Experts at Terrassa Workshop

Helena Medina

Helena Medina started her career as a television writer on NBC in New York, where she lived and worked for thirteen years, and where she still spends part of the year as a professor at the prestigious New School University, teaching Script courses and television theory.

As a scriptwriter, she has signed numerous award-winning TV movies, series, and docu-dramas shown on TVE, TVC, Canal Plus, and other European channels. She is the author of the primetime miniseries “The King: The Hardest Day” (TVE, 2009) which has become the highest rated fiction in the history of television in Spain. Helena was also been a script-doctor in programs such as Pilots (Media Programme of the European Union), and Co-Pilots, as well as in official agencies such as the CDA in Barcelona. She has a doctorate degree from Columbia University in New York.

Pere Roca

Soon after graduating in Language and Literature from the Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona, Pere Roca entered the field of audiovisual management and production, beginning with fiction and commercials. He served a ten-year spell as Executive Producer at IMATCO, a Catalan production company; this involved him in feature films, TV series, documentaries and TV specials, and in co-productions and co-development with Cameras Continentals, FR3, Gerhard Schmidt, TR Maroc, Channel 4, Seventh Art, TVE, TVC, and so on. For four years he was a freelance producer for Zentropa, FR3 and Canal 9 Spain among other companies.
A regular tutor at the Television Business School, he has been co-operating with the Media Business School since its inception in 1991 when he directed the Feasibility Study for PILOTS (Programme for the International Launch of Television Series); from 1993-96 he was Managing Director of PILOTS. From 1996 to 1999 he was the assistant to the Programming Director of TVC (Catalan Television) and Co-ordinator of the Production Department at ESCAC (the Catalan School of Cinema and Audiovisual Studies), Lecturer and Expert at several European training initiatives and Adviser of the Intermediary Organisation of the Media Training Programme.
Since 1999 until 2003, Pere Roca was Head of Development of Filmax, a Spanish Production and Distribution Company and between 2004 and 2007 he directed the Centre for Audiovisual Development (CDA), a public service institution, that functioned as a development body for those Spanish companies that do not have in house a department specifically dedicated to this task.
 
At present, Pere is the Director of Canal Cultura a new digital channel of RTVE expected to start broadcasting in 2010.

Edmon Roch

Initially a journalist, historian and film critic, Roch became a producer in 1994 with Barcelona, by Whit Stillman, followed by The Tulse Luper Suitcases, by Peter Greenaway (2003), Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006) by Tom Tykwer. He was also production manager of the critically acclaimed Seven Years in Tibet (1997) by Jean-Jacques Annaud. Roch set up Ikiru Films company in 2004, which is currently producing one the most ambitious Spanish project, Bruc, by Daniel Benmayor and Lope, by Andrucha Waddington. In addition to this, he has directed and produced five short films before his first feature, Garbo, The Spy, based on Joan Puyol, for which he won a Goya for Best Documentary of the year.
Reasons to make a film:

“This was an extraordinary story which deserved to be told. When Sandra Hermida offered me the project there was no looking back. I started with the research and I was surprised that one ever had attempted to tell that story. I fell in love with the character and I believed it was necessary to be completely and utterly devoted to it. It was one of these atypical stories which needed to be told.”

Claudia Llosa

Claudia was born in 1976 in Lima, Perú. She studied cinema and television in Lima, New York and Madrid. When returning to her native country, she started working in advertising along with her production company Vale Films. Her first feature’s script was awarded at the Habana Film festival and selected for the “Scripts’ Laboratory” at Sundance Film Festival. Shot in the Peruvian Andes, produced by Wana Films and Oberon Films ―both Spanish production companies― Madeinusa was presented at the Rotterdam film festival and won the Fipresci award. Her second feature film, The Milk of Sorrow, won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 2009 and received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film. Claudia Llosa has been residing in Barcelona for 10 years.
On her first feature:

“Let me put it this way … in the day-to-day details of filmmaking I’m as virginal and chaste as Little Miss America, but I’m no weaker or naïve because of it. And although I almost always try to convince myself that this will form part of my freedom - as has been the case to date – that ‘almost’ will always remain as a reminder to us of just how difficult it is to take on new challenges. But I intend to tackle them resolutely. I feel I’m in very good company.”

Jorge Guerricaechevarría

Jorge Guerricaechevarría is one of the most acclaimed screenwriters in Spain. Graduated from the Salamanca Media School (Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca)
He often writes for the highly praised directors Alex de la Iglesia and Daniel Monzón. His most outstanding features are the Day of The Beast (by Alex de la Iglesia),
Live Flesh (by Pedro Aldmodóvar), The Oxford Crimes (Alex de la Iglesia) starring Elijah Wood and John Hurt, and Celda 211 (by Daniel Monzón) for which he was awarded a Goya for Best Adapted Screenplay of the Year.

Cristina Pastor

Cristina Pastor, also known as Mapa Pastor, was born is Valencia and worked in advertising and TV before becoming an editor. She edited Daniel Monzón’s first short film, and they have been working together ever since. Their last film together, Celda 211, won her with a Goya award for Best Editing of the Year. Celda 211 was edited with Final Cut, and Pastor candidly admits that the action of the film was so ‘toned up that I sometimes had to mute the film unless I wanted to go mad’.