/FDS.

Trainers • 2013

Arnau Gifreu Castells

Expert
Arnau Gifreu Castells is a lecturer, researcher and director in the audiovisual and multimedia field.
He is a doctor in communications and has a master’s degree in digital arts from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). He is a research affiliate at the Open Documentary Lab (MIT, Massachussets Institute of Technology) and part of the i-docs group, of the i-docs Lab and the i-docs Conference (University of the West of England). He is a lecturer at the Universitat Ramón Llull (URL) and at Universitat deVic (UVIC), directing Final Grade Projects in the multimedia field. He is a founder and coordinator of UVIC_Lab. He has published various book chapters and articles in his research area, interactive and transmedia non-fiction, and specifically on interactive documentaries. In terms of research stays, he has been a research lecturer at Harvard University (Harvard Metalab) and York University (Future Cinema Lab).

Trainers • 2013

Bruno Flaven

Development Lab expert panel
Before launching the 3WDOC project, Bruno Flaven worked within the media business for 15 years, first as TV producer for documentaries and then on the Internet as content and project manager, working closely on the convergence of the 2 medias: Web and TV.
He founded the web agency Hecube with 2 partners who came from a similar background and persisted with the idea to mix Web and TV into a tool that will let anyone produce multimedia content on the Internet, Mobile and Connected TV (HbbTV, social TV, second screen). With extensive development in HTML5 and jQuery, Hecube have created 3WDOC Studio, one of the first browser-based authoring and publishing applications for digital storytelling, fully Cloud and totally SaaS. This web application introduces timeline and positioning in a web page. 3WDOC Studio gives anyone the ability to create beautiful and interactive stories on the web.

hecube.net – Creative & interactive digital experience. Blog: social.hecube.net.

3WDOC.COM – Mix the Web and become a Media.Blog: blog.3wdoc.com.

Trainers • 2013

Christian Beetz

Expert
Christian Beetz studied theatre studies and cultural sciences in Berlin.
As executive director of gebrueder beetz filmproduktion he produces international documentaries since 2000 and is responsible for feature films and international coproductions, working both as executive producer and director. Some of his productions include: “FC Barcelona Confidential”, “Autumn Gold” and the TV-series “Inspired by Nature” or “Farewell Comrades!” with its interactive webformat. For his documentary “Between Insanity and Beauty – The Art Collection of Dr. Prinzhorn” he won the German Grimme Award for screenplay and director within the category Information and Culture and the Marler Group’s Adolf-Grimme Audience Award.

Trainers • 2013

Christian Popp

Development Lab expert panel
Christian Popp has since 1991 worked as a journalist and film director. From 1998-2003 he was commissioning editor for ARTE in Strasbourg and in Berlin.
From 2005 to 2010 he worked as producer, author and editor in chief in Paris and Berlin for interscience film, an independent French-German production company. In 2011 he established in Berlin DOCDAYS Productions where he produced documentaries and transmedia projects until the end of 2014. In 2012 he co-founded with Fabrice Estève the Paris based productions company YUZU Productions where he is currently producing. Christian is mentoring and moderating at various documentary events (Thessaloniki Documentary Forum, LisbonDocs, Vision du Réel, Doc Ouest, IDFA Academy, Diagonale, interactive documentary workshop). He attended the Pixel Lab in 2011 and was part of the Swiss Transmedia Projects jury in 2014.

Trainers • 2013

Claire Leproust

Expert
Since January 2008 Claire Leproust is CAPA’s Associate Director in charge of the group digital content development, production and publishing channels Rendez-vous à Paris – Youtube and CapaTV.
From 2006 to 2007 she was Associate Director of Marketing and Content at EYEKA, a web2.0 internet start-up. From 2003 to 2006 Claire Leproust founded and managed “TV For Mobile”, a company specialised in mobile and internet content sourcing, conception, production and distribution. From 1993 to 2003 she was deputy director of programs in charge of developing new interactive television services at Canalsat (VIVENDI GROUP), and Director of Marketing and Portal content at Vizzavi (SFR).

Trainers • 2013

Frédéric Dubois

Development Lab Mentor
Frédéric Dubois is a screenplay designer and producer in the field of interactive non-fiction.
Frédéric has worked with the National Film Board of Canada on several projects. The last one he directed is the interactive version of The Hole Story, a documentary about resource extraction. He regularly works with the Association for Progressive Communications – an NGO network concerned with human rights and the internet, as well as with other nonprofits. Frédéric is a reporter and activist with independent media and he co-edited two books about media and journalism: “Autonomous Media” (2005) and “EXTRACTION!” (2007).

Trainers • 2013

Gerry Flahive

Expert
In a career spanning more than 30 years with the National Film Board of Canada, Gerry Flahive has produced more than 75 documentary films and interactive projects on a wide range of subjects, including health care, cultural diversity, urbanism, history, communications, diplomacy, globalization and racism.
Senior producer Gerry Flahive has been at the forefront of the NFB’s innovative work with digital media, producing the groundbreaking multi-platform Filmmaker-in-Residence project at St. Michaelʼs Hospital, winner of the NFB’s first Webby Award in 2008. He is currently producing Highrise, a multi-year many-media documentary project looking at vertical life across the planet. “Highrise: Out My Window” won a 2011 Emmy Award. His recent projects include “Paris 1919”, “Waterlife”, “I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors”, “The End of Time”, and “Surviving Progress”. Flahive is a frequent contributor to the Globe and Mail, and has been published in Time, The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, the Toronto Star, and the Los Angeles Times.

Trainers • 2013

Jeremy Mendes

Expert
Jeremy Mendes is a Vancouver based artist with over 12 years experience working on interactive projects.
He is currently working with the National Film Board of Canada as a Creator and Interactive Producer. His recent success with Bear71 has landed numerous awards including a Cannes Cyber Lion, and FWA Site of the Year 2012. He has attended festivals internationally, performing a live version of the project and speaking to audiences about interactive work – venues include IDFA, DOXA and Rooftops festival NYC. Other NFB projects include co-creation of This Land – with a handful of other titles due to launch this year. These interactive projects truly capitalize on his collective experience – requiring an understanding of story, culture, art and design. And importantly, how these elements are conveyed through interactive experiences. He graduated from Emily Carr in 1996 and specialized in Art Direction, Creative Direction, Design and Illustration. His experience spans – storytelling, interactive design, motion design, information design, creative conceptual work, brand development and advertising.

Trainers • 2013

Judith Aston

Expert
Judith Aston is co-director of i-Docs, the web-hub and international symposia for discussion and debate on the rapidly evolving genre of interactive documentary.
She holds a PhD in Interaction Design from the Royal College of Art in London and a Masters Degree in the Social Sciences from the University of Cambridge. She was a pioneer in the UK’s emergent multimedia industry, working on videodisc and CD-ROM projects with the BBC Interactive Television and Apple Computing in the mid-1980s and has retained her involvement in this area ever since. As a documentary maker with a specialist interest in cross cultural communication, her work has brought her into contact with a wide variety of people including Tibetan monks, Tuareg nomads, museum archivists and factory workers. She is an associate lecturer in multiplatform production at the University of the West of England and is actively developing i-Docs related projects through her affiliation with the University’s Digital Cultures Research Centre.

Trainers • 2013

Lena Thiele

Development Lab mentor
Creative Director and Author Lena Thiele designs and produces media formats in the field of film, online, mobile and games since 2003.
2008 she co-founded a Berlin based games studio. Since 2010 she is focusing on international transmedia productions in the field of documentary and fiction. Her last interactive documentary FAREWELL COMRADES! INTERACTIVE, produced by Gebrueder Beetz Filmproduktion, in coproduction with Artline Films, ARTE France, ARTE G.E.I.E. and ZDF Germany, has been awarded the FOCAL INTERNATIONAL AWARD 2012 and nominated for international awards like the DEUTSCH-FRANZÖSISCHER JOURNALISTENPREIS or PRIX EUROPA.

In addition she works as a lecturer at international workshops and universities like INTERNATIONAL FILMSCHOOL COLOGNE, the TORINO FILM LAB, DOKLAB or HFF MÜNCHEN, and as consultant for the media industry.

Lena Thiele holds a Master of Arts Degree from the University of Arts, Berlin in Communication in Social and Economic Contexts with focus on experimental media design and cinema studies. Furthermore she was juror in the digital program (non-fiction category) for the 2012 International Digital Emmy® Award and obtained her coaching certificate last year.

Trainers • 2013

Mandy Rose

Development Lab mentor
Mandy Rose is a Senior Research Fellow at the Digital Cultures Research Centre, University of the West of England.
Her research looks at the space where documentary meets networked culture. Her work as a documentary maker includes Hilda at Darjeeling for Channel Four and Meeting the Masai Mob for BBC2. She has been responsible for a number of ground-breaking participatory media projects for the BBC. She was co-founder and producer of Video Nation (CRE Media Award), executive producer of the digital storytelling project, “Capture Wales” (BAFTA Cymru), devised the multiplatform “Voices” project (Webby nominee) and executive produced “MyScienceFictionLife” (Webby Honoree). Mandy Rose’s current work-in-progress, the Are you happy? project revisits Rouch & Morin’s seminal 1960 documentary “Chronicle of a Summer” in the context of the global web. Mandy blogs at CollabDocs and is a contributing editor to i-Docs.

Trainers • 2013

Marije Meerman

Development Lab expert panel
Marije Meerman lives in Amsterdam. She made her debut as a director with the documentary “The Creche: Live and Work in the Spirit of Lenin” on the anti-authoritarian kindergarten that she attended in Amsterdam at the end of the sixties.
At the kindergarten she was raised according to the ideas of Marx, Lenin and Reich. Most of her films explore on the question how the needs and longings of the individual collide with systems of ideology and religion. From 1998-2001 she worked on the series “The New World” (VPRO) about the effects of globalization. She works now for “Backlight”, a “future-affairs” series for VPRO, Dutch public television. Many of her films are personal stories set against a backdrop of a rapidly changing world. They deal with globalisation, finance and international relations. She made the internationally acclaimed “I Wanna Be Boss: China’s Smartest Kids/China Prep” in which she followed five students of an elite high school in Chongqing during their preparations for the infamous National College Entrance Exam. Also she made in collaboration with designers Catalogtree, the world’s first TouchDoc “Money & Speed: Inside the Black Box”; a reconstruction of the infamous flash crash. A documentary that was made into an interactive app for iPad. Recently she made the documentary “The Tax Free Tour” for a collaborative transmedia project with designer Femke Herregraven who developed the online serious game “Taxodus”. Both on the parallel financial shadow world that is a result of global tax evasion by multinationals.

Trainers • 2013

Susanna Lotz

Development Lab mentor
Susanna Lotz is an online editor at the Web Department of Arte.
After graduating in Art History, she continued her university research by integrating the Dance Lab in Paris 8, working on motion capture in contemporary dance choreographies. Susanna coedited two issues of “Anomalie”, a bilingual review exploring different themes in the fields of arts and digital technologies.

Her work included Anomalie #2 “Digital Performance” and Anomalie #3 “Interfaces”. She also contributed to the CD-ROM “Le Centre Georges Pompidou: La collection” and “Yves Saint-Laurent: 40 ans de création”.

Since 2002 Susanna has worked for the Web Department of Arte, where she was recruited to create innovative content for the web. Her teamwork with the commissioning broadcast editors resulted in the project “Gaza-Sderot – Life in spite of everything”, or “Farewell Comrades!”.

Today Susanna Lotz lives in Berlin, where she collaborates on international transmedia projects. Susanna Lotz coordinates the Development Lab of the interactive documentary workshop: a project development programme for expanded documentaries, promoted by the Laboratory of Visual Culture (SUPSI) and Visions du Réel.

Trainers • 2013

Yasmin Elayat

Expert
Yasmin Elayat is a new media artist and creative technologist who merges arts and technology when designing and developing interactive installations for physical spaces and interactive storytelling projects for the web.
Her work seeks to push the boundaries and form of storytelling. Yasmin is the Co-Creator of 18 Days In Egypt: A Collaborative Documentary Project about the ongoing Egyptian Revolution which calls on the Egyptian community to tell their story using their own media. The project was awarded the Tribeca New Media Fund grant and was one of six artist projects selected by the Sundance Institute New Frontier Lab, awarded an Honorary Mention in the Digital Communities Category of the Prix Ars Electronica 2012, and featured in the Margaret Mead Film Festival 2012. Yasmin moved to Cairo after the Egyptian revolution began, and she now currently lives between Cairo and New York.