Masterclasses
Masterclasses
Masterclass by Solar Cinema & MakeDox Traveling Cinema
Bring Unseen Films to Unusual Places
Date: August 23, 2025
Time: 11:00 – 13:00
Venue: Laboratorium
How can we bring films to places where cinema has never existed? How do we make sure that powerful stories reach even the most remote corners of our societies? And how can we do it in a way that is sustainable, inclusive, and poetic?
In this unique masterclass, two visionary cinema initiatives—Solar Cinema Network and MakeDox Traveling Cinema—come together to explore cinema’s potential to decentralize culture and democratize access to art.
Solar Cinema is an international network of solar-powered mobile cinemas committed to promoting renewable energy and expanding access to cinema. Traveling across borders and landscapes, they bring unseen films to unusual places. Using 100% solar energy, they organize open-air screenings in public spaces after sunset—completely off-grid and self-sufficient.
On the other side of Europe, MakeDox’s Traveling Cinema has since 2010, been a faithful donkey-powered caravan that ventures deep into rural North Macedonia. With a handmade screen, poetic spirit, and strong belief in the power of storytelling, the MakeDox team visits 7–10 new villages on the territory of Macedonia every summer—sometimes even crossing the border to Albania. Their screenings under the open sky have reached over 13,000 people in more than 100 remote locations, where cinema was long forgotten or never existed.
In this masterclass, the creators behind both of these projects will share insights, challenges, and memories from the road. Together, they will reflect on cinema as an instrument for social engagement, a catalyst for conversation, and a bearer of light—sometimes literally.
Expect stories of donkeys, solar panels, curious villagers, border crossings, poetry, onions, and a whole lot of love for documentary film.
Masterclass by Hubert Sauper
Radical Minimalism In “World Cinema”
Date: August 24, 2025
Time: 11:00 – 13:00
Venue: Laboratorium
For the last three decades, the director, cinematographer, writer Hubert Sauper has directed nonfiction cinema films which have acclaimed worldwide recognition, were multiply awarded in Venice, Berlinale, Sundance, and the film Darwin’s Nightmare was nominated for best documentary at the Oscars.
Hubert tried to reduce the act of making non-fiction filmmaking to almost “nothing”: since the late 1990s in Congo and Tanzania, he has thrown overboard just about everything a “cinema film production” usually seems to need – no more tripods, no artificial lights, no sound team even. Nothing but the sheer minimum: a tiny but high-end camera and a very good microphone. And the ultimate necessity: long periods of time to write, think, research… also to meet, encounter, and the most important – the characters.
Making this kind of cinema is like writing poetry of novels, or a kind of a lifelong meditation.
“When the camera goes “on” there is nothing else in the world but the eyes, the breath, the thoughts, the smiles or tears of the protagonists” says the director. Magic happens not despite, but through the presence of a camera.
The humans in Hubert’s films looks straight into the eyes of the audience, and the effect is hypnotic. Every film then becomes a deep and enigmatic journey, a moving movie.
In this master class for young filmmakers and cinephiles, Hubert will unveil some special secrets of his methods. How to “write-in-movement” which literally means “cinemato – graphy”. Also, the director will talk about political cinema and mental ecology. How to stay mentally afloat in an insane world… how to look into the abyss – without the abyss staring back at you. And how to plant apple trees and all kinds of living things.