15. December 2016, 5pm,  Municipal Library of Prague

"In my work as a script advisor, I frequently come across filmmakers who are not primarily interested in creating a story that can be summarized via plot or character change. These projects have one thing in common: when we try to pitch them the way pitching stories is understood, it usually doesn’t work, it doesn’t communicate well. There is not enough “meat” that can be made into a story, or rather, saying what happens will not necessarily give you a clear idea of what the film is going to be like, how it is going to look and feel. In order to convey the ideas behind these films, the unique qualities of each one of them, we need to look for other ways of communication. Not only when presenting the work, but also during the development, and that includes the scriptwriting process. If it is true that not all films fit in the classical form of writing, we have to ask ourselves: How to write cinema? But such a question already implies that you can write cinema in the first place. So we might better ask: can we write cinema? All forms of cinema?"  - Franz Rodenkirchen

"In my work as a script advisor, I frequently come across filmmakers who are not primarily interested in creating a story that can be summarized via plot or character change. These projects have one thing in common: when we try to pitch them the way pitching stories is understood, it usually doesn’t work, it doesn’t communicate well. There is not enough “meat” that can be made into a story, or rather, saying what happens will not necessarily give you a clear idea of what the film is going to be like, how it is going to look and feel. In order to convey the ideas behind these films, the unique qualities of each one of them, we need to look for other ways of communication. Not only when presenting the work, but also during the development, and that includes the scriptwriting process. If it is true that not all films fit in the classical form of writing, we have to ask ourselves: How to write cinema? But such a question already implies that you can write cinema in the first place. So we might better ask: can we write cinema? All forms of cinema?" - Franz Rodenkirchen

A presentation of series of topics that are interconnected and address the following issues: scriptwriting as craft and a necessary step towards filmmaking. What kind of approaches can we find? (This includes classical scriptwriting, manuals about "writing good scripts", script consulting approaches, but also script and in general project formats.) For example the treatment is a format that seems invented by funding bodies, not because filmmakers need it). The presentation of the whole spectrum, from classical form, often with a clear division of labour, to an open form that includes filmmakers who do no longer find the script format sufficient or adequate.

Franz Rodenkirchen is a Berlin-based, internationally working script consultant and tutor. He works with TorinoFilmLab’s Script&Pitch & Frame Work, the Script Station of Berlinale Talents; plus a.o. the Berlin Film Academy (dffb), CineLink Sarajevo and CPH:LAB. He also teaches a script consulting workshop for film professionals and has an ongoing interest in researching modes of visual narration. With Françoise von Roy, he runs the Script Circle, a periodic script development workshop in Berlin. From May – Sep 2013 he was Artist in Residence at the Dutch Film Academy, Amsterdam. In 2014, he co-curated the exhibition „Real emotions – thinking in film“ at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. In more than 18 years, he has consulted on many independent film projects from all over the world.