Being a filmmaker means not only to create, but also to take full responsibility for one's creations. It doesn't matter if one's an artist trying to alter human souls or a commercial director who would like to offer the viewers simple joys and seductive escapism. Each filmmaker engages in a dialogue with the audience, thus he or she needs not only to be able to put his/her thoughts into an appropriate form, but also to learn to listen. Jay Rosenblatt, this year's Head of the Jury of the Feature Length Documentary Films Competition “IMAGE OF THE WORLD - WORLD IN IMAGES" under the patronage of DISCOVERY NETWORKS CEEMEA, had repeatedly proven with his films that he is a very sensitive filmmaker, trying with his creations to make the viewers to be more aware and critical of themselves.

Jay Rosenblatt
It's no surprise when You consider the fact that Jay Rosenblatt has a Master's Degree in Counseling Psychology and for some time he worked as a therapist. Paradoxically, it had been efforts to help his patients through opening himself to their problems that led him to start his romance with cinema. Saddened by what he had seen in “instructional films", that formulated therapist's duty with a number of neat and simplified definitions, Rosenblatt decided to appeal with his vision of humanity to a much wider audience. It was 1980. Three decades and almost thirty movies later he is recognized as one of the most prominent American directors of short films. His works are screened in prestigious institutions like New York's Museum of Modern Art, still surprising the subsequent generations of viewers. Rosenblatt's films are so memorable due to their unusual form and the director's quixotic quest to find humanity in everything that surrounds us. One of his most acknowledged creations is a documentary about Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Francisco Franco and Mao Tse Tung. “Human Remains", awarded at various film festivals, including Sundance, doesn't use the reminisces of the horrors those dictators were responsible for; instead it explores their private lives, and thus radiates with ironic, slightly poetic and timeless reflection on the different appearances of evil.

The form is essential in understanding the way Jay Rosenblatt's films work. They are closest to documentaries, as they are composed of archive materials, found footage, fragments of old movies, TV news, still photographs and edited parts of film soundtracks. They use voice-over, which in these cases stands for the author's voice, nevertheless, definition of a documentary is too narrow to describe Rosenblatt's artistic creations. His films are perfectly realized hybrids composed out of various forms of cinema; they resist being described with mere few words. Just as human identity, spirit and soul's capability of doing evil resist being defined by a few encyclopaedic definitions.

Although his creations were evolving throughout the years in terms of form, aesthetics and narration, Jay Rosenblatt's first two films - “The Session" and “Doubt" - had already heralded most of the themes he would explore throughout his whole career: opening oneself to another human being, trying to understand the essence of human capability of doing both good and evil, provoking discussions about cultural taboos (i.e. suicide) and penetrating the mechanisms of human memory. Especially this last aspect made Rosenblatt's cinema timeless. The phantoms of passing time, forming one's identity and the way complex, associative mind works, marking people's understanding of the surrounding world, reminisce the celebrated Proustian Madeleines.

Still from "Human Remains"
“I don't have answers and I don't think films have answers, but they hopefully can be catalysts for a deep discussion and a way of reflecting with one's self as you're viewing it," said the American artist in one of his interviews. We are very proud that Jay Rosenblatt will be once again the festival's guest, heading for the second time in a row the Jury of the Feature Length Documentary Films Competition. As a tribute to Jay Rosenblatt we will screen some of his work, including “Human Remains", “Phantom Limb", “Beginning Filmmaking", “Afraid So" and other films. This is the kind of cinema that challenges the viewer, it is worth to try it, especially considering the fact Jay Rosenblatt will be at Q&A's after the screenings.