Guests 2024

Jiří Suchý is the legend of Czech theatre, music and film that has enthralled several generations with his works. The list of his songs, albums and theatre plays would be very long. We will focus on his cinematic work by introducing the autobiographical film Forward March Or Halt and his playful experimental directorial debut The Bride made in 1970.

Arnaud Desplechin is one of the most significant contemporary European film auteurs, an ardent cinephile and a lifelong film lover (the proof of this is his latest film premiered at Cannes, aptly entitled Filmlovers!). He’s a master of subtle psychological dramas with finely balanced aspects of comedy and tragedy of human existence and a filmmaker with an exceptionally compact and coherent filmography interwoven with characters (Paul Dedalus) and actors (Mathieu Amalric).

Together with Marta Meszaros, Ildiko Enyedi is the strongest female directorial voice in Hungarian cinema. She launched her career as a conceptual artist and worked in the only independent film studio in the Eastern Bloc (Béla Balázs Studio). Then there was the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, My 20th Century, in 1989, a long creative pause, and the winning film of the 2017 Berlinale , On Body and Soul. Enyedi is a modest legend of European cinema.

Jan Kačer studied stage directing at Prague's DAMU. After graduation, he worked in the Petr Bezruč Theatre in Ostrava where he laid the foundations for Prague's Dramatic Club Theatre, his home in the 1960s and 1970s. Jan Kačer was one of the leading directors in the domestic theatre scene. In Ostrava, he also collaborated with Jan Kadár and Elmar Klos, when he was cast in the lead role of their film Death Is Called Engelchen. After this success, he made several great films with the top directors of the Czechoslovak New Wave, such asNobody Will Laughwith Hynek Bočan, The Return of the Prodigal Sonwith Evald Schorm orThe Valley of the Beeswith František Vláčil. Jan Kačer always gave his characters human depth and even a philosophical aspect.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf is one of the cornerstones of the “Iranian cinematic miracle”. Together with Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi, he is ranked among the greatest Iranian directors of the last decades. Makhmalbaf visited Summer Film School in 2015, when he impressed the festival audience with both his films and humanism. He is the personification of Iranian cinema, its living conscience and the author of several films that gained the status of classic works of world cinema (The Cyclist,, Gabbeh) .

Fridrik Thor Fridriksson is one of the most famous Nordic directors who gained worldwide reputation with his films Children of Nature, , Cold Fever or Angels of the Universe. Formerly an experimental filmmaker who later became a master of subtle psychology and laconic humour, skillfully analysing the specifics of the Icelandic society, visited Summer Film School in 2010.

Sean Ellis, one of the most progressive contemporary British filmmakers, visited Summer Film School in 2014, when he presented his unprecedented creative diversity to the festival audience (Cashback , Metro Manila). Since then, he managed to make his mark in Czech cinematography with his world-renowned drama Anthropoid about the assassination of Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich.

Peter Strickland, an outstanding solitaire of contemporary art house film, presented his colourful filmography, built on cinephilia and allusions to the history of cinema and music, at the 2015 Summer Film School. His films are genre experiments full of quotations and echoes that offer a unique and unforgettable viewing experience.

The list of his artistic professions is as long as his name. He is an actor, screenwriter, director, producer, cinematographer, prop maker or anything else a DIY film production requires. As a kid, he shot on a family camera. In high school, he completed assignments and projects in the form of videos and made a school promo film with his best friend, M. Cheslik. After studying film at a university, he and his friends made their first feature film , Lake Michigan Monster. Later, they follow up on this niche indie hit with Hundreds of Beavers. When he’s not in front of or behind the camera, he makes his living as a waiter at a ramen restaurant.

David Bushman is the author of five nonfiction books, including three connected to the Twin Peaks universe: Twin Peaks FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About a Place Both Wonderful and Strange He is cofounder/co-president of Fayetteville Mafia Press, publisher of such books as Lost Highway: The Fist of Love or Fire Walk with Me: Your Laura DisappearedHe was a television curator at The Paley Center for Media (formerly The Museum of TV + Radio) for twenty-five years and before that a TV editor at Variety and program director at MTV Network’s TV Land. He’s a member of the Mystery Writers of America New York Chapter’s board of directors and a writing coach for Write By Night and The Loft, and teaches writing and media courses at several colleges in the New York area.

Ichiro Kataoka is one of the best known and most acclaimed benshi, which is a profession that has no parallel in Europe. Benshi accompanied Japanese silent films and became an essential part of the local filmmaking. Kataoka was trained by one of the first modern benshi, Midori Sawato, he performed in 18 countries and accompanied more than 350 Japanese and Chinese films. He is also the author of the book Breathing Life Into Film: The History of Benshi. Kataoka will accompany two silent films by Yasujiro Ozu at Summer Film School.

Valerio Coladonato is a film historian at Sapienza University in Rome. He focuses on the history of Italian national cinema, its overlaps and international context. His current projects deal with the role of the United States in the Italian film industry of the 1940s or with populism in 21st century Italian film and television. At Summer Film School, he will present the retrospective of Federico Fellini.

Thierry Loa is an interdisciplinary filmmaker and new media content creator. Having studied multimedia, philosophy, photography, cinema, anthropology and geography, he has diligently been exploring and working in various visual and media disciplines, on a diverse and mixed array of projects such as video installations, films, interactive, VR, and photography. His ongoing VR project titled 21-22 is doing an in-depth exploration of the Anthropocene on the global scale.