DIRECTING MASTERCLASS
WITH DIRECTOR NAE CARANFIL

Three meetings with the director of the films Filantropica, Asfalt Tango, Periculoso Sporgersi, The Rest is Silence and Closer to the Moon. Throughout the meetings, director Nae Caranfil will touch, from different perspectives, the status and role of the director in the making of a film.

Are screenwriters the authors of a narrative structure that becomes a tool for the director, or on the contrary, are they the mental authors of the film to be?

Are directors the absolute creators that manipulate teams, actors and experts (screenwriters, art directors, costume designers, cinematographers) in order to put into the film their own artistic vision or are they the mereley (inspired or less inspired) conductors of a piece that has already been written?

The structure of the masterclass will be divided in three modules:

January 30:PLEA FOR THE WRITER: The theory of the screenplay, famous screenwriters, the way the film style is sometimes born on paper, long before the new director is involved. Screening some relevant film scenes.

February 6: PLEA FOR THE WRITER: What does a director do on set? What are the traps? How does a relatively insipid text can become magical on screen, following the intervention of the director? Examples of mis-en-scene or editing interventions on the narrative piece of writing. Screening some relevant film scenes. 

February 14: PLEA FOR THE TOTAL AUTHOR: The analysis of works from profoundly original filmmakers, in which the director and the screenwriter (whether they are the same person or not) become one unitary authorial entity, and the personality of the artist is so strongly engraved in the film that all the other collaborators become puppets in the work of a unique vision. Screening some relevant film scenes. 

NAE CARANFIL

NAE CARANFILwas born in 1960 in Bucharest. He graduated from the National University of Theatre and Film in 1984. His student film “Frumos e in septembrie la Venetia” has won several national and international awards (Tours, 1985).

After several years in which he practices theatre directing, he goes to Bruxelles to pursue the European Screenwriting Program of FEMI (Flemish European Media Institute) and in 1988 he writes the script “The Rest is Silence”. Between 1989 and 1991 he writes scripts for the French production company Cimpagnie des Images.

In 1992 he directs his first feature film “E Pericoloso Sporgersi”, a French-Romanian co-production, presented in Quinzaine des Realisateurs in Cannes 1993 and awared in festivals like Montpelier, Bratislava or La Baule. His next film is “Asfalt Tango” (1995), another French-Romanian co-production, starring Charlotte Rampling. His third feature is a French-Italian-Belgian co-production, “Dolce Far Niente” (1998) starring Francois Cluzet, Giancarlo Giannini, Isabella Ferrari, Marguerita Buy and Pierfrancesco Favino (Best Screenplay in Namur in 1998 and included in the official competition of Karlovy Vary in 1999). “Filantropica” (2002) is a yet another French-Romanian co-production, a dark comedy which gets the Audience Award in Paris International Film Festival and numerous awards in Wiesbaden, Mons, Wurtzburg, Bratislava, Newport Beach and Athens.

The screenplay “The Rest is Silence” has won, throughout the years Best Screenplay at the Paris International Film Festival in 1995 and the 2nd Prize in “Hartly & Merrill International Scriptwriting Competition”, Hollywood 1999. The film is screened in Cluj at TIFF 2007 and closes the official competition in Locarno, in the same year. It also wins the Black Sea Trophy for Best Film at the International Independent Producers’ Film Festival in Constanta (2008), Best Screenplay and the Audience Award in B-EST 2008. The film was Romania’s nominee for the Oscars in 2009.

His latest production is “Closer to the Moon”, not yet launched in Romanian, with an British- American cast featuring Vera Farmiga, Mark Strong and Harry Lloyd. The film is English-spoken and has opened the last edition of the Making Waves Film Festival in New York.

The three meetings of the masterclass will take place on January 30, February 6 and February 14, 2014.