Conference speakers

 

Antoine Schirer

From his teenage years and throughout his twenties (2005→2016), he has been intimately involved in B-Boying culture, as an second-rate dancer, and mainly as a videographer. Within various collectives (Style2ouf, IBE, R16), I filmed battles, portrayed dancers, produced short documentaries…Unexpectedly, this teenager's passion took me to thirty five countries, from Korea, to Brazil, Nigeria… I made videos with some of the best dancers in the world, and also with hidden talents in places like El Salvador, Qatar or Sudan.

Daniel Zhu

Creative director and co-founder of StanceElements, a production company immersed in the art of movement.  Since its inception in 2014, StanceElements has partnered with Red Bull, Monster, Olympics, and international tourism bureaus in creating content and managing their social media pages.  His content has been featured on Joe Rogan and the front page of Reddit on occasions.  Currently, Daniel's excitement in social media is showcasing breaking in the Olympics, which will debut in Paris 2024.  He is a graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the USA, a returned Peace Corps Volunteer, and has lived in South Korea, Alaska, Mauritania, and Senegal.

David “Footloose” Russell

B-Boy (Breakdancer) who fell in love with Hip-Hop culture at the age of 27, always being a fan of Hip-Hop music since the age of 14 listening to Big L, Big Pun, Biggie, Cypress Hill

Estelle Ebenga Hénot

Creative entrepreneur based in Paris,France. Communication consultant, fashion designer and podcaster. She started Hip Hop dance as a teenager in Roubaix, France and travelled the world to follow her passion through battles and workshops.  Today she owns a streetwear label @iam.eeH (on Instagram) and teaches entrepreneurship and branding in a Fashion Business School in Paris. 

Giulia Giorgi aka Chimp

Polyhedric figure active in the Italian independent movie industry. Member of Wild Up b-girl Crew, she has always been active into the hip hop community. She organized many international Hip Hop youth exchanges supported by the EU, and events as the b-boy event for 3 years, the funky afternoon and many hip hop parties and events in clubs and social centers. She directed two hip hop documentaries “1 world under a groove” and “Break the siege” and the video experimental “The antisexist manifesto in the Italian rap.She is one of the founder of Baburka Production, an independent production based in Rome.She is also one of the founder of the first Italian SFX makeup association “EffectUs” and the promoter of the independent cinema productions network “Il Cartello degli Indipendenti”. Moreover she is the art director of the HipHopCineFest.org.

Martha Diaz

Colombian-American futurist Martha Diaz (MD) is a seasoned community organizer, media producer, archivist, curator, educator, and social entrepreneur. Has produced and consulted on numerous Hip Hop media projects including, Where My Ladies At? by Leba Haber Rubinoff (2007), Black August: A Hip-Hop Concert by Dream Hampton (2010), and Nas: Time Is Illmatic by One9 (2014). In 2002, MD founded the highly acclaimed Hip Hop Odyssey (H2O) International Film Festival, the first festival of its kind. She curated the first Hip Hop movie series presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and served as a guest curator at the Museum of the Moving Image and Schomburg Center. In 2010, MD launched the Hip Hop Education Center for Research, Evaluation, and Training at New York University, now part of the Universal Hip Hop Museum.


MG – Martin Gilian

He is co-founder and CEO of MG & MK, s.r.o (The Legits) and the producer of Hip Hop festivals The Legits Blast in Slovakia, Czech Republic and USA. He created also the video production The Legits Studios to capture the soul of the action in the breaking world and the clothing brand The Legits dedicated to the breaking community worldwide

Mini boj

Grew up in the small town of Poprad in Slovakia he has been since he was six years old. When he was 14, he got his first computer and he was breakdance since already 3 years. He started edit videos in 2003 before the YouTube era, so at that time was all about trying and failing. He has been inspired by Little Shao at the beginning, and was Shao who showed him the tricks to become a professional photographer and videographer in the breaking world and make him believe that it was possible. Today, in the internet era, he is overwhelmed of inspiration and constantly look for people all over the globe who are doing cool things.

Michael ‘Piecez’ Prosserman

Author, B-Boy, university instructor and professional speaker who specializes in scaling start-ups, integrating mental well-being into team culture, innovation in fundraising, and healthy succession of long time leaders. In Michael’s new book Building Unity: Leading a Non-Profit From Spark to Succession, he shares practical tools and stories to launching, leading and leaving a sustainable organization. He scaled a grassroots organization from the ground up as the Founder of Unity Charity, an organization using Hip-Hop to improve youth mental health. In over 15 years Michael grew Unity from a volunteer group to employing 80 staff, raising $7 million, and having an impact on 250,000 youth. Michael is committed to empowering leaders in the public and private sector to build resilient, responsive and responsible organizations.

Rob Schwartz

Hip hop media and distribution pioneer. He starting out at PolyGram Records distributing artists like Jay-Z, Jeru the Damaja, and Beenie Man. Rob then created one of the first hip hop websites to feature original video content www.whomag.net. Rob currently owns 3 music TV networks including WHO?MAG Multimedia (www.whomagtv.com), iFame TV, and Video Vision. As a multi-award winning film director, he has directed a movie in London as well as many in the US. Rob has received awards from Master P & Jesse Jackson, Pocono Film Fest, 3 from the city of Philadelphia, 2 from the city of Baltimore, and many more.

Elisa Ciprianetti aka Saiko

Is a professional dancer and choreographer of Street dance, stand up and break dance, member of the Wild Up Bgirl Crew. She took part in multiple national and international shows and contests and her experience spans from live performance, theater shows till the art education through the break dance. Socially engaged, she organizes international exchanges and participates in various social shows for world peace. Among her works we remember the participation in the Lions’ Gate Movie “Crew to Crew”, the theater show Hip HopOpera Dr J&H as female protagonist.

Veronika Urbonaite-Barkauskiene

Is a phd student of sociology in Vilnius University, researching graffiti development in the Baltic states and especially Lithuania, interested in the spatial and historical aspects of illegal urban writing. She is also the author of an essay book “The Kids of the 90s Become Parents“ (2020).

Yassine El Idrissi

He explored different professions before becoming a storyteller in the film industry. But the power of images was always the common denominator. El Idrissi worked several years as a successful photojournalist in maroccan national newspapers and international news agencies until he found that to satisfy his urge to tell the stories, he needed the power of cinema. He took two years to produce his first documentary “Waiting for the Snow”. Yassine graduated at the Netherlands Film Academy in Amsterdam in 2013 with a Master degree.

 

Andrea Traina

He is an Italian director and screenwriter who lives and works in Rome. He has written and directed short films, commercials, feature films and TV series. His works, aired on the main Italian broadcasters, have been selected by international festivals, never failing to win major awards. He collaborated with Sky Italia, Fox Crime and Filmax and, as a screenwriter, he won the "Premio Solinas", the most important and prestigious Italian award for screenwriting. Recently he collaborated with Tìpota Movie Company in the making of some documentaries. He is a founding member and currently a member of the board of the Writers Guild Italia, the screenwriters' union.

 

Bboy House

Edson “Bboy House” Magana is a Mexico City-born street artist representing the Boys and Writers (graffiti). He is a practitioner,student, and educator/lecturer of Hip Hop culture and its communities. He is co-founder of Furious Styles Crew, an organization that creates collaborations and networks of socially engaged work. Co founder of the
www.LoveFightsBacks.info art initiative launched during the
pandemic and BLM movement he can be seen as an artivist in his
communities.

Bill Bering

For the last 20 years, he have been working with Cinema in Greenland and Denmark. A self-taught Projectionist and Cinema manager in Greenland’s only full-time Cinema in Katuaq – Greenland Cultural Centre. Furthermore, he have worked as an Artistic Director and as technical advisor for Nuuk International film festival in Greenland for the last 4 years. His main area is with indigenous filmmakers in the arctic.

1895.cloud

1895.cloud was started by a group of passionate and dedicated cinema exhibitors and film distributors who wanted to create a network between themselves and with their most precious accomplices:  the spectators.Thanks to the web and to the digital resources, it expands, without substituting it, the collective vision enriching the 'on demand' experience of human warmth made up of audience relations, interactions and exchange of ideas, which is the hallmark of the cinema exhibitors’ profession.

 

Marcos Antonio Candido Carvalho

Marcos Antonio Candido Carvalho: from Fortaleza, at just over 20 years old he participates in the birth of Axé. He has the privilege of going to Sao Paulo several times to meet Paulo Freire in person with whom he discusses the formation of future Axé educators. He gets his PhD from "New York University" in Inenvironment psychology. Subsequently he refuses a safe place in the academy and decides to return to Salvador and continue his work with Projeto Axé. Meanwhile he becomes a Psychoanalyst, a profession he has been practicing for more than a decade. Today he is the coordinator of the whole atertudicative area of ​​Project Axé and has supported dozens of training courses in Latin America, the USA and Europe. Creator of the Pedagogy of Desire, last 2016 he directed a research, called "Cartography of desire" conducted by Projeto Axé Brazil in partnership with the Federal University of the State of Bahia and financed by UNESCO, through which the number of people living in street conditions in the city of Salvador.

Fabio Del Greco (per Indiecinema)

Fabio Del Greco was born in Pescara where he attended the faculty of foreign languages and literature at the G. D'Annunzio university. In 1997 he attended the Dams of the University of Rome Tre, the Maldoror school of cinema and photography, studied screenwriting with Leo Benvenuti, and worked on various film sets as assistant director, assistant editor. As a director and screenwriter he has made about ten short and medium-length films, and the feature film “A better life”. He has written three scripts for feature films and has directed over 30 commercials.

Mad Solutions

MAD Solutions is the first Pan-Arab independent studio and fully integrative marketing and creative consultancy for the Arab film and Entertainment Industry. Under the umbrella of MAD Solutions, the studio is supported by five pillars: MAD Marketing, MAD Content, MAD Distribution, MAD Culture and MAD Celebrity, which together are helping to usher in an exciting new generation of Arab filmmakers and entertainment talent.

Zalab

For over 15 years she has been dealing with the organization and programming of markets, workshops and reviews related to cinema, in particular documentary. Among others: Documentary in Europe, Italian Doc Screenings, IDS Academy, Mese del Documentario, Salina Doc Fest.
Since 2016 she has been working at ZaLab (www.zalab.org) as head of distribution.

Karim Kouki aka Kouki Dateacher

He started rapping in 1989.He was also a Hip Hop dance choreographer in the 90's. He had the first Hip Hop tv show in Tunisia.
He is now a Rap radio show presenter. He have been an MC for more than 20 years.

Paul Van Dal

Paul van Dal started breaking in 2000 and is one of the co-founder of the breaking crew The Ruggeds. From 2008 onwards Paul has been busy organising breaking events and in 2009, he co-founded World BBoy Classic.
From 2013 he has been involved into the Red Bull BC One on an annual base and been responsible for the media production of events such as The Notorious IBE, Undisputed BBoy Masters. In 2016 he co-founded the Dutch Breaking League for the upcoming youth in The Netherlands and since the inclusion of Breaking into the Olympics he’s part of the breaking commission of the Dutch Dance Federation. In 2010 he started co-managing Prodance TV which he later took fully over and transformed into New Dance TV. New Dance TV will be an online platform for high quality street dance content giving the culture it’s platforms it deserves. Driven by the roots of our culture, Paul is determined to make the world of Dancing, and Breaking in particular known to a global audience.


François Gautret


Director and Co-Founder of the Urban Films Festival, Curator at the Philharmonie de Paris on the Hip-Hop 360 exhibition.
François Gautret evolved as a bboy in Paris from an early age with the company "Quintessence" and with the pioneers of French Hip Hop. Producer of events, it federates and promotes urban cultures around events of international scope

Greta Nordio

Greta was born and raised in Venice, Italy, and she currently works as manager of business and legal affairs for Vivo film, an award-winning independent production company based in Rome.
She has also been working in the field of Audience Design for years, collaborating with TorinoFilmLab in numerous projects, including the communication strategies of the multi-award winning The Wound, A Land Imagined and La Nuit des Rois and holding workshops in Turin, Sao Paulo and Beirut.
She pursued a degree in English and Film Studies in Scotland and a master in Film Studies at Columbia University, New York, where she lived for 3 years. In NY she mainly worked for Film Presence, specializing in strategic outreach and crowdfunding campaigns for various films, including Citizenfour, National Gallery and Miles Ahead, and the New York Film Festival.

 

Maurizio Ravallese

Born in Rome in 1989, has a Doctorate in Philology and History
of the Ancient World. He has worked as a director’s assistant on many television and film productions. He has also directed various video music clips. In addition, he is the director and screenwriter of three short films: Miracolo in Periferia (Miracle on the Outskirts, 2013), La Terra degli sconfitti (The Land of the defeated, 2014), and Il Vestito (The Suit, 2020). Together with Emanuele Pisano, he is a founding partner of Pathos Distribution and Pathos Magazine.


Jacopo Testone


His first approach to cinema began when he was 17 as a member of the jury at Rome International Film Fest. Then he spends his twenties in atching movies, studying abroad and working for many production companies. He wrotes and shots some shorts to seek a personal vision of the orld, and now that he is 30 he feels ready to direct my first feature film. In the meanwhile he’ll keeps on carrying out with passion every assigned job within the filming industry, because he loves work with movies doesn’t matter if they are his movies or someone else.

Tommaso Agnese

Tommaso Agnese was born in Rome on April 3, 1983 and graduated in History and Criticism of Cinema at the University of Rome Tor Vergata with 110 cum laude. After experiences in various production companies (including Elephant Italia and Velafilm) he is currently Creative Producer for the production company Garbo Produzioni, where he follows the development of the Mediaset series "The silence of the water". Tommaso also works as a director and screenwriter, has made two films for the cinema "Paranormal Stories" and "My name is Maya", written and directed several plays including "Verso Dante", "The professional" and "SDC Cash Cash". Parallel to his activity as a Producer (which saw him work for various companies - Elephant Groupe - Velafilm - Garbo productions) he has always pursued his passion for writing (in 2017 he published the novel "Erotic Diary of a cybernauta") and for cinema, for this reason he has been Manager of the cinema magazine “Fabrique du Cinéma” since 2012 and since 2020 Managing Director of the international distribution company Direct to Digital.


Kento

Francesco "Kento" Carlo is a rapper and author from Reggio Calabria, with an experience of more than 1,000 concerts in Italy and abroad. He has been holding writing workshops in juvenile prisons, schools and rehabilitation communities for more than 10 years and been awarded by ANPI - Partisans Association and Casa Memoria Impastato (Sicilian anti-mafia association). His latest book "BARRE - Rap, Dreams and Secrets in a Juvenile Prison" has been published in 2021 by minimum fax.

Valentina Guglielmo

After specific studies in theory of cinema (DAMS bachelor) and in cinema promotion (CMC – Cinema Communication and Marketing master) I started my journey in the Italian independent cinema industry.
First in Milan, at Lo Scrittoio, as press office assistant and distribution coordinator. Then in Rome as coordinator in Draka Distribution.
Since 2018 I’m a freelance consultant for theatrical release, self distribution, promotion. I work also with exhibitors for special event and educational program.
I’m currently one of the 10 attendee of the Next Wave Program at the DFFB in Berlin.