UCLA FILM SCHOOL & DUTCH PROGRAM AT SEEfest: Master Class with Rada Sesic

Monday, May 5th @ 8PM

The Dutch film program is supported by Dutch Culture USA
of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.  

The focus of Ms Šešić’s talk are the contributions to Dutch cinema by immigrants from Eastern and Southeastern Europe, as well as highlighting the work of the Hubert Bals Fund and IDFA Bertha Fund, with an overview of their funding schemes, and current priorities. 

Part of the master class will be devoted to Q&A with students about the projects they are developing, and opportunities in the Netherlands including co-productions,  and film festivals like IDFA, Rotterdam, and Eastern Neighbors. 

Moderated by SEEfest’s Director Vera Mijojlic and Hans-Martin Liebing, Lecturer, UCLA Film School. 

Rada Šešić directed several award-winning films, including ‘Room Without a View’ and ‘In Whitest Solitude’; she is a long-time festival programmer, film lecturer, and documentary labs expert. Born in Yugoslavia, she lives in The Netherlands. She heads Documentary Competition at the Sarajevo Film Festival, and for 20 years collaborated on selecting films/film projects at the IDFA Amsterdam. Her impressive professional career spans teaching at the Master of Film Program in Amsterdam and mentoring/consulting at various European and Asian documentary workshops. She is the Founder and artistic director of the Eastern Neighbours film festival in The Hague (2008-2023). She established and co-heads Docu Rough Cut Boutique in Sarajevo, and in Italy, at the industry part of Trieste Festival- When East Meets West, she is the artistic leader of the platform Last Stop Trieste. She has worked as program advisor for the IFFR Rotterdam from 2000-2020. Her directorial work in The Netherlands includes Dutch produced-short films ‘Room Without a View’ which premiered at NFF and IDFA, film and video installation ‘Soske,’ dance film “In Whitest Solitude” which premiered at IFFR, and ‘On the Way to School’ which premiered at De Balie Amsterdam. Her films were screened and awarded at around 60 film festivals in Europe, Asia, Africa and the USA, including MoMA in New York, and she has served on more than 50 juries worldwide; she is a regular mentor at Vision du Reel – Rough Cut Lab in Nyon, the BDC Discoveries platform Sofia, and Docs to Go / Krakow. Ms Šešić is a member of NETPAC and European Film Academy.  

She has collaborated on books on cinema a.o. World Documentary Encyclopaedia edited by Ian Aitken, published by Routledge; ‘Cinema of Flames’ by Dina Iordanova, and wrote articles for the film magazines Skrien and Filmkrant in The Netherlands, magazines in the USA, the UK, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and India.