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About the Cinema Workshop site
The international Arab-language Cinema Workshop website, which now has a new English section, is an open, independent site providing information and training on cinema and film making. Our aim is to share knowledge and experience with aspiring professionals as well as cinema lovers interested in film making. We wish in particular to encourage young film makers, and provide a platform for contacts between cinema professionals in the Arab-speaking and English-speaking communities.
We welcome collaboration for this site, on a volunteer basis, and invite our English speaking readers to send us their lectures, seminars, reports on film festivals,etc
You can contact us at info@cineworkinst.eu
WRITING FILM SCRIPTS–THE MOROCCAN EXPERIENCE
The latest edition of CINEMAG, the French-language Cinema and Audiovisual Magazine of Morocco (No. 10. Nov.09 – Feb 2010) devotes a Special Section to script writing in Morocco. The views and experiences of 16 personalities of Moroccan cinema are presented through articles and interviews. Writer-directors, screenwriters, cinema critics and professors explain how they approach writing scripts, what difficulties screenwriters face and how they see scren writing as part of the future development of Moroccan cinema. Joanna Tachmintzis presents below a summary of some of the points made by Moroccan Writer- Directors in CINEMAG.(magazine website: www.cinemag.info)
Belgium hosts the 1st International 3D Stereo Film and Technology Festival – 3D Stereo MEDIA
The first edition of the "International 3D Stereo Film and Technology Festival," also called "3D Stereo MEDIA " was held in three cities in Belgium, organized at the initiative of the e-mage technology forum, the University of Liège (ULg), and TWIST (the Cluster of the "Technologies from Wallonia for image, sound, and text"). Read more..
Interview with Michael Haneke, the Austrian director of ‘The White Ribbon’, winner of this year`s ‘Palme d`Or’ in Cannes.
‘The White Ribbon’ recounts strange happenings in a small German village on the eve of the First World War. The story is about punishment rituals on the children of the village, raised under extremely puritanical conditions. For Haneke it is a story from the past which also treats a modern problem....Read more
INTERVIEWS
Young Dutch director makes cross-cultural documentary: Hans Groenendijk's success story
Last year the 28-year old Dutch director Hans Groenendijk made his debut as a documentary film maker with ‘Sayed, Soccer Talent’. The 28-minute film tells the story of 9-year old Sayed Abdullah Sulaiman from Kuwait, who dreams of becoming an international football icon. The young player's father posts a home video of his son's playing on the internet on SoccerTalents.tv and the boy gets invited at Feyenoord and FC Barcelona for a trial.
. Cinema Workshop interviewed Hans Groenendijk...Read More
HOME – The stunning and disturbing environmental documentary by Yann Arthus Bertrand
Most famous for his stunning aerial photos of the Earth, the French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand turns to the cinema with his new environmental movie HOME, released worldwide on World Environment Day, June 5, and seen by millions of people since.This visually dramatic film is well worth seeing, both for its images and its environmental message, despite its somewhat didactic voice-over in the rather traditional documentary style of the past. The first ever movie with 100% aerial footage, it illustrates the planet's fragile state entirely from a birds-eye view in stunning high definition. :..Read more
Belgian Directors Give Cinema Master Class at the Cannes Film Festival 2009
How the Dardeene Brothers make great films
Amongst the bustle and hype of the Cannes Film Festival, sandwiched in between the dozens of parallel film showings, an important and very interesting annual event almost goes unnoticed at Cannes: the Cinema Master Class (Leçon du Cinema), this year given by the acclaimed French-speaking Belgian directors Jean -Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Looking very relaxed and casual, in front of a packed auditorium with many disappointed Festival participants left outside, « the Dardenne Brothers », as they are known, ...Read more
Film Archive Reviews -
Reviews of feature and documentary films that have endured the test of time
« Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam » - A moving documentary still relevant today
What immediately strikes you on seeing Bill Couturie's 'Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam'' is how relevant this 1987 documentary still is in 2009. It gives an account of the horror and suffering and pointlesness of the Vietnam War in the words of the US servicemen and women who fought it, through the letters written by them to their families and friends from the battlefronts, read while original footage from the Vietnam war is shown.The effect is both moving and disturbing. And it made me wonder what letters home the US troops are writing from Iraq and Afghanistan... Read more
EDUCATIONAL BOOK REVIEW
« Le Son au Cinéma » by Laurent Jullier, published jointly by Cahiers du Cinéma and SCEREN-CNDP
For those who can read French, the series « Les Petits Cahiers » published by the Cahiers du Cinéma in France, and edited by Joel Magny, are useful educational material. Simply written and interesting to read, with many concrete examples from movies and useful annexes with interviews and analyses, they are aimed at cinema students and teachers as well as cinema fans who want to learn about film making.
'Le Son au Cinéma' (Sound in Cinema) is one of the many booklets of the series, published in 2006 and written by Laurent Jullier, Professor of Cinema at the University of Paris III- Sorbonne Nouvelle. It begins by giving a historical overview of the development of sound in film, from Alan Crossland's 1927 film « The Jazz Singer », ..Read more
A step by step guide to making a low- budget short movie
This is the Cinema Workshop's compact guide on how to deal with a big subject: making a short film with a very limited budget.
Short films are an underrated medium and an often forgotten art form. But they can be very effective and creative cinema, as well as a tool for learning and testing ideas. It is also a way of demonstrating that you have the talent to go further and to make feature films. Many filmmakers have launched their own career by making a no-budget short film and displayed how they can be creative and innovate with very small sums of money. It costs nothing to be creative...Read More ...
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