Nenad Puhovski

Nenad Puhovski
Born	1949 Zagreb, Croatia
Occupation	film director producer
Website	Bio

Nenad Puhovski is a renowned Croatian Jewish theater, film & TV director.

Early life

Nenad Puhovski was born in Zagreb, Croatia in 1949, and has completed elementary and grammar school there. He made his first amateur film when he was 12, and got his first award at the age of 15. Puhovski is partly Jewish. He graduated in Sociology and Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, as well as in Film and Television Directing at the Academy for Drama arts in Zagreb.

As a director, he is active in theater as well as in film and television.

Theater

In theater Puhovski directed a handful of productions: “Jenny, the pirate bride” and “Emigrant conversations” by B. Brecht, “Pit, this is America, too” by M. Rupčić, “1984” by G. Orwell, “Abduction” by Ž. Senečić and “Travesties” by T. Stoppard.

TV

On television, he has directed over 150 shows – television features written by P. Brook, S. Šembera, G. Massot, P. Pavličić, T. Sabljak, S. De Beauvoir, M. Feldman, and himself. For the documentary strand he directed a number of films as well as the series The TV America that had as many as four reruns.

Puhovski also directed a large variety of music shows of different genres encompassing almost all forms of music – Classical music, pop, rock, chansons and jazz.

He also directed a number of live television events, best known being „Eurovision Song Contest“ that took place in Zagreb in 1990.

Film

In film, he directs mostly documentary films covering social problems (“Činča”, "Dead Harbor", “Volunteer stories”, “Borderlines of hunger”, "Graham and I – a true story", "Pavilion 22", "Lora - testimonies") and films about fine arts (“Five films about Nives KK”, “In Quest of Šutej”, “Bućan - triptych”). Many of his films have been screened worldwide, while his films about fine arts have been awarded the Gold medal and other highest honors at the festival of documentary and short films in Belgrade.

On the other hand, some of Puhovski's films on social issues had quite a different destiny. Film „ Dead Harbor“, made for television and dealing with a notorious asylum authorities didn’t like to be shown, was banned for more than 15 years, some of his films on Croatian war crimes are still waiting to be showed publicly, while some of them created strong public reactions – one of the veterans associations asked Puhovski (without seeing the film) to leave the country “because his film „Lora – testimonies“ proves that he doesn’t recognize Croatia”.

He also directed a feature lengths documentary "Together“ which premiered at IDFA 2009.

In 1996, Puhovski founded FACTUM documentary film project, which soon became the largest and most influential independent documentary film production in Croatia. He has produced some 65 documentary films of authors of all generations, especially young ones.

According to the general opinion of the critics and public, the best Croatian documentary film of the last decade of the twentieth century, The Boy who Rushed as well as the most controversial documentary film of that period – The Storm over Krajina have been produced by Factum. As a producer, he received four awards for the best production at the Croatian National Film Festival.

He was in two terms a member of the Executive Board of the European Documentary Network (EDN), and is now it's Croatian "ambassador".

In 2004, he founded ZagrebDox – unique international competitive documentary festival in the CEE region with an audience of 25.000 viewers. Apart from screening a rich variety of documentary films, ZagrebDox is, through its seminars, pitching workshops, masterclasses and conferences, also becoming the focal point for documentary professionals from the region.

In 2009, Puhovski got EDN award for the outstanding contribution to the development of European documentary culture.

He is a member of European Film Academy.

Academic career

He began his academic career at the Academy for Drama Arts in Zagreb in 1979 as an assistant, while today he works as a full professor of Documentary film directing.

In 2009 Puhovski created and is now heading MA program in documentary directing & producing at ADU.

He has also taught in Argentina, Austria, Australia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Cuba, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Mexico, Namibia, Netherlands, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Vietnam, USA and Zimbabwe.

External links

• factumdocumentary.com Bio