OCEANUL MARE (77 minutes), directed by Katharina Copony, is a documentary coproduced by Katharina Copony, with Komplizen Films (Germany) and Hi Film Productions (Romania).

The film follows the paths of Chinese immigrants in Bucharest and pursues their occupational developments and private lives within their new homeland, marked by flux and radical change.

It focuses on two Chinese people – who in the meantime have settled in the Romanian capital – both of whom saw the revolution in Eastern Europe as a chance to leave China.

The lives of the central figures, characterized by dramatic turns, encounter a piece of recent Romanian history, providing a foreign view and a central Asian perspective on the former communist, European brother nation.
Katharina Copony was born 1972 in Graz, Austria. She studied media-arts in Vienna. Her previous film, „Il Palazzo“, won the Arte-documentary award for the Best German documentary in 2006.

After graduating the Camera Department of the Film School in Bucharest, I started making documentaries in 1993. Meanwhile I have been pursuing my career as director of photography for fiction films.

My interest in multimedia, developed during a residence at the University of California at San Diego (1996) materialized in the conception and production of several interactive cultural CD-ROM’s with the Visual Arts Foundation. (www.fav.ro )

I have directed more than a dozen documentaries. (and photographed most of these). My films are always mixing genres, using my visual and experimental skills. They have been screened and awarded in festivals around Europe and the US.

In 2001, I followed training through the Discovery Campus Masterschool and the project that resulted was the “Great Communist Bank Robbery” http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/storyville/great-communist-bank-robbery.shtml The “…Robbery” premiered at IDFA in 2004 and helped me work further on international co-productions since then. Starting 2004, I have been developing projects with Ada Solomon, through Hi Film Productions – the company that she runs. (www.hifilm.ro)

In 2007, I launched „Cold Waves”, a feature doc on Radio Free Europe “Cold Waves”, on propaganda and the Cold War, and the contemporary echoes of this confrontation. www.coldwaves.ro

I have recently released a film entitled „Kapitalism – our secret recipe”, a romanian-french-belgian coproduction, that is still running in Romanian cinemas.

I have been involved in researching, line-producing and putting together documentary co-productions with the UK, Canada, France and Germany. Former collaborations have been broadcasted by the BBC, Channel 4, Arte or CBC.

And finally, I’ve been teaching at the Film School and within the Arts Academy in Bucharest and I am a member of the European Documentary Network.

http://www.liternet.ro/autor/1461/Alexandru-Solomon.html

http://www.kinokultura.com/specials/6/romanian.shtml

http://www.toroartsgroup.com/?p=464