Alternative Film Education
seminar / film screenings
Super 16 is the leading alternative film school of Denmark which over the last almost 20 years has graduated many successful filmmakers and films produced by the school are very often selected and awarded at various film festival around the world. What are the advantages and challenges of such an education model, how is the school financed, how is possible to achieve the continuation of the project and how does it work to be responsible for your own education and education of your schoolmates? Those are the questions to be discussed with Super 16 graduates, producers Kirstine Barfod and Kasper Dissing who will also present film made by the Super 16 students.
The organisation of Super16 is legally a union with a board of selected students, and Super16 functions as a community, solely driven by the filmmakers themselves. The education runs for 3 years, and every second year, the current students accept 6 new directors, 6 producers and 4 writers. The classes are organised by the students and no teacher work full time, but instead they hire in external teachers and experts from the Danish and international film industry, all depending on what the current students find relevant.
Kasper Dissing holds a bachelor’s degree in law and has worked as a producer at Zentropa since 2014. In 2010 Kasper began his career in the film industry by starting as a trainee at Zentropa in Denmark. In that time he produced several short films and music videos with emerging talents, which gave him entry to the alternative film school in Denmark, Super16, from where he graduated as a producer in 2016. His graduation film, Halvman (Halfman), was nominated for a Robert from the Danish Film Academy for best short film, and was later selected for Vimeo Staff Pick.
Kasper has worked with Danish talent such as Thomas Vinterberg (The Hunt, The Commune), Kristian Levring (The Salvation) and Christoffer Boe (The Journey) and worked closely with producers such as Sisse Graum Jørgensen and Peter Aalbæk Jensen.
In 2016 he was selected for the Young Nordic Producer’s Club in Cannes, participarting with young producers from all of Scandinavia. Kasper has a love of genre films and wants to explore this market more as well as finding out new ways of funding, distributing and marketing films. In 2017 he produced The Journey, a cinematic exhibition for Moesgaard Museum, which was a part of AARHUS – 2017: European Capital of Culture. The centerpiece of the exhibition was a film, taking place on all seven parts of the world. The exhibition was the result of a collaboration between the film industry and the museum industry.
Currently Kasper is developing both TV-series and features with Nordic talents.
Kirstine Barfod was born in 1979 and work and live in Copenhagen. She has a solid background in filmmaking and has produced several feature documentaries and series, among them “JUST BOYS” (2018), “VENUS” (2017), “Born To Lose” (2015) and “KIDD LIFE” (2012). Kirstine is educated producer from the independent film education Super16, and studied cultural studies and literature from Malmö University.
Kirstine has been working in the in the production company Danish Documentary since 2013. The company was founded and is co-owned by four celebrated directors, Phie Ambo, Pernille Rose Grønkjær, Mikala Krogh, Eva Mulvad and producer Sigrid Dyekjær. She has a close working relation with Sigrid Dyekjær, where they collaborate on some of the titles.
Kirstine aim is to choose projects by heart and quality, and she is looking for creative documentaries all with the specific directors’ distinctive cinematic traits. Currently she in working with Oscar nominee Feras Fayyad (“Last Men in Aleppo”), Mira Jargil (“Till Death Do Us Part”) and newly out of film school director Thora Lorentzen.
