The Immersive competition section of the 27th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival embraces creations that make use of high-end technologies to present different views of extended reality, transcending film genres and immersing the viewer in an exciting interactive viewing experience. The Golden Alexander awarded to the best film of the section is accompanied by a monetary award of €2,000. The members of the jury are: Karen Cirillo, visual artist, curator, and journalist; Scott Morris, Head of DIgital Productions for Tate, UK; and Stella Ntavara, CPH:LAB and XR exhibition at CPH:DOX, Denmark.
Karen Cirillo
Karen Cirillo is a cultural worker, curator, writer, and producer with a focus on non-fiction film and XR/immersive art. She creates multimedia work and events that explore issues at the intersection of media, cultures, and technology. With a Masters in Visual and Media Anthropology, she is interested in how audience reception and storytelling, aesthetics, and forms of representation differ between cultures and identities. She curates documentary film and XR exhibitions, and writes about documentary ecosystems, non-fiction cinema and XR for Documentary Magazine, Modern Times and is a contributing editor for XR Must. She founded Doxita, a traveling program of short non-fiction cinema, was Shorts Programmer for the True/False Film Festival, and Associate Director – Film/Programming at Full Frame Documentary Festival. She was Program Director of UNICEF’s global OneMinutesJr. project, collaborating with video artists to produce video workshops for kids around the world. She creates and manages visual projects for UN agencies, and has programmed and sat on juries for various festivals, museums, and organizations. She’s worked in the orbit of non-fiction creation and social impact for over 25 years, with global experience in documentary film, immersive arts and international development.
Stella Davara
Stella Davara is an arts and culture project manager originally from Greece and based in Copengagen since 2018, working as the CPH:LAB and INTER:ACTIVE exhibition manager at CPH:DOX Copenhagen International Documentary Festival. Prior to her work and life experience in Copenhagen, she studied, lived and worked in France and Germany in the corporate sector of aircraft manufacturing as project manager. She pursued a specialized education on Arts & culture management and worked for some of the most important annual cultural events of Copenhagen – from the CHART Art fair and the Copenhagen Photo festival as production, guests and experience manager, as well as the studio manager for the visual artists duo Hesselholdt & Mejlvang and International Press officer for the Thorvaldsens Museum. This wide span of cultural projects gave me an open-minded approach to how I work internationally and engage with different profiles of creatives, directors, storytellers and visual artists. Her passion is to create experiences via events that can reach big audiences and have an impact on people's life, work and way of living.
Scott Morris
Scott Morris is lead digital producer for Tate’s four London art galleries, commissioning and producing film, audio and immersive content to appeal to art lovers worldwide. He has produced films with artists including Kara Walker, Jesse Darling, Veronica Ryan, Malgorzata Mirga-Tas and Hera Büyüktaşcıyan. His most recent project is a six-channel installation on JMW Turner and travel for MAP gallery in Shanghai.
