Artist, Photographer, Filmmaker

Austrian born artist and documentary filmmaker Heidrun Holzfeind studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and at Cooper Union in New York. After 15 years in New York City she moved back to Vienna and currently lives in Sweden where she teaches photography at the Umeå Art Academy. Her work has been shown at numerous international art institutions and film festivals. She was awarded the 2011 Camera Austria prize for contemporary photography for her important contribution to the continuity and rephrasing of questions pertaining to the documentary and to the role of photography as situated amongst social and political practice as well as art.

MASTERCLASS: REAL UTOPIAS

In the master class she will introduce her artistic practice using photography and video to question immanent architectural and social utopias, exploring the borders between history and identity, individual histories and political narratives of the present
. From various examples such as her most recent projects which explore alternative communities in India, Europe and the U.S

. and her exhibition “From Without and from Within (The Auroville project)” with Christoph Draeger at Kunstpavillon Innsbruck, she will discuss notions of location and the documentary framing of a place or situation, as well as working with found footage and archive materials.

A collaboration with   

Cinematographer

Leena Koppe was born in Vienna and studied cinematography at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna

. During her studies she already worked as camera assistant, lighting technician and director of photography for commercials, TV productions and feature films
. One of her student works („Yoake-a-chewinggum-story“) was invited to Cannes in 2002 and won the Best Photography Award in Tarragona

. Since her graduation Koppe has shot four feature films, several documentary movies, a few commercials and projects with visual artists and dancers. She was nominated twice for the Austrian Film Award, as well as for the Romy Award which she won in 2015. She also won the Best Picture Award for a feature film at the Festival of Austrian Film – Diagonale as the first female Director of Photography.

MASTERCLASS: THE PERFECT PICTURE

Leena Koppe shows the participants her way of approaching a script in order to find a „language“ for a film. What does that include? Amongst other things she explores the role of the cinematographer, tries to answer the question about what the most important thing for a film is and how the collaboration with a director works

. Furthermore, she will talk about concepts, intuition and the ‘perfect’ picture.

DoP, Producer, Director

Nino Leitner is an award-winning filmmaker, director of photography and film producer based in Vienna. Nino’s work mainly focuses on documentaries, TV commercials, corporate films for international brands and narrative short film productions with his film production company Nino Film GmbH
. He is also a well-known blogger as a partner at cinema5D.com, one of the world-leading websites for camera and accessory reviews, as well as his own personal blog ninofilm.net/blog, where he shares insights into how he works on his shoots and projects. Last but not least he is ambassador for Carl Zeiss lenses.

MASTERCLASS: GOOD CAMERA, BAD CAMERA?

In this masterclass we tap Nino Leitner’s brain. How? He will give us some insight into how he proceeds in testing a camera

. Keeping in mind what purpose he needs the camera for – be it TV, commercials or film – he will give us a live presentation of his area of expertise. And round it all up by showing us some footage of what he has produced so far.

A collaboration with 

Cinematographer, Photographer

Piotra Jaxa is a Polish cinematographer and photographer living in Switzerland. He graduated from the Polish National Film School in Lodz and has worked as Director of Photography on a range of fictional and documentary films worldwide (his work has been shown at festivals such as Cannes, Mannheim, Krakow, Los Angeles and Berlin). His film style draws from the period when he did numerous documentaries. For the last few years, he has been extensively exploring the creative possibilities of digital cinematography in independent European productions for the cinema. His last analogue film was done in 2003. Following his photographic collaboration with Krzysztof Kieslowski on the set of the film trilogy “Blue”, “White” and “Red”, he prepared an exhibition entitled “Remembering Krzysztof” which has been touring the world since 1994

. Since 1995, he has been working on a new book and exhibition project entitled “Cinematographers” – a collection of portraits of directors of photography from around the world. Today he is mainly shooting long feature films – “Animals” (d: Greg Zglinski, which premiered at the Berlinale Forum 2017), “Hermit” (d: Kamal Musale) and “Witness” (d: Mitko Panov)… to name just a few.

MASTERCLASS: THE EVERYDAY LIFE OF A DOP

His masterclass will cover the approach to his work as DoP before, while and after shooting the footage

. He will give an insight into the basic steps of the preparation process like reading the script, meeting with the director, discussing visual concepts, visiting locations, taking lots of pictures as a base for further discussion with the director, producer and heads of the crew. Casting the crew, choice of the camera, special effects, light and grip equipment. For Jaxa the close collaboration with the art director is very important
. During the filming process it is more and more common to work with two cameras and a small number of lights. He’ll point out simplistic means of achieving dramatic and visually interesting images and the importance of a professional crew on a low budget film production. For the postproduction the participants will learn about his experience in working with special effects, grading and the matter of achieving overall high-impact-shots and the final print of the DCP.

MASTERCLASS: PHOTOGRAPHY IN FILM

He was 13 years old when he started taking pictures. This has been his passion ever since, and after film school in Lodz/Poland has become his profession. He made four books, one of which he will bring to Innsbruck. He worked as a still photographer for several movies, the most well known pictures are the film stills done on the set of Krzysztof Kieslowski colour-trilogy. He will present a selection of his stills and the collection of portraits from his project “Cinematographers”.

Cinematographer

Reinhold Vorschneider was born in 1951 and went to the DFFB (German Film- and Television-Academy, Berlin). Since he graduated in 1988 he has been working as director of photography, frequently working with auteur filmmakers like Rudolf Thome, Angela Schanelec, Maria Speth, Michael Kreihsl, Thomas Arslan, Christoph Hochhäusler und Benjamin Heisenberg
. Many of his films have been shown at international film festivals such as Cannes and Berlin. For his image composition in Benjamin Heisenberg’s film „Der Räuber“ („The Robber“) Reinhold Vorschneider was nominated for best camera for the German Film Award, the German Camera Award and the Austrian Film Award. In 2013 Vorschneider received the Marburger Camera Award for outstanding cinematography in his complete works
. In 2016 he won the German Camera Award and in 2017 he was given the German Film Award for the cinematography in Nicolette Krebitz’ film „Wild“.

MASTERCLASS: CAMERA CONFESSIONS

Building upon the film „The Robber“, which the Campus participants will have seen in the cinema the evening before his masterclass, Reinhold Vorschneider will use scenes from the film to focus on his approach to mise-en-scène, camera movement and especially lighting

. He will use another one of his works to elaborate how he uses natural lighting as a reference and continue by using examples from his other films.

Gaffer

Since he quit Circus school to join the film business 21 years ago, Jakob Ballinger has been working in the film and television industry. While at a young age, he pursued his interest in developing lights, rigs and fixtures, then became an electrician

. He enrolled at the National Film School in Vienna to deepen his knowledge of the craft. Back in the field of his choice, he has been working as a gaffer ever since. Specializing in large scale feature films (for directors Michael Haneke, Angelina Jolie, Virgil Widrich etc.) and commercials, his international career has taken him all over the world

. As an industry gaffer with experience on projects ranging from small productions to major film studio shoots, Ballinger understands the need for high-quality and economical lighting for various creative projects with different budgets

. He is also founder of The Light Bridge (Centre of Innovative Lighting) and co-developer of CRLS Cine Reflect Lighting System.

MASTERCLASS: BRIDGING LIGHT

After taking a tour through the light labs of Bartenbach GmbH, Jakob Ballinger will introduce his approach to lighting in film. The CRLS system is a highly elaborated technique that works exclusively on the concept of reflections, giving every film set an authentic look while at the same time allowing much more space for the cast and crew to move around. Ballinger will show examples from his work and explain his personal approach to lighting to the Campus participants.