Workshops
Daily instructor-led intensive sessions.
Directing Actors
Working with different types of actors in pre-production and on-set to bring out a collaborative performance.
Virtual Reality
Creating a VR piece, from concept to post. What kind of stories work best? How to build a team? Do I need modelers, VFX artists, programmers? How much will it cost? Who funds this stuff? There will be over a dozen examples available onsite, where we will have an Oculus Quest II and HTC Vive.
Mise-en-scène
How do directors create their own style? How do past styles inspire new generations, from Ozu to Jarmsuch or Leone to Tarantino? To this end, we will look at how directors use light, color, wardrobe, hair & makeup, composition, art direction, aspect ratio, and acting styles to tell a story and reference pre-existing genres.
Rough Stuff: Raw Footage, and What No One Else Sees
Using actual footage, participants will look at the rough footage, including mistakes, surprises, and happy accidents, that no one else sees of a finished film. A great way to see what is actually shot and how it’s manipulated.
Getting it Made
How to make your film. At all costs. [Can’t stop, won’t stop!]
Previz
The art of imagining a project before it exists.
Exercises & Activities
Individual creativity and group collaboration.
Exquisite Corpse Filmmaking
A 15 minute film, which will include a one minute segment directed and edited by each participant. This method, invented by the Surrealists, collectively assembles a group of short pieces of writing or images into a single work of art. Creating our own tradition, the film will be screened on the last evening of the retreat.
Pitching
Over the course of the retreat, participants will learn the art of the pitch. Neal and Mika will pitch past or future projects. Some participants might try their hand at a no-pressure group pitch as well!
Screening & Discussions
We'll watch a bunch of films. Our discussions will range from Q&As with the filmmakers themselves, to why we’ve found these films to be inspiring and exciting, to how they’re relevant to the workshops.
Daily Meditation Sessions
Using meditation to unlock creativity, connect to your unconscious, and improve your intuition.
Visiting Filmmakers
Award-winning filmmakers will bring their unique perspectives on creativity, production and festivals.
The visiting filmmakers are one of the most wonderful parts of Wandering Cinema!
Giacomo Abbruzzese
Taranto, Italy
Born in 1983 in Taranto, Southern Italy, Giacomo Abbruzzese lives and works between Paris and Madrid. His first feature film Disco Boy, a France-Italy-Belgium-Poland coproduction, starring Franz Rogowski, premiered in the main competition at Berlinale in February 2023 where it won the prestigious Silver Bear award.
A Le Fresnoy graduate, his short films have been selected and awarded in many international festivals including Oberhausen, Palm Springs, Clermont-Ferrand, Viennale, Mar del Plata, Tampere, Indielisboa, Nouveau Cinéma Montreal, Winterthur, Angers, Torino, Leeds. They were broadcasted on TV-channels like Canal+, Arte, France3, France2, Sky Art, SVT. In 2022, he was nominated for the César Awards with his documentary America.
Abbruzzese was artist in residence at the Cannes Film Festival Cinéfondation, the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and at the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival.
Blerta Basholli
Pristina, Kosovo
Blerta Basholli is a writer/director with a unique realistic visual style. Her stories touch upon social and gender issues from the country where she was born and raised, Kosova, and beyond.
Basholli’s debut feature film Hive (2021), broke Sundance records where she swept the Grand Jury Prize, the Directing Award, and the Audience Award in the World Cinema Dramatic category, becoming the first film in the history of the Sundance Film Festival to do so.
In 2008 she was awarded the Dean's Fellowship at the Film Graduate Program at Tisch School of the Arts – NYU. She lived in New York City for four years where she had the opportunity to work on several film projects as a student.
In 2011, she returned to her birthplace where she wrote/directed and worked in many short and feature films.
Check out Blerta's Top 10 Criterion Collection Films.
