Artur Conka is a Slovakian-born English photographer and filmmaker. He studied photography at Derby university and lectured on the representation of Roma in the media at Huddersfield University. He came to Britain in 1998 as an 8-year-old and had always wanted to return to his roots in the former Czechoslovakia and document the environment and, more importantly, the people at the Luník IX housing estate in Košice, Slovakia, where he had spent a few years of his life before its tragic decline into Slovakia’s largest ghetto. That is why in 2012, he created the short film Lunik IX. Artur’s work has appeared in various international publications such as the Huffington Post, The Independent, Vice Magazine, Foto8 Magazine, Vas.Cas.Sk, Creative Boom, Lab Kultur TV Magazine, and Derby Evening Telegraph. In the last six years, he has worked as a media producer in the creative media industry. As a director of photography, he has also worked with award-winning independent film director Jasmine Dellal in, among others, on a 2017 feature-length documentary on Brexit for Spring Pictures.

 

Katalin Gödrös is a director, film producer and screenwriter. She was born in Zürich and studied production at the Film Academy in Budapest. In addition to working as a production manager for cinematic films, she made several short films and also worked with ZDF’s ‘Das Kleine Fernsehspiel’ on her first feature film “MUTANTEN”, which premiered at the Berlinale in 2002. Her second film, “SONGS OF LOVE AND HATE” appeared in 2010 in the International Competition at the Locarno Premiere, and was released in the autumn and winter of 2011 in Swiss cinemas and German cinemas. Together with Hugo Film GmbH, she adapted  the book “TAUBEN FLIEGEN AUF” by Melinda Nagy Abonji (German Book Prize 2010) to the screen. From 2009 to 2011 she worked as artistic director of Cinema Total at Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, and also for Pitch Stop until 2011, also at the Collegium Hungaricum. Under her leadership, the International Romani Film Commission was founded in 2012. She has been lecturing at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin since 2012.  “IN ABSENTIA” led her to gain a scholarship from the Binger Film Lab in Amsterdam and the Swiss Creators’ Society. The project was selected for Équinox. The adaptation of “DAS VERSCHWINDEN DES PHILIP S.” by Ulrike Edschmid was funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM) and is now in the financing phase, as well as the production of “JACOBS ROSS” by Silvia Tschui, a cinema project produced by TURNUS Film GmbH. For Swiss television she has, in the last three years, directed three seasons of the hit series “DER BESTATTER”, the refugee drama “Im Nirgendwo”, and the crime series “Ausgezählt” (Broadcast 2019).

 

Éva Kalla is a filmmaker, writer and educator from Hungary. She studied Press and International Communication at the University of Szeged as well as  Theology at the J. Wesley Pastor Training College. From the 1970’s to the 1990’s, she was working as an educator, especially with Roma youth, and as an expert on Romani culture and history in Hungary. From 1990 to 2003, she worked for the Hungarian Television as an editor, among others on the portrait series The Lord loves the Righteous People. From 2005 to 2010, she was a member of the ORTT, the complaint committee of the National Radio and Television. In 2009, Éva Kalla founded the Romani Film Fest in Budapest, which she has been organizing annually ever since. She wrote screenplays for many educational films and theatre plays, she directed the documentary film Respect for Gypsy Mothers (2011) and from 2014 to 2017, she worked as an expert and writer for the National Theatre in the production called 371 Csillag (371 Stars), on the occasions of Roma Resistance Day.

 

Candis Nergaard is an actor and writer from Kent, England. She trained as a method actor at the leading Dartington College of Arts and Giles Foreman Centre for Acting in London. After a breakthrough film performance opposite Tom Hardy in Stuart: A Life Backwards, she has worked widely in film, television, radio, and on the stage. Candis Nergaard’s credits include Grantchester (TV) opposite James Norton; White Chamber (film) opposite Oded Fehr, and Brecht’s Fear and Misery in the Third Reich (stage). She also played the lead role in the critically acclaimed BBC production of Carmen, and was nominated for a BBC Best Actress Award in 2012. Candis Nergaard has worked extensively with Dan Allum’s Romany Theatre Company, starring in and co-writing The Yellow Dress (BBC Radio) and Atching Tan (Stopping Place), the BBC’s first ever drama series created by and about Romani people. She has also worked as a Romani language and cultural advisor on Peaky Blinders (series 3 and 4, BBC TV) and Glue (E4 TV). In the past months, she has been starring in a touring theatre production, Carmen the Gypsy, playing the leading role Carmen, in collaboration with the Romany Theatre Company.

 

Pablo Vega is a film director and visual artist who focuses on the emotions and feelings transmitted through his images. He says that being a Gypsy gives him a unique view on things. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Multimedia Technologies and Design from the University of San Francisco and a Master’s degree in Realization and non-linear Editing from the CEV, Escuela Superior de Comunicación, Imagen y Sonido in Madrid. In 2012, Pablo Vega was awarded as Young Creator by the Gypsy Culture Institute run by the Ministry of Culture of Spain, in 2013 he was also awarded for his artistic work by the autonomous Gypsy Community of Madrid. In 2003 he founded his own production company Dika-Audiovisual, working as a photographer, producer, and editor for various advertising campaigns, including Londonize by Beefeater (Mr. Goldwind Agency, 2006-2015, rewarded with a Golden Sun at the Bilbao International Advertising Festival), Beat a Guinness Record (Bacardi, Marketing Agency in the Box, 2008), L’Oreal Professionnel España (Flow Agency, 2003-2008), HBO Spain (2016), and Adidas Real Madrid (2017), among many others. With his passion for audiovisual art, Pablo Vega made music videos for outstanding musical groups such as the Flamenco group Ketama (The soul does not have color – direction, production and editing, 2005) and the Camerata Flamenco Project (Entre corrientes – direction and editing, 2009), as well as for the legendary rock group The Enemies (Intelligent Life). In 2010 he premiered his first documentary Romnia: Huesca Gypsy Women, a portrait of four Gypsy women, which was received an award at the Tikinó Festival in Granada. In 2010-12 Pablo Vega collaborated as director and editor on the documentary Africa the Beat by the collective Samaki Wanne, which reflects the omnipresence of music and its rhythms and melodies in the daily life of the Wagogo tribe in Tanzania. He is currently based in Madrid and works as a freelancer for different producers and advertising agencies.