SPECIAL PROGRAMME: Workshop II – Capturing the Space

A Hands-On Workshop on Space in Filmmaking and Multimodal Production

Facilitated by Mike Poltorak
Co-organized with Saada Elabed
Location: Seminar Room

This workshop examines the role of space as both a subject and collaborator in filmmaking and multimodal works. Central to the workshop is the exploration of ‘liminal spaces’: those in-between realms where the familiar meets the unknown, where uncertainty and discovery coexist. How can the act of filming a space reveal its emotional and historical depth? How do filmmakers negotiate their gaze and responsibility when representing spaces shaped by movement, absence, or change?

Through practical exercises, discussions, and excerpt screenings, participants will explore how spaces inspire, irritate, and incite creativity. The workshop encourages you to engage with the concepts of space – formal, informal, situated, or imagined – as a living archive. An archive that carries layers of memory, transformation, and significance.

Limited space registration mandatory, visit www.regardbleu.ch for more information (if you are really keen to participate, you can also contact us at festivaloffice@regardbleu.ch after the registration deadline).

About the Facilitator

News: Unfortunately, Tobi Akinde is unable to join us, and we truly regret his absence. However, we are delighted to welcome Dr. Mike Poltorak, who will be stepping in to lead the workshop. We look forward to an engaging and insightful session with him!

Mike Poltorak

Mike Poltorak is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, medical/visual anthropologist, and impact designer who explores social and planetary health through teaching, ethnographic film, and transmedia. His documentaries, emerging from long-term community engagement, include Fun(d)raising: The Secret of Tongan Comedy (2010), One Week West of Molkom (2013), and Five Ways In (2014). His latest film, The Healer and the Psychiatrist (2019), won the SVA Best Feature Film Award (2020) and screened at 14 global festivals. He has taught visual, social, and medical anthropology at Sussex, Kent, UCL, and Zurich universities, earning multiple teaching awards. As an impact designer, he worked with the Films for Future Festival in Zurich and is developing a documentary on fishing, community, and climate change on Lake Zurich. He is a Senior Research Fellow at La Trobe University, producing a documentary on trust in medicine and land in Fiji, and Co-President of the SAA Interface Commission. He holds a PhD from UCL (2002).

Tobi Akinde

Tobi Akinde is a Nigerian filmmaker and independent film curator currently based in New Orleans. In 2020 he co-founded the Monangambee Film Foundation, a nomadic pan-African microcinema in Lagos, Nigeria, and has curated films for the Goethe-Institut Nigeria and the African Studies Book Club at the University of Cambridge. His most recent documentary work as a cinematographer, Coconut Head Generation (2023), won the Jury Grand Prix at Cinema du Reel, Paris, and has screened at New Directors, New Films at MoMA, New York, BlackStar Film Festival, Philadelphia, the Geneva International Film Festival, and Forum on Human Rights, amongst others.