Guests of the 12th edition of 2014 Festival

Honorary guest of the 12th edition of 2014 Festival: Samuel Maoz

The Festival shows the films directed by an aclaimed director, like Venice Golden Lion winner: LEBANON.

Samuel Maoz

Samuel Maoz (born c. 1962) is an Israeli film director. His 2009 film, Lebanon won the Golden Lion at the 66th Venice International Film Festival.

Biography

Shmuel (Shmuel) Maoz was born in Tel Aviv. At the age of 20, he was a gunner in one of the first Israeli tanks to enter Lebanon in the 1982 Lebanon War. After the war, he trained as a cameraman at the Beit Zvi theater school, and did art direction in film and television productions.

Film career

As a director, Maoz was associated with the production of documentary films, directing the ARTE production Total Eclipse (2000) with Yevgenya Dodina. In 2007, Maoz began working on Lebanon, his first feature film. The script, based on Maoz's personal experiences, describes the traumatic experiences of a four-man Israeli tank crew in a Lebanese village early in the war.

At the end of July 2009, Maoz received an invitation to the competition of the 66th Venice Film Festival, where he won the Golden Lion after having had been rejected at the Berlin and the Cannes film festivals.

Lebanon was praised as one of the most compelling competition entries. That same year the film was nominated for the Ophir, Israel's national film awards, in ten categories.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Martin Smith - a guest of 12th Festival 2014

2014 Festival presents a documentary "A Different World - Messenger from Poland" directed by Martin Smith

The Museum of History of Poland is a patron of Mr. Adam Smith`s trip and stay during the Festival

Martin Smith has been making and writing international documentary films for more than forty years. His awards include an EMMY, several BAFTA nominations, two George Peabody Awards, an 'Outstanding Archival Achievement' prize from the British Film Institute, a Royal Television Society Award and numerous Film Festival successes.

Smith's oeuvre includes films for 'The World at War', 'Vietnam - A Television History', 'The Struggles for Poland' and 'Cold War'. His documentaries for the BBC include the prophetic 'States of Terror - Soldiers of God' and 'China - The Giant Awakes'. For Thames Television he directed four exposés of the tobacco industry, among them 'Death in the West' and sixteen other investigative documentaries. His Latin American documentaries include the prize-winning 'Compańero - Victor Jara of Chile'; 'Bolivia - The Tin Mountain', 'Argentina - State of Seige' and 'Brazil - The Children of the Miracle'.

For his work as exhibition director at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. Smith received a Presidential award from William Clinton.