We invite you to a presentation and panel discussion: Programming for and with audiences with disabilities. The event will take place online, on Wednesday 14 July 2021 at 1.15. David Sin (Independent Cinema Office) will host the event and lead the discussion with: Lizzie Banks & Matthew Hellett (Oska Bright Film Festival), Paulina Gul (Fundacja Kultura bez barier), Joanna Piotrowiak (kino Muza). The discussion will be held in English and translated to Polish Sign Language by Bernard Kinov and streamed on the Animator Festival channel on Facebook.
Partners: Independent Cinema Office & Creative Europe, British Council
More about the event: www.animator-festival.com; www.facebook.com/FestivalAnimator
Lizzie Banks
Producer of Oska Bright Film Festival. The festival is the biggest film festival in the world showcasing films made by or featuring people with a learning disability or autism. The festival is supported by the BFI, Arts Council England and Adult Swim and is also now BAFTA accredited. Oska Bright Film Festival tours the UK and abroad in non-festival years sharing award-winning shorts and features, running workshops and hosting seminars.
Paulina Gul
Paulina’s passion is to improve the accessibility of cultural content for the deaf and hard of hearing; a long-time collaborator of the Culture Without Barriers Foundation. She coordinated the Foundation’s Rodzina Kinomaniaków project, promoting films for everyone, including people with disabilities. A hard-of-hearing person herself, Paulina uses sign language translation, SDH subtitles and hearing loops during live events. She is passionate about new technologies, especially those that empower the deaf and hard of hearing as viewers.
Matthew Hellett
Oska Bright's Lead Programmer, a role he took on after being part of the prestigious Guiding Lights scheme in 17/18, the UK film industry’s leading mentoring programme. Matthew was mentored by Emma Smart, programmer at BFI Flare Festival. As part of this role he introduced a new strand in to the festival Queer Freedom. Matthew has developed his skills as a panellist and has presented on panels as part of Bristol Encounters Film Festival, BFI Flare, Film Hub South East and with the British Council.
Joanna Piotrowiak
Holder of a degree in Film Studies awarded by the Polish Philology Faculty at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. After graduation she was involved in the production of festivals in Poznań, but her most exciting professional adventure was the organisation of the 2005 Polish Film Review in Irkutsk, Russia. Since 2013, she has been working at the Muza Cinema in Poznań. Her duties include programming and administration. She is one of the initiators of NOTHING TO SEE HERE (NIC SIĘ TU NIE DZIEJE) a joint initiative of Poznań arthouse cinemas, for which she received the Cinema Manager of the Year 2016 Award. Since October 2017, she has been the manager of the Muza Cinema, modernised and expanded in 2019. She is a board member of the Arthouse Cinemas Association and a co-creator of mojeekino.pl, the Association's VOD platform.
David Sin
David has worked in the independent film sector for over 25 years, as a programmer, distributor and consultant. His career has included spells as Director of Cinema at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), where he acquired and released films by directors such as Abbas Kiarostami, Jia Zhangke and Roy Andersson and launched J-Horror in the UK with Ring; as Head of Content at the BFI overseeing the Institute’s distributed films; and as the first Coordinator of Lincolnshire Cinemas, which became a model for rural cinema provision.