21 – 26 June 2017, HOME, Manchester
July – October online sessions
15 – 19 November 2017, Lo schermo dell’arte Film Festival, Florence
directed by Leonardo Bigazzi and Sarah Perks

Lo schermo dell’arte and HOME, Manchester’s brand new cross-art centre, present the ground-breaking first European intensive training programme for visual artists developing and producing their first feature film.

FEATURE EXPANDED 2017 AWARDS
La giuria di Feature Expanded 2017, composta da Marietta von Hausswolff von Baumgarten, Heinz Peter Schwerfel e Yorgos Tsourgianis, ha assegnato i quattro premi:

Feature Expanded Distribution Award a Janis Rafa con il film Kala-a-zar scelto per “la capacità della regista di comunicare l’importanza di restare umani in un momento storico sempre più caratterizzato dall’apatia”.

Feature Expanded Development Award a Assaf Gruber per lavorare alla sceneggiatura del suo film The Conspicuos Part, scelto dalla giuria per contribuire al suo sviluppo “creando uno spazio in cui differenti idee possano essere valutate per realizzare un’esperienza teatrale unica che racchiuda le tre differenti trame sviluppate dall’artista”.

ottod’Ame Film Award a Paulin Curnier Jardin per lo sviluppo del suo film $eba$tiano Blu che “come la sua autrice, è un lavoro pieno di vitalità, passione ed eccitazione visiva, in cui emerge il bisogno insaziabile di attenzione di un bellissimo giovane uomo, i suoi pensieri ossessivi e le sue paure sulle donne, che lo conducono in un percorso tormentato e fatale”.

SUB-TI Award a Axel Straschnoy per il suo film Argentine from Helsinki che “affronta il tema dell’alienazione attraverso il linguaggio e le sfide culturali di Horacio, un argentino trasferitosi in Finlandia, che, quando la sua esistenza sta per crollare, si trova costretto a decidere chi è e cosa vuole dalla vita.”

PROJECT

Feature Expanded is the first ever training programme designed to support visual artists who want to make a full-length film. The project is developed by Lo schermo dell’arte Film Festival and HOME and directed by Leonardo Bigazzi and Sarah Perks.

Feature Expanded provides a uniquely tailored set of activities responding to the important trend of visual artists pairing new vision and strong innovation with feature film production. This new generation of filmmakers expands the terrain of the traditional audio-visual industry, attracting new audiences, partnerships and structures with a different take on feature film.

Across two locations and a six-month duration, this programme is a combination of masterclasses, case studies, workshops, screenings, one-to-one meetings and pitching sessions for directors developing their first feature film. Participants acquire essential new skills and expertise to advance their early stage feature film projects for theatrical distribution and exhibition.

Feature Expanded takes the form of two residential workshops in Manchester and Florence, between these the participants work on project development, respond to set tasks and use online consultancy on the specific topics. After this, participants are directed to collaborations with relevant festivals, markets and other partners. Training activity is peer-led by industry experts working currently in this field with several feature film credits. The course covers script development, non-script rsed production, project pitching, co-commissioning and financing, working with actors and participants, distribution and exhibition involving digital platforms.

Feature Expanded is supported by the Creative Europe – MEDIA programme.

PROGRAMME

The six-month Feature Expanded programme combines:
• A week intensive residential at HOME in Manchester that mixes masterclasses, case studies, workshops, networking opportunities and screenings alongside individual tutorials and group work.
• Online tutorials with the Feature Expanded experts.
• A four day residential at Lo schermo dell’arte Film Festival in Florence to attend the festival and continue tutorials before pitching films to a jury and a selected group of industry professionals.

Jury
• Caroline Bourgeois, curator Pinault Collection
• Heinz Peter Schwerfel, filmmaker, Producer and director of Kino der Kunst Festival (Munich)
• Yorgos Tsourgiannis, producer

Prize                                                                                                                          

• Feature Expanded Distribution Award: One of the 12 film projects is selected for the FEx Distribution Award. The award provides one of the film projects with a theatrical distribution in the UK and Ireland by HOME Artist Film and in Italy by Lo schermo dell’arte.
• Feature Expanded Development Award. The award provides one participant with a 4-day intensive residency in Stockholm to work with script consultant Marietta von Hausswolff von Baumgarten on the script development of his/hers film project.
• Ottod’Ame Film Award a research cash prize.
• SUB-TI Award consisting in the subtitles in one European language for the awarded film, offered by SUB-TI.

Each of the twelve participants is assigned an experienced producer as a tutor who will work with them in developing their Film project throughout the Programme both on a one-to-one basis and in groups of four artists.

Feature Expanded Tutors are: Jacqui Davies, Lisa Marie Russo and Leif Magne Tang

 STAFF AND TUTORS
Leonardo Bigazzi
Project Director

Leonardo Bigazzi is a curator based in Florence, Italy. He is been working at Lo Schermo dell’Arte Film Festival since its first edition in 2008. For the Festival he curates VISIO – European Programme on Artists’ Cinema and Notti di Mezza Estate. He is also the co-director of Feature Expanded, a training programme for visual artists working on their first feature film developed together with HOME in Manchester. Beside collaborating to the selection of films for the main program, in the past edition of the Festival he has been responsible for special projects with the artists Hito Steyerl, Omer Fast, Melik Ohanian and Hiroshi Sugimoto.
From 2014 to 2016 he worked as a curator at Museo Marino Marini where he curated the exhibition 30/60 Opere dalla collezione del Frac Champagne-Ardenne, with a selection of over 40 works from the collection of the French institution (co-curated with Florence Derieux); the solo show of Pablo Bronstein Studies in mannerist decomposition (co-curated with Alberto Salvadori); Alfred Jarry Archipelago ‘Ha ‘Ha, a programme of performance, installations and screenings; the solo show of Rayyane Tabet La Mano De Dios. In 2016 he co-curated the first edition of La Nuite blanche de Monaco.
Since 2014 he has an on-going collaboration with the artist Petrit Halilaj and he has worked for the research and production of his exhibitions at the 57ª Biennale di Venezia (Special Mention of the Jury), New Museum (New York), Fondazione Merz (Turin), Bundeskunsthalle (Bonn), Kölnischer Kunstverein (Koln) and Palazzo Grassi/Punta della Dogana (Venice).

Sarah Perks
Project Director

As Artistic Director of the Cornerhouse’s visual arts section she has co-curated some major solo exhibitions such as Pakistani artist Rashid Rana’s Everything is Happening at Once, and It’s Cool I’m Good by performance and video artist Stanya Kahn. In 2011 Sarah structured Cornerhouse Artist Film, socialised into the production and distribution of artists’ feature films, starting with the UK and Irish theatrical release of Self Made, the directorial debut of Turner Prize winning artist Gillian Wearing. In June 2012 the second release was Swandown by Andrew Kotting and Iain Sinclair. Most recently Sarah has produced Rosa Barba’s first 35mm feature commission, Subconscious Society, and also Rough Cut film accompanying Jamie Shovlin’s solo exhibition Hiker Meat.

Jacqui Davis
Tutor

Jacqui Davies is a London-based producer and curator. Since 1997, she has worked internationally with artists on projects involving film and video. Working independently across all platforms – producing, commissioning and curating – Davies has facilitated projects for television, galleries, site-specific, stage, cinema and online.
Davies is the Producer of Ben Rivers’ Artangel/ BFI funded film The Earth Trembled and the Sky Was Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers, Ray & Liz: a feature film by artist Richard Billingham, and a feature-length documentary-fiction project by filmmaker Louis Henderson. She was the Associate Producer on Phillip Warnell’s feature film, Ming of Harlem, which won the George Beauregard Prize at FID Marseille 2014. She is currently developing feature projects with Redmend Entwistle and Louis Henderson. Davies also works with Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London, to curate exhibitions of artists working with moving image. She is also a consultant on film and art for Dazed and Confused.

Lisa Marie Russo
Tutor

Fly Film is a UK-based production company formed in 2009 by Bafta and Emmy award winning producers Kate Ogborn and Lisa Marie Russo.
Fly is the Executive Producer for Screen South Ignition Random Acts Network, an initiative supported by the Arts Council of England and Channel 4 who have the opportunity to select the films by young people age 16 – 24 for online or broadcast. Fly are executive producing 72 × 3 minute films between 2016-2018.
Additionally, Lisa Marie produced Pia Borg and Edward Lawrenson’s Abandoned Goods with Kate Ogborn, which won the Golden Leopard for Best International Short at Locarno. Previously Lisa Marie produced Ken Loach’s documentary The Spirit of ’45 with Kate Ogborn and Rebecca O’Brien of Sixteen Films; and Swandown, a feature documentary by artist Andrew Kotting and writer Iain Sinclair. She also produced Turner Prize winner Gillian Wearing’s feature debut, Self Made and was an executive producer on The Deep Blue Sea and Hockney. Prior to creating Fly Film, she executive produced Terence Davies’ documentary Of Time and the City as well as the films Salvage and Kicks as part of Digital Departures, a scheme to celebrate the Capital of Culture in Liverpool ‘08. Of Time and the City was critically acclaimed at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008, and was nominated for a Bafta, Bifa and Grierson Award.

Leif Magne Tangen
Tutor

Leif Magne Tangen is an award-winning film producer, curator specialising in artistsʼ moving image and picture theory and a writer. As a producer he has worked with filmmakers such as Benjamin Naishtat, Loretta Fahrenholz, Declan Clarke, Knut Åsdam and Laida Lertxundi. Tangen was the funding director of D21 Kunstraum Leipzig, European director of PIEROGI Gallery (Brooklyn/Leipzig) and director of Fotogalleriet Foundation, Oslo, Norway. He is co-curator of Reihe Experimentalfilm, co-owner of independent video rental store Filmgalerie Alpha60 and owner and producer for vitakuben film. Leif Magne is currently intendant at Tromsø Kunstforening.

Sibylle Kurz
Pitch Expert

Sibylle Kurz specializes in pitching training, project presentation, proposal development and dramaturgical doctoring. She also offers communication skills, negotiation training and personal coaching for companies and individuals. With an academic background in media & communication science, sociology and psychology; she has a postgraduate education as a communication skills trainer and is a certified NLP Trainer (INLPT Associational standards). She works as a Pitching Trainer and consultant for film schools and film institutions all over Europe. Her experience in The Art Of Pitching is a result of more than 15 years experience in the acquisition, distribution and co-production of theatrical, video, and TV films in the German-speaking market at a distribution company that she co-founded in 1981. She left the organisation in 1995 to start her own company. Kurz’ intensive workshop sessions enable producers to hone and time-tune their projects prior to pitching as well as gain insight into their own professional practice. In 1995, she co-founded d-net-work, an alliance of young European producers (feature & documentary) to help find co-production and distribution partners for their projects. She is a member of the European Documentary Network and the author of two books.

Marietta von Hausswolff von Baumgarten
Script Expert

Creator of MotherofSons (MOS), development/film production company based in Stockholm. Related areas: art and music, theatre, and television drama (screenwriter, script consultant, director, creative producer). Marietta worked as commissioning editor for SVT Drama Sweden, and also as staff writer/editor for Pearson/Freemantle Drama before becoming an international feature film script consultant. Marietta wrote and co produced the film Call Girl (Fipresci Award in Toronto 2012 and shown in many festivals world wide, directed by Mikael Marcimain). Since 2007 Marietta is connected as script consultant with Torino Film Lab, Binger Film Lab, Venice Biennale College Cinema, on films such as the BabadookDjeca/Children of SarajevoHi-SoLos HongosLes Quattro Volte; Beyond /SvinalдngornaH; The Sky above us and so on. She has also been involved as script advisor for Tiff STUDIO Toronto, Boost Rotterdam, Rutger Hauer Masterclasses, Generation Campus Moscow, Script Lab Russia, Balkan Film Fund Athens, Talent Campus Sarajevo and Berlinale, Irish Film Board, Filmpool Nord, B3 Media London, Lux UK, Doha Film Institute, and does extensive private project consultation. Marietta is a member of the Swedish Drama Union and the European Film Academy.

Partecipants  
Angela Anderson
US / Germany

is an artist & filmmaker working at the intersection of the fields of philosophy, ecology, economics, migration, media and feminist & queer theory. She has worked with many artists and filmmakers on the realization of performative, filmic and installation projects. Since 2013 she has been working with Angela Melitopoulos and anti-mining activists in NE Greece on the audio-visual research project Unearthing Disaster. Recent exhibitions include Framer Framed – Amsterdam, the Minnesota Street Project (San Francisco), the 2015 Thessaloniki Biennale and Holbaek Images. She is the exhibition designer for Forum Expanded (Berlin International Film Festival) and is currently a PhD student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

Mariangela Ciccarello
Italy

Mariangela Ciccarello is a filmmaker and artist whose work builds on her background in philosophy and art history to reposition historical and contemporary representations of gender and identity across geographic space and time. Her film and video work has been exhibited in festivals such as Festival del film Locarno, Torino Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s “Art of the Real,” and in contemporary art venues, including the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, La Gaîté Lyrique, and Harvard Art Museums. She has participated in residency programs at the UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art (USA) and Spazju Kreattiv (Malta) and her work has been included in a number of collective exhibitions, in addition to recently being featured at the Mediterranea 18 Young Artists’ Biennale. In 2013 she cofounded the artistic collective Nusquam Productions.

www.mariangela-ciccarello.com

Pauline Curnier Jardin
France

born in 1980 in Marseilles, graduated in 2006 both from the Ecole supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy, and from the Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs de Paris (ENSAD), with a specialisation in cinema and video. Along with those degrees, she got a scholarship to start a residency in Finland where she decided to settle from 2007 to 2009 and where she also finished her master thesis about the representations of St-Joan of Arc in the history of Cinema. The diversity of the media she uses in her work, her qualities as a visual artist as well as a filmmaker and performer led her to multiply the exhibition projects in France (MAM of Paris, Palais de Tokyo, Centre Georges Pompidou), abroad (M.I.T List Visual Arts Center of Cambridge, ZKM of Karlsruhe, Watermill Center in N-Y, HKW in Berlin) but also to bloom in numerous collaborations. She has been a resident at the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten in 2015 and 2016, she is currently participating to the 57th Venice Biennale. Pauline lives in Amsterdam and in Berlin and works with Ellen de Bruijne Project gallery in Amsterdam.

www.paulinecurnierjardin.net

 
Michelle Deignan
Ireland

(b.1970, Dublin) is a visual artist and filmmaker living and working in London. Her multilayered film narratives often draw on under represented histories, such as histories of women and the diaspora as active producers of culture. Combining factual and fictional forms, these works address the complex contexts that lead to the creation of images and stories made for mass consumption.
Michelle’s multichannel installations, single screen shorts and documentaries have been screened and exhibited in international venues such as Whitechapel Art Gallery; Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe; Tramway,Glasgow; Camden Arts Centre; Media Art Lab, Moscow; Irish Film Institute, Dublin; Tate Modern; Konstall Malmo; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin and CAN, Neuchatel. She is currently working on Frau W (Her Little Big Lies), a feature length work.

www.michelledeignan.info

Bart Groenendaal
Netherlands

(Amsterdam, 1975) is a filmmaker and artist, currently living and working in Amsterdam. An interest in cultural anthropology has since partly defined his practise. Initially focussing on documentary, his work took him to Africa and the Middle-East (notably Yemen), where he worked on both his own projects and commissions. After completing a residency at the Rijksakademy in Amsterdam in 2008 he lived in Paris and Brussels, partly working in collaboration with performance artist Egle Budvytyte. His practise gradually evolved more towards fiction film, focussing on questions relating to cinematic emotion and the cinematic image in the art space. At the moment he is developing his first feature length fction film. His work was shown among other places at SMBA; de Appel (Amsterdam); Moderna Museet, (Sweden); Palais de Tokyo, (France); CAC, (Lithuania).

www.bartgroenendaal.eu

Assaf Gruber
Israel/Germany

(born 1980 in Jerusalem) is an artist and filmmaker who works and lives in Berlin. He studied at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and is a graduate of the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts de Paris. Gruber won many awards and scholarships including the Israel Lottery Council for Culture and Arts (2015). He then moved to Belgium to participate in the postgraduate program of the HISK (Higher Institute of Fine Arts of Ghent). His work has been shown in international Biennales and group exhibitions in venues such as Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (2015), Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź (2015) and MOCA Belgrade (2016). His films have been featured in festivals including Berlinale Film Festival (2016), Lo schermo dell’arte Film Festival (2016) and the International Short film Festival of Oberhausen (2016).

www.assafgruber.com

Ursula Mayer
Austria

Her internationally exhibited practice spans a range of media, including film, video and sculpture. Her single and multi-channel films are crystalline circuits of images, composed of signs borrowed from architecture, fashion, literature, politics, mythology, geology and science. Using the grammar of cinematography and montage, Mayer’s practice strives to indicate how spatial composition, human choreography and narrative construction inform and contribute to one another.
She has been awarded numerous grants such as the FLAMIN Productions Award, Film London and the International Studio & Curatorial Program, ISCP, New York.
Her work has travelled extensively. Upcoming solo shows include the Salzburger Kunstverein curated by Seamus Kealy, TANK, FHNW, Institute Kunst, Basel curated by Chus Martinz, and Vleeshal curated by Roos Gortzak.

www.ursulamayer.com

Mario Pfeifer
Germany

His work explores representational structures and conventions in the medium of film and video. Pfeifer works closely with communities, establishing intimate relationships from which he conceives his projects in collaboration with his protagonists. Critically investigating anthropological and ethnographic image production, Pfeifer has expanded essayistic narratives to create multiple screen video installations, integrating scientific imagery, animations or music videos to engage with urgent societal conditions to audiences beyond genre definitions.
Pfeifer’s installations were presented at the Getty Center, Los Angeles; MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main; N.B.K. Neuer Berliner Kunstverein; Fotomuseum Winterthur; KOW, Berlin; Beursschouwburg, Brussels; and his films presented at international Film Festivals in Berlin, Cologne, London, Madrid, Paris, Oberhausen, New York, Seoul and Toronto. In 2017 he founded the production house blackbordfilms.

www.mariopfeifer.com

Anastasija Piroženko
Lithuania

is an audio-visual artist and filmmaker currently based in Amsterdam. She holds an MA in Film from the Netherlands Film Academy (2016). Her practice spans documentary filmmaking and fiction, video installations, and photography. Her films construct slow narratives, through which she explores absurdity in routine, and beauty in the mundane. She is currently researching mimicry in relation to post-Soviet identity after the transition from Socialism to Capitalism, and the discrepancies between the newly adopted Western ideas and Eastern European realities.
Her films have been screened at several international film festivals and art events, including Visions du Reel International Film Festival (CH, 2017), Vilnius International Film Festival (2013), International Contemporary Art Fair Art Vilnius (LT, 2013), and ZubrOFFka International Short Film Festival (PL, 2011).

pirozenko.net

Theo Prodromidis
Greece

is a visual artist, director and producer, based in Athens. He was awarded an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths in 2007, in London, UK.
His practice includes moving image, photography and performance, which combines historical research, fiction and documentary elements and induces a variety of associations.
His work has been exhibited and screened in galleries, museums and festivals such as Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Nanjing International Art Festival, Les Rencontres Internationales, Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre, 5th and 1st Thessaloniki Biennale, 4th Athens Biennale, Werkleitz zentrum für medienkunst, Contour Mechelen, State Museum of Contemporary Art, Centre Pompidou, Fondazione Merz. In Autumn 2016, he was a Laureate of the Institut Francais residency programme at the Cité internationale des arts and as a Fellow of the Onassis Foundation, where he also started the research for his first feature film.

www.theoprodromidis.info

Janis Rafa
Greece/Netherlands

lives and works between Amsterdam and Athens. She completed her education in Fine Art (BA, MA, PhD) at the University of Leeds in Britain. Her body of work spans from experimental-documentary practices, to video-essays, archival footage and most recently cinematic narratives and medium length films. She has recently completed the Rijksakademie (2013-2014) in Amsterdam, with a scholarship by Onassis Foundation (GR). Her first solo exhibition was presented at Martin van Zomeren Gallery, Amsterdam, 2014. Her films and video works were screened at: Netherlands Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, BFI London, Gulf Film Festival Dubai, and as part of Rencontres Internationales, 2010, at Centre National d’Art Moderne – Centre Georges Pompidou, Reina Sofia National Museum and Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Her work is part of Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam collection.

www.janisrafailidou.co.uk

Axel Straschnoy
Finland

(born 1978) is a visual artist born in Buenos Aires, based in Helsinki. His long-term and research focused projects include Kilpisjärvellä (2011-12) a planetarium film on exploration in northern Lapland under the Northern Lights. La Figure de la Terre (2014) a short film based on the book The Figure of the Earth by 18th century French mathematician and explorer Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, and the lecture-performance series, Notes on the Double Agent (2013-ongoing). Other recent exhibitions and screenings include The Great Morning / Winds of long ago / blow through the pine-trees, Del Infinito, Buenos Aires (2016), Le rappel à l’ordre, Forum Box, Helsinki (2016), Emerging Media Artists 2014, Edith-Russ-Haus, Oldenburg. The Detective (2017), a VR film on the way virtual reality changes our perception of art and the world—commissioned by Kiasma for ARS17—, will be premiered in May. Straschnoy has participated in Le Pavillon residency at Palais de Tokyo (2008-09) and trained in Art History at University of Buenos Aires.

axel.straschnoy.com

Promoted and organized by
Lo schermo dell’arte Film Festival and HOME

Supported by
Creative Europe-MEDIA, programma dell’UE

Programme partner
FID Marseille