Festival Guests

Biographies


Licinio Azevedo
Director / Mozambique / Brazil
Speaker . Professional Workshops 2017

Licínio Azevedo is a Mozambican filmmaker and writer, born in Brazil but has been living in Mozambique since 40 years. He is part of a generation of filmmakers from the National Institute of Mozambique, in the years that followed the Independence, with different directors among them Ruy Guerra, Godard and Jean Rouch.

As director, Licínio’s films are closely linked to the reality of his country and at different moments of its trouble political evolution. He cycles through fiction and documentary, always inspired in relevant facts. In the documentaries, when the off voice exists, it’s one of the leading actors being the base of the narrative with its own actions that develop in front of the camera in a spontaneous way. In his fictions, always filmed in natural scenery’s, he incorporates elements of the local reality, giving it the authenticity of a documental work. One of his books about the struggle for the Independence of Mozambique, was used as the base of the script of the first Mozambican fiction feature film, “O Tempo dos Leopardos”.

Documentaries like “Desobediência”, “Grande Bazar” and “Water War” are among African best documentaries, premiered in Biarritz and major European film festivals.

Licínio has worked with BBC, YLE and has become one of the best African filmmakers. His fiction debut “Virgin Margarida”, premiered at Toronto International Film Festival, attended fifty festivals, received dozens of awards, and released in more than twenty countries.


Simon Rouby
Director / France
Speaker . Professional Workshops 2017

Born in 1980, Simon Rouby learned to paint the hard way, that is to say; with a spray can. He then went on to study Animation at the famed Gobelins school in Paris as well as Calarts in Los Angeles. Adama, his first featured animation was nominated for the Cesar and European Film Awards for best animated feature in 2015. He is currently an artist in residence at the French Academy of Villa Medici in Rome where he develops his next film, as well as a new body of work using video installation.


Gaïa (Anne Gaëlle Michel)
Photograph / Reunion Island
Speaker . Professional Workshops 2017

(FRENCH) Avec une formation initiale aux beaux-arts à la Réunion; Anne-Gaëlle MICHEL pratique la photographie depuis plus de 20 ans. Peu importe le statut, la photographie a toujours était un art majeur dans sa vie, une pratique permanente, une action incontournable pour sublimer le monde, à travers le regard. Après la réalisation d’un atelier photo au Mali avec les artisans forgerons en 2006, C’est à parti de là que s’ensuit une série d’autres ateliers photos & des interventions en milieu scolaire. Ces ateliers ont chaque fois le même angle : celui de travailler le regard, l’observation le travail individuel & collectif.


Olivier Barlet
Publications director of Africultures, specialist of African cinema / France
Speaker . Professional Workshops 2017

Olivier Barlet was born in Paris in 1952. He has translated a number of books on Africa and of African authors, and is also the author of different books himself. He is a member of the Syndicat français de la critique de cinema, and is a film correspondant for Africultures and Afriscope. He was a long time a film correspondant for Africa international, Afrique-Asie and Continental. He is in charge of the Images plurielles collection on cinema for L’Harmattan Publishing House. His book entitled “Les Cinémas d’Afrique noire : le regard en question”, which won the Prix Art et Essai 1997 from the Centre national de la Cinématographie, has been published in the collection and has been translated into English under the title “African Cinemas, Decolonizing the Gaze” (Zed Books, London), as well as into German and Italian. His last book is entitled Les Cinémas d’Afrique des années 2000 : perspectives critiques (L’Harmattan, Paris, 2012), translated into English : Contemporary African Cinema (Michigan State University Press, 2016), Spanish and Arabic. Olivier Barlet is now Editorial Director of Africultures, an African cultural journal that features a paper edition and a website (www.africultures.com), where he has written 1700 articles on African film.


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