Mannheim-Heidelberg Fest Jury

The 59th International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg takes place from the 11th till the 21st November 2010.

Three experts for Mannheim-Heidelberg – The International Jury is complete with film artist Cynthia Beatt, film author Clemens Klopfenstein and cinematic all-rounder Stefan Laudyn
Mannheim-Heidelberg, November 2nd 2010---- Three persons who know how to create cinematic art, how to talk about it and how to convey it: This year, the decision on the Main Award of Mannheim-Heidelberg is in the hands of Cynthia Beatt from Great Britain, Clemens Klopfenstein from Switzerland and Stefan Laudyn from Poland.
Cynthia Beatt is a film director, author and curator. She grew up in Jamaica and later on the Fiji Islands and lived in London for some time. Since 1975, she has been residing in Berlin. She has worked, amongst others, with Rudolf Thome and Ulrike Ottinger. In 1988, she went on a cinematic 160-kilometers-cycling-tour – which led along the Berlin Wall, starting and ending at the Brandenburg Gate – with the then relatively unknown actress Tilda Swinton for the film “Cycling the Frame”. In 1991, she realized the feature film “The Party: Nature Morte”, for which she also wrote the script. From 2006 until 2009, she shot the film “Ein Haus in Berlin”.
“The Invisible Frame” is Beatt’s second film featuring Tilda Swinton and was screened at the Festival of German Films 2010 in Ludwigshafen. 21 years after “Cycling the Frame”, the director again cycled the same route along the largely vanished Berlin Wall with by now famous Oscar winner Swinton.
Clemens Klopfenstein is a Swiss film director, screenwriter, cameraman, film producer and trained art teacher. Film historian Ulrich Gregor characterizes him as a “film author who refuses to assimilate or to subject to any commercial recipe for success, but who develops new and fresh impulses by exposing himself to his environment, his experiences, his friends and the motion picture medium – and also through the reaction to landscapes, milieu and ambience”. Klopfenstein is considered one of the most important film makers of Switzerland.
Klopfenstein shot numerous films, such as “Sybilla’s Kiss” (1985), “Macao” (1988), “The Silence of the Men” (1996), “Whyafraidwolf” (1998) and “St. Francis Bird Tour” (2005). From 2007 until 2008, he worked on the novel “Die Leichtigkeit des Schweins”. In 2008, he and his son Lukas Tiberio shot the film “The it.Aliens”, which had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival 2009.
Stefan Laudyn is the director of the International Film Festival Warsaw since 1991. In the 1980’s, he was involved in the rock music scene of Warsaw as a concert promoter and band manager. In 1990, he became chief fund manager of the Polish multimedia group ITI and the first Polish sales representative for US distributor Warner Brothers. Until 1994, he was responsible for the promotion of Polish films abroad and the contracts in the sales area for the “Film Art Foundation” of Poland. In 1995, he founded the Film Foundation of Warsaw.
Stefan Laudyn is reviewer of the Polish script agency responsible for screenplay funding as well as member of the European film academy. He also works as a film critic for major Polish and other media such as “Gazeta Wyborcza”, the trade journals “Film Pro”, “Rezyser”, “Machina”, “Isskustvo kino” and “Variety”. Furthermore, he acts in the promotion of Polish films abroad, works as a translator of dialogue lists as well as a professional consultant for numerous film festivals.