Competition Jury
The AFO Festival has a total of 4 juries consisting of leading filmmakers, scientists or representative of major film or scientific institutions. The Student Jury consists of one representative per one Palacký University Faculty.
International Competition Jury, 2019
Paul Lewis (Canada)
Paul Lewis is Conference Director of the World Congress of Science and Factual Producers and has more than three decades of broadcasting and production experience. Most recently Paul was President of Strategic Growth at Great Pacific Media (GPM) – an award-winning production company with a strong reputation for storytelling and ratings success. As President and General Manager of the Discovery business in Canada, Paul created, developed and commissioned thousands of hours of ambitious, successful factual television and digital content including the world’s first daily science magazine program. Paul’s television career began in 1980 as a journalist at Canada’s public broadcaster, CBC, working on news and current affairs programs.
Alison Leigh (Australia)
I am an adviser to the World Congress of Science and Factual Producers which under my previous direction has acquired the reputation of being the world’s best event for tracking the trends and engaging in provocative and engrossing debate around issues affecting our genres. Formerly I was Head of ABC TV Science Unit, Australia. I am currently working as a part-time executive producer and writer for the Museum of Australian Democracy in Canberra, and I offer a comprehensive service as a “story doctor” and script editor to emerging producers.
Christoph Krachten (Germany)
Christoph Krachten has worked for almost all TV stations in Germany. As a producer and moderator of Clixoom, he is one of Germany’s best-known YouTubers. He founded VideoDays, he is one of the founders of Germany’s first YouTube network Mediakraft and, with Community Editions, he is responsible for the most successful founding of a publishing house in recent years. Today he manages successful YouTubers like LiDiRo, the Simon Will or the Datteltäter for „funk“, the young offer of ARD and ZDF, he advises companies and institutions in the field of online video; he is a member of the Journalistic Commission of the German Bishops’ Conference and is jointly responsible for the most successful brand channels on YouTube in Germany.
Janet Tobias (USA)
Janet Tobias is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker. Tobias started her career at CBS’ 60 Minutes, after which she moved to PBS. There she created and executive produced, the Emmy Award-winning PBS program Life 360. In 2012, she made her theatrical debut with the documentary feature No Place on Earth, which premiered at TIFF. Her most recent documentary feature, Unseen Enemy, was released at the Copenhagen and Beijing International Film Festivals and broadcast on five continents in nine languages. It was also shown at #AFO53. Tobias is also an adjunct assistant professor of Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and a research professor of Global Public Health at NYU.
Markéta Štinglová (Czech Republic)
After graduation at Film and Television Faculty of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) Marketa joined as an executive producer the production company K2 Ltd. Since 2001 Marketa has been working for Czech Television on various job positions. Currently she works as a Head of International Co-Productions and is responsible for international cooperation across genres. Marketa also participates in the international co-production and pitching forums and she is also occasionally a member of festival juries (Rose d´Or, Banff Festival, International Emmy Awards) where she represents Czech Television. In 2016 she was elected to the Bureau of the EBU Documentary Experts Group and she was also a member of Eurovision Science & Knowledge Experts Group Bureau since 2017.
Czech & Slovak Competition Jury, 2019
Patrizia Mancini
Patrizia Mancini has a professional background in theatre and dubbing. She worked at the Servicing department of Wide House, French sales company specialized in documentaries. At the end of 2012 she begins with the sales assisting Anaïs Clanet, Wide House General Manager, in multiple markets and festivals and becoming Head of Sales. She worked with the Italian sales company Slingshot Films collaborating with Manuela Buono for the sales and the acquisitions. At the end of 2017 she joined the team of Sunny Side of the Doc as Intl Development Officer taking care of the intl producers, distributors, decision makers and partners attending the market.
Pavel Doleček
Within the framework of the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MEYS), Pavel Doleček works as a Designated Deputy for Management of University Education, Science and Research. At first, he worked at MEYS as Section Leader of Conceptional Department for Universities. His following position was Representative Deputy for Management Section of University Education, Science and Research. In both his current and previous jobs, he participated at the conception and implementation of university and scientific policies of the government, being in the services of the ministry. Apart from these functions, he is an active member of expert councils and advisory bodies, such as the Assembly of Czech Academy of Sciences, and he also presides the Supervisory Board of Centre for Higher Education Studies (CHES), a public science institute.
Jiří Dušek
A former passionate night sky observer and correspondent, online journalist and author of numerous performances for Brno Planetarium. Currently working as a manager. In 1996, he received a master’s degree in Physics at Masaryk University, where he also defended his dissertation on carbon stars in 2002. He is a director of Brno Observatory and Planetarium. Together with a team of skilled professionals, he helped to create a new building and a digital planetarium, now one of the most frequented planetariums in Central Europe.
Petr Salaba
Petr Salaba is a Czech documentary film-maker who is currently completing his studies at the Documentary Film Department at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. In 2018, his documentary essay titled IIIIIIIIIIIII, reflecting the problem of machine autocracy, won the award for the Best Czech and Slovak Popular Science Film at the international festival AFO. He is currently developing a documentary computer game Malaria 1983 with the producer Radim Procházka.
Petra Vejvodová
Petra Vejvodová works as an assistant professor and head of the Security and Strategic Studies at the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Studies of the Masaryk University. She focuses her research on the issues of extremism, radicalism, information warfare, propaganda and misinformation. Besides a number of academic publications, she is also the co-author of The Best Book about fake news, disinformation and manipulation!!! (Albatros Media, 2018) and she also acts as a mentor for the Fakescape student project.
Short Film Competition Jury, 2019
Naomi Adachi
An actress, host, model and gamer with Japanese roots. She studied acting at The Prague Conservatoire despite being warned she would hardly get an acting job in the Czech Republic with her origins. She persisted and now, among other things, she has been hosting a Czech show on video games for five years, thus combining her two passions. She is also successful as a model. That’s apparent from once again becoming the face of several campaigns of this year’s Prague Fashion Week. Her goal is to challenge the traditional idea of beauty. “I’m practically alive thanks to documentaries!” she comments with laughter. Her Japanese father is a cameraman, and her parents met on the set of a documentary about the Liberec theatre.
Thomas Beachdel
Thomas Beachdel is an Assistant Professor of Art and Architectural History at City University of New York (CUNY), Hostos. His primary academic work focuses on landscape aesthetics/ideologies between the 17th and 19th centuries. He also maintains an active role in contemporary practice as curator, lecturer, and critic. His current book project is tentatively titled Wrecks, Ruins, and Eruptions: The Visual Culture of the Sublime in the Long Eighteenth Century. His article, A Visionary Shift in Viewpoint: William Hogarth’s Bathos, Edmund Burke’s Sublime, and The End of Beauty, can be found in the spring 2019 British Art Journal 19, no. 3. Paradigm Publishing will publish the book Marie Tomanova: Young American in spring 2019.
Daniel Te Lindert
As a creative director at N=5 – the largest independent agency in the Netherlands – I like to think creative work can have any form. The agency’s independence allows us to fully focus on creative and innovative ideas. By using cultural insights we can create work/campaigns/products for our clients that respond to changing behavior and adapt to a new era. Everything is possible. We believe good (film)craft, storytelling and design always plays a vital role in creative work.
Gabo Arora
Gabo Arora is an immersive artist, the founder and Creative Director of LightShed, a storytelling, technology, and research studio collaborating with creative pioneers and entrepreneurs leading innovation in VR, AR, and AI. He is also a professor at Johns Hopkins University, where he is the Founding Director of the new Immersive Storytelling and Emerging Technologies (ISET) program and lab. His work explores how new technologies can promote social causes and make decision-making processes more inclusive. His VR film Clouds Over Sidra, in partnership with UNICEF, is the most widely distributed and viewed social impact VR film globally.
Tom Millen
Tom Millen is a director at Crossover Labs. He is a curator of immersive storytelling who has pro- grammed exhibitions for a wide range of festivals internationally including CPH:DOX, Bergen Inter- national Film Festival, Silbersalz Festival, Adelaide Fringe Festival and the International Film Festival of India. Tom also works as a producer of digital content and as a mentor on Crossover’s various labs and training programmes.
