The masterclasses focus on learning first-hand from renowned filmmakers, who have worked in the field for years and decades and have broken many ‘glass ceilings’ in a predominantly male profession. Each masterclass/panel starts with a screening, followed by a moderated discussion between the filmmaker and an invited moderator. All the screenings, panels, and masterclasses are free and open to the audience.
Art School Maa
Art School Maa is an educational institution, which aims to provide professional education and artistic development for its students. It fulfills this task by organizing various kinds of teaching situations. There are around 50 students at Art School Maa. They are taught annually by approximately 50 art professionals in teaching situations that range from longer periods and workshops or one-off lectures and events. In addition to its teaching, Maa-Tila, a project space in Sörnäinen, is part of Art School Maa. The programme of Maa-Tila involves approximately twenty artists annually in different roles.
Academy of Moving People and Images (AMPI)
The Academy of Moving People and Images is a platform founded by filmmaker Erol Mintaş, in Helsinki for mobile/moving people - those who have arrived in Finland for different reasons; be they displaced people, forced immigrants, students, asylum seekers, employees, or those who immigrated for love. AMPI aims to design a new learning model and a sustainable pedagogical platform where people who have arrived in Finland from different backgrounds get to co-work/learn together. Its aim is to contribute and initiate change to rebuild a discrimination-free film industry.
Critical Cinema Lab
Critical Cinema Lab is a film-practice-led and artistic research entity which fuses theory and practice of filmmaking in order to catalyze new forms of cinema and new ways in which cinema can connect with audiences beyond the mere commercial emotion economy. The core objective of CCL is to experiment with how cinema in its myriad forms – fictional, documentary, experimental, interactive, or any hybrid combination of these – can make visible and experiential the ethical, social, political or ecological complexities of our time. Cinema is seen as an elastic art form echoing the urgencies of the historical moment in which we live in. The CCL brings together filmmaker- theorists, doctoral students, and MA students committed to experiment and theorize within and in relation to their artistic work.
Erol Mintaş
Founder & DirectorErol Mintaş (b. 1983, Kars) is a filmmaker and doctoral researcher, who completed his graduate studies in computer science and in cinema—his MA thesis was about the cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky and existentialism in cinema. His short films Butimar and Berf (aka Snow) received many awards, and competed in various important film festivals around the world. In 2014, Mintaş’s first feature, Song of My Mother, made a major splash on the festival circuit, playing around the world and being awarded plenty of prizes, including the Heart of Sarajevo award for best film and best actor, and numerous other important awards. He moved to Helsinki in January 2017, where his new film project (Earth Song) is currently taking place, supported by the Finnish Film Foundation (Suomen elokuvasäätiö) scriptwriting grant and development support.
Teresa Siltanen
CoordinatorTeresa Siltanen is a Helsinki-based filmmaker from the United States. She holds a bachelor's degree in Theater Arts from Methodist University North Carolina. She works primarily within the Assistant Directing Department on films and commercials.
For event inquiries, questions, or concerns: coordinator.of.tbc@gmail.com
Jelica Jerinić
Screening CoordinatorJelica Jerinić is a Serbian-born and Helsinki-based filmmaker. She graduated with an MA in Dramaturgy from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. She is an Academy of Moving People and Images, Sarajevo Talents, European Short Pitch and EFM Fiction Toolbox Programme alumna. She has directed three short films: a documentary, Girls Who Cut Their Hair Short, and fiction films, Dog Day and Duck Roast.
Yilin Ma
Guest CoordinatorYilin Ma is a Helsinki based writer, curator and producer, working in the intersections of literature, visual culture, and live performance with a focus on queer diaspora narratives and queer-feminist ways of understanding the spaces between lyrical and material.
Samra Šabanović
Content, Communications & Marketing ManagerSamra Šabanović (b. Bosnia and Herzegovina) is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Helsinki. She graduated from Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, holds a Master's degree in Visual Cultures, Curating and Contemporary Art from Aalto University and is Academy of Moving People and Images alumna. Her short film I Need to Tell You Something made its debut at Sarajevo Film Festival in 2022. Besides filmmaking and art, Samra is working in audiovisual production, communications and content creation as a freelancer.
For media inquires and interviews: tbcpressandpr@gmail.com
Tanja Becher
Administrative and Financial ManagerTanja Becher is an art historian (MA) and scenographer (MFA) working in arts and culture. She is currently the Study and Administrative Coordinator at Art School Maa.
H Ouramo
Administrative ManagerH Ouramo is a performance artist and educator based in Helsinki. They are currently working as Rector of Art School Maa.
TransBorder Conversations is supported by the Finnish Film Foundation and AVEK (the Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture Finland). The last masterclass of 2023 was also kindly supported by Goethe-Institut Finnland.