Dmitry Omelchenko, a staff member of Center for Youth Studies, visited the Summer School on Documentary Film in Pozega (Serbia).
Second half of August in the academic community is usually decided to be spend on self-education, such opportunity was taken by the lecturer of the "Sociology" Department to improve the level of his competence in the production of documentaries.
Pozega is a small town in the south of Serbia. And 5 years in a row a silent life of it stops when students and professionals of documentary filmmaking are coming here from all around the globe. The school format includes master classes and a work-shop. As part of the master class, the attendants are provided with tons of theoretical material, and work-shop participants are united in groups to create their own documentary projects from scratch. Each crew consists of international cast - producer, director, cameraman, sound editor and editor. The creative team find themselves in an unknown city where it is necessary to find a story and expose all their knowledge and talent with the documentary project, that later will be presented at the Documentary film forum in Belgrade. A great opportunity to try out their skills. As for the master class, there were two lecturers this year, famous Yugoslav directors - Zhelimir Zhilnik and Dragan Elcic. In addition to numerous awards, major accomplishment of Mr. Zhilnik is the prize of the Berlin Film Festival for Best Film "Early Works" (1969) and Dragan Elcic has been nominated in 1985 for an Academy Award from Yugoslavia.
The whole event took full two weeks. And, despite the fact that the theoretical and practical schedule was very tight (actually, day began at 9 am and the last lecture ended at eight in the evening), all guests at Pozega experienced evening entertainment. The documentaries screenings, symphonic concerts, an indie rock gig, karaoke parties, parties with local spirits, also all the participants from all countries made a presentation of their homeland. By the way, there were participants from 15-17 different countries. Such as: Hong Kong, Mexico and Venezuela, Republic of South Africa and Canada, and of course, from most European countries.