Danish

With a background from filmstudies at University of Copenhagen and a broad experience in communications and project leadership prior to the studies, my professionel life in the film industry has centered around recognizing, developing and producing stories.

For five years I was responsible for development and production support on feature films for children and youth at the Danish Filminstitute. I have worked as screenwriter and script- and development consultant on featurefilms and tv-series for several of the largest danish filmcompanies.

On national television TV2 I have been filmcritic and presenter in the filmprogramme Filmkanylen and the talkshow Go’morgen Danmark, and have made documentaries and talkshows on film and art for the channel.

I have been founding editor in chief on the filmmagazine EKKO, filmcolumnist and national newspaper Politiken, contributed to books on filmtheory and genre and written and edited educational material on filmanalysis and filmlangue.

Email: metteds|europeanfilmcollege.com
Phone: +45 8752 9275

Australian

I grew up in Australia’s capital city, Canberra, and I have a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Australian National University with a Film Studies major. After graduating I was hired by Bearcage Productions, where I worked on more than 40 corporate videos as director, editor, producer or all three. I was thrown in the deep end and I loved every minute. I also worked in crew roles on short films, documentaries, music videos (e.g. silverchair), and made a few shorts of my own.

In 1999 I found the EFC in a list of film schools. I signed up, flew to Denmark and breathed an enormous sigh of relief when the bus pulled up in Ebeltoft and the school actually existed! I loved it and have been hoping for a chance to come back ever since. Next I moved to Sydney and worked at the Australian Film Commission, researching the production industry and preparing catalogues of new Australian films for international markets. My strategy was to understand how the funding agencies work from the inside.

Most recently I was the Governance Manager of Screen Australia for its first year of operation as the new Australian Government film agency. I have been an active member of industry organisations, serving on the Australian Directors Guild Conference Committee and the Sydney Film Festival’s Film Advisory Panel. In 2007 I produced a documentary entitled "Projecting the Body", which has screened at gay and lesbian film festivals in Australia and the US. Finally, 10 years on, I’ve found my way back to EFC.

Email: sophie.harper|europeanfilmcollege.com
Phone: +45 8752 9281

British

I have a background in acting, filmmaking and teaching, with professional experience working across Europe, America and the Far East. I also have ongoing practice and research in actor training, screen performance and cinema studies.

I grew up in Essex, near London in the UK, where I performed in professional theatre and television productions. I also worked on educational, corporate and independent film productions. After training part-time at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, I then studied at the University of Westminster, where I learnt about all aspects filmmaking, from screenwriting to editing.

After graduating, I lived in London with a few summers in New York, working in film workshops, television studios and theatres. This experience inspired me to live and work abroad again for five years, in Tokyo, followed by Hong Kong, where I was teaching drama in English, training actors and performing in educational theatre.

I returned to the UK to study for a Masters in acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, where I specialized in the training of actors for film and worked on a number of film productions as an acting coach. I then taught acting for film at the Central School of Speech and Drama, Goldsmiths, Central Film School and the Actors Centre in London. I also recently worked for the New York Film Academy at Universal Studios in Los Angeles and at La Femis in Paris.

I am excited to bring my knowledge and passion together at the European Film College and look forward to working creatively with actors and filmmakers in an international environment.

Email: michael.morgan|europeanfilmcollege.com
Phone: +45 8752 9287

Danish

My interest in the visual expression initiated, when I as a 16 year old went to Guatemala to study Spanish. Discovering the life, light and colors of the country evoked a need to capture its stories and images in photography. Once at the University, my interest expanded to the moving image. I started directing short films while simultaneously developing my theoretical vision for the art of film and storytelling.

I am a Master of Arts in film studies from Copenhagen and Stockholm University. Moreover I have attended advanced courses at The Department for Professional Training at The National Film School of Denmark and at the Danish National School of Theatre.

In Sweden I began working as an editor for film director Maj Wechselmann, whose courage and persistence as a director had a profound effect on me. Collaborating with director Vilgot Sjöman had a significant influence on my inclination to experiment with the film medium. The opportunity to work with film music composer Jorge Arriagada made me discover silence as an essential poetic expression in cinema.

My vocation is to inspire film students to refine their individual ability to see. That is, to sense what is most alive in a situation, a person, a place or an object. Once you understand the nature of these elements, you will be able to turn a person into a character and a situation into a scene. You will go from seeing to creating.

Email: karin.grand|europeanfilmcollege.com

American

I grew up near Boston, in an area noted for its writers (Thoreau, Emerson, Alcott, Hawthorne) and an appreciation of literature was instilled in me early on. I studied English at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida and filmmaking at Ithaca College in upstate New York. After graduating I spent a year in the former Danish island of St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, then returned north to write a humour column for a Boston newspaper. In the early 1990s I moved to Los Angeles, where I wrote over 15 screenplays and worked in development for a variety of film and television production companies, including Centropolis (Independence Day, The Patriot) and Carsey-Werner (Cosby Show, Roseanne, etc). I also worked for a production company that specialized in Australian authors, helping them adapt their work for the screen. In 2000 I and my Danish wife moved to Denmark and since then I have taught scriptwriting at the European Film College.

Email: jim.fernald|europeanfilmcollege.com
Phone: +45 8752 9290

Danish

Originally trained as an electrician, I later graduated as an electronics engineer from the Technical Institute of Copenhagen. In 1972 I joined Scandinavian Airlines to work with navigational and communication equipment in aeroplanes. In the mid-seventies I joined a trans-Pacific expedition as the radio operator, diver and navigator aboard a replica of a 2000-year-old Chinese junk, and was camera assistant and sound engineer on a BBC documentary about the expedition.

From 1978 to 1993 I travelled worldwide as senior technical consultant and lecturer in computerised equipment at Radiometer International Ltd., and produced and edited the company’s instruction and promotion videos. In 1995 I was given a grant by Nordisk Film to develop the ‘gyrocam’, a gyrostablised camera system designed for steady filming from moving vehicles, and set up a company specialising in aerial filming. The company has been involved in a number of feature films and numerous commercials, working with directors such as Nils Malmros, Lars Von Trier, Morten Arnfred and Peter Flint.

I have taught editing and audio-visual techniques at the European Film College since 1993.

Email: allan.kartin|europeanfilmcollege.com
Phone: +45 8752 9280

German

I was born in Zurich/ Switzerland and raised in Bremen/ Germany. After my A-levels I moved to NY, Berlin and finally settling in London, where I started working as an air stewardess for an international airline. I collected stories all over the world in the following years and when my story-bag was full, I went to film school at the Hamburg Media School to study script writing.

After my diploma I worked in two different film production companies and realised that my passion lies in production and developing film projects. I continued writing screenplays and enjoyed my work producing and organising international co-productions.

I then worked at the film school in Hamburg and started teaching filmmaking at the university and the community college in Bremen. I co-organised a film workshop in Palestine and in a women’s prison in Hamburg. I felt, that if you can’t go to a film workshop yourself, then we need to bring the workshop to you. The work in Palestine touched me a lot and I am hoping to go back for a film project one day.

In 2010 I started making my own short films to be screened at little festivals in Bremen, I then went to set up my film production company B-Story Productions and in 2011 produced my award winning short film „Transit Girl“.

I am very much looking forward to pass on my own experiences in film production and story development and hope to be able to show students the fun and creative side of production.

Email: miriam.thiel|europeanfilmcollege.com
Phone: +45 8752 9270

Danish

Educated at the National Film and Television School in London.

Since the age of 3 I have repeatedly tried to kickstart a career as an artist or creative person of some kind, be it with crayons, playback performances to records or making "wonderful" worlds of sound with my favorite toy, my little cassette recorder. I expanded into graffiti, garage rock and 8MM film-making but had to simplify my life a bit during the difficult years of adolescence where pressure was on to choose a sensible career. This I tackled by working dead-end jobs and playing a lot of unsellable prog-rock that NOBODY liked. The very, very rare gigs had zero audience so we decided to never try again. The world was not ready! Instead I bought a four-track cassette recorder and went into making "low-fi" demo-tapes. That nobody heard. But simultaneously I was sometimes helping out some friends that were shooting short films and music videos with a bit more success.

Somehow my cassette skills and my film skills connected and I started traveling around Europe as part of a film crew shooting an art house feature on mini DV-tape. This experience made me decide that film sound was my field and I worked in it ever since. Not always with great financial success but with artistic reward and as a wonderful life style. My experience with young talented filmmakers forms a natural foundation for the teaching I'm doing at the EFC.
Not so long ago I graduated myself from the National Film and Television School in the UK, having learned both a lot of sound design tricks, but also more about how it feels to study film. So I really look forward to teach and work with the EFC students!

Email: steen.bondrop|europeanfilmcollege.com
Phone: +45 8752 9279

Danish

I was born in Arad in the Western Transylvanian region of Romania and graduated in Cinematography from the Institute of Theatrical and Cinematographic Arts, Bucharest (1983) and in languages from the University of Bucharest (1990). After completing my film studies I worked for seven years for the Motion Picture Studio in Buftea, Romania, participating in the production of twelve features, eight documentaries and various commercials, instruction and corporate films, while working simultaneously as a freelance journalist.

I have taught cinematography at the European Film College since 1994. I am a member of the Dansk Filmfotograf Forbund (Danish Association of Cinematographers) and a member of the Board of FAF (the Union of Danish Film Workers).

Email: petru.maier|europeanfilmcollege.com
Phone: +45 8752 9257