BITOLA / SKOPJE (SEEcult.org) - The International Cinematographers Film festival (ICFF) Manaki Brothers, which will be held in Bitola and Skopje, for the first time this year will grant three Special Awards Golden Camera 300 for significant contribution to the world cinematography, and among the laureates are Menahem Golan, the world renowned Israeli/American producer and director, as well as famous Croatian director Veljko Bulajic.

Related link: www.manaki.com.mk

Golan is a member of the International Jury at the 29th edition of the ICFF Manaki Brothers, which president is cinematographer Christian Berger, one of the leading Austrian cinematographers, who also works as director, writer, producer, actor and professor at the Vienna Film Academy.

The Jury also consists of Macedonian director Stole Popov (Fire, Dae, Australia, Australia, Red Horse, Happy New ’49, Tatoo), who works as Professor of Directing at the Faculty of Drama Arts in Skopje. Also in the Jury is Sue Gibson, cinematographer from Great Britain, who was the first woman to be invited to join the BSC/British Society of Cinematographers.

Hungarian actor Ivan Fenyo is also a member of the Jury, and is regarded as one of the most promising and most talented young artists in his country.

Golan is one of the most productive film producers in Hollywood with more than 250 films that make him an absolute champion in the film history. He started his career as youngest directors in the native Israel. In 1958 Golan went to USA to study film at Columbia University as well as New York City College.

He then joined the producer Roger Corman as an assistant to Francis Coppola. With his cousin Yoram Globus he founded the Production Company Cannon Films (Number One independent Company in Hollywood). Over the years Golan produced and directed dozens and dozens films that become successful worldwide, winning festival awards and several Oscar Nominations.

He was born to parents of Polish decent in Tiberias, Israel, in May 1929. He started his education in the Old Vic Theatre School, in London, thus becoming one of the youngest and most successful theatre directors in Israel. He went to the USA to continue his studies at the Columbia University and the New York City College, and started his career as an assistant in the film Young Racers, where he worked side by side with Coppola, who became, over the years, his mentor. The numerous awards and Nominations for Oscar for Best Director and Best Producer, among which the film Operation Thunderbolt witness the success of his films.

Currently, through his Jaffa Production Ltd. Production Company, Golan is preparing for the film which he considers as potentially the most important project in his career - BADENHEIM 39 based on the best-selling book under the same title of the writer Aron Aplefeld, planned to be shot in Europe in 2009.

One of the winners of this year’s the Special Award Golden Camera 300 for outstanding contribution to the world Cinema is Croatian director Veljko Bulajic, born 1928 in Vilusi, Montenegro (ex-Yugoslavia).

According to the ICFF’s organisers, the history of the film art has a special place for Bulajic in the establishment of the Croatian and ex-Yugoslav cinematography.

His first feature film Train Without a Time Table (1959) is considered the turning point setting the highest criteria in ex-Yugoslavian Cinema. At the Festival in Cannes, the critics presented the film as a significant creation of the world cinematography as well. The French critics included it among the ten best films of the year.

Bulajic’s upward movement in the world Cinema was marked by his film Kozara (1962), the Golden Medal Award winner at the International Film Festival in Moscow. Kozara was equally successful in the East and in the West. Here, the author shows a new dimension of the war film. The mark of the French director Francois Truffaut, film author with a completely different poetics, brought forth to the artistic values of the film:”Kozara crushed the prejudice that the war film cannot bring anything new”.

While Kozara was achieving success on every continent, Bulajic completed the documentary feature film Skopje’63 (1964, shot after the catastrophic earthquake in Skopje in 1963). The film received a number of important awards: Grand Prix “Golden Lion Saint Marco” in Venice, Grand Prix “Golden Nymph” in Monte Carlo, the UNESCO Award “Kalinga”, these are but a few of the important awards that followed the world campaign of this documentary film.

The Battle of Neretva (1969) is a war spectacle in its form and was also screened through the world. In 1970, the film was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

Among other films of Bulajic are War (1960), Boom Town (1961), Looking into the Eyes of the Sun (1966), Donor (1969), The Day That Shook the World (1975), The Man to Destroy (1979), High Voltage (1981), Heroes (1983), The Promised Land (1986), and Libertas (2006).