The Film Forward Competition Section includes eleven films of over 45 minutes, which experiment with the form and method of documentary filmmaking. The films will compete for the Golden Alexander, which is accompanied by a €6,000 cash prize, and the Silver Alexander, which is accompanied by a €3,000 cash prize. This year, the Film Forward Competition Jury members are: Christoforos Marinos, curator; Sister Sylvester, visual artist; and Bo Wang, filmmaker.
Christoforos Marinos
Christoforos Marinos is an art historian and curator. He has published extensively on contemporary art and curated group and retrospective exhibitions of acclaimed Greek artists. He is co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online art review kaput. He is the editor of several books and exhibition catalogs, including Possibilities: Interviews with Young Greek Artists (2006) and The Work of Curating (2011). From 2012 to 2015 he was president of the Greek section of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA Hellas).
Christoforos Marinos is an art historian and curator. He has published extensively on contemporary art and curated group and retrospective exhibitions of acclaimed Greek artists. He is co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online art review kaput. He is the editor of several books and exhibition catalogs, including Possibilities: Interviews with Young Greek Artists (2006) and The Work of Curating (2011). From 2012 to 2015 he was president of the Greek section of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA Hellas).
Sister Sylvester
Sister Sylvester is a multimedia artist based in New York and Istanbul. In collaboration with Deniz Tortum, she created the VR documentary Shadowtime, (2023) which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival and continues to tour to festivals including IDFA, GIFF, and Thessaloniki Film Festival; and the film Our Ark which premiered at IDFA (2021) and has screened at festivals internationally. In her live work she creates visual essays and books that become performances, spatial narratives that play with spoken and written text to create communal reading experiences. Most recently Constantinopoliad, with a live score by Nadah El Shazly, was commissioned by the Onassis Foundation, and premiered at National Sawdust in NYC (2023); and The Eagle and The Tortoise, which showed as a work-in-progress at Ferus Festival and premiered at Frascati Theater, Amsterdam, as a part of IDFA On Stage (2022). She is a current resident at ONX Studio; a 2019 MacDowell Fellow; an alumna of the Public Theater New Works program and CPH:DOX lab. She teaches a bio-art class, “The School of Genetically Modified Theater,” at Colorado College, and has also taught and lectured at MIT, Princeton, UCCS, Columbia University, and Boğaziçi, Istanbul.
Sister Sylvester is a multimedia artist based in New York and Istanbul. In collaboration with Deniz Tortum, she created the VR documentary Shadowtime, (2023) which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival and continues to tour to festivals including IDFA, GIFF, and Thessaloniki Film Festival; and the film Our Ark which premiered at IDFA (2021) and has screened at festivals internationally. In her live work she creates visual essays and books that become performances, spatial narratives that play with spoken and written text to create communal reading experiences. Most recently Constantinopoliad, with a live score by Nadah El Shazly, was commissioned by the Onassis Foundation, and premiered at National Sawdust in NYC (2023); and The Eagle and The Tortoise, which showed as a work-in-progress at Ferus Festival and premiered at Frascati Theater, Amsterdam, as a part of IDFA On Stage (2022). She is a current resident at ONX Studio; a 2019 MacDowell Fellow; an alumna of the Public Theater New Works program and CPH:DOX lab. She teaches a bio-art class, “The School of Genetically Modified Theater,” at Colorado College, and has also taught and lectured at MIT, Princeton, UCCS, Columbia University, and Boğaziçi, Istanbul.
Bo Wang
Bo Wang is an artist, filmmaker, and researcher based in Amsterdam. His works have been exhibited internationally, including at MoMA, Guggenheim Museum, Garage Museum, CPH:DOX, Visions du Réel, IFFR, LUX, Open City Documentary Festival, Torino Film Festival, Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Sesc_Videobrasil and Sharjah Film Platform, among others. He is a recipient of major international awards, including New:Vision at CPH:DOX, Golden Dove at DOKLeipzig, O.F.F. Prize at Sesc_Videobrasil, Best Doc Short at Sharjah Film Platform, etc. He received a fellowship at the Flaherty Film Seminar in 2013, and was an artist-in-residence at ACC-Rijksakademie from 2017 to 2018, as well as at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore in 2016. He is currently a PhD candidate at Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, Universiteit van Amsterdam.
Bo Wang is an artist, filmmaker, and researcher based in Amsterdam. His works have been exhibited internationally, including at MoMA, Guggenheim Museum, Garage Museum, CPH:DOX, Visions du Réel, IFFR, LUX, Open City Documentary Festival, Torino Film Festival, Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Sesc_Videobrasil and Sharjah Film Platform, among others. He is a recipient of major international awards, including New:Vision at CPH:DOX, Golden Dove at DOKLeipzig, O.F.F. Prize at Sesc_Videobrasil, Best Doc Short at Sharjah Film Platform, etc. He received a fellowship at the Flaherty Film Seminar in 2013, and was an artist-in-residence at ACC-Rijksakademie from 2017 to 2018, as well as at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore in 2016. He is currently a PhD candidate at Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, Universiteit van Amsterdam.
