|  Open Eyes Award

Letizia Battaglia (Presidente di Giuria)
Photographer (Italy)

Letizia Battaglia was born in Palermo, Sicily, in 1935. She worked for L'ora newspaper in Palermo from 1972 to 1990. Then she founded the documentation centre Giuseppe Impastato and also became involved in women's and environmental issues. In 1985 she received - first European photographer - the Eugene Smith Award for humanistic photography. For several years she stopped taking pictures and officially entered the world of politics. From 1985 to 1997 she held a seat on the Palermo city council for the Green Party. She was deeply involved in working for the rights of women and in 1991 founded the magazine for women Mezzocielo. She was also director of experimental theatrical pieces. In 1999 she received the Photography Lifetime Achievement of the Mother Jones International Fund for Documentary Photography; in 2007 the Erich Salomon-Preis, a 'lifetime achievement' award of the Deutschen Gesellschaft für Photographie and the most prestigious prize in Germany. Letizia Battaglia shoots short movies (as Fine della storia) and she's making a film about the teens in Palermo.

Alia Arasoughly
Director, Sociologist, Director of Shashat (Palestine)

Alia Arasoughly is Palestinian filmmaker, producer, sociologist and since 2005 General Director of Shashat's Women's Film Festival. She has directed Liberation and Alienation in Algerian Cinema and is specialized in developments in film and media. She served as a Media Consultant for two years, and now holds the same post with The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy - MIFTAH on the UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women) project Empowerment of Palestinian Women Leadership. Since 1993 she has made a dozen short and medium-length films including Torn Living (1993) and This Is Not Living (Hay mish eishi, 2001), a documentary about the lives of eight Palestinian women and their struggle to live normal lives amidst the degrading drama of war, terror and military occupation. The movie has been screened at fifty international festivals. The Clothesline (2006) examines the war inside and war outside of an apartment during the 2002 Ramallah siege. Her last movie is After the Last Sky (Ba 'd as-sama' al-akhirah, 2007), the story of a friendship between three women, a Palestinian and two Israelis, who are brought together by the painful and senseless destruction of the Arab village Kfir Bir'im by the Jerusalem army.

Tarin Gartner
Video artist (Israel)

Tarin Gartner, Israeli artist born in Jerusalem, work with photography, video installations and drawings. Some of her works make part of the permanent collection of Haifa Museum of Contemporary Art, Haifa (Israel). Her personal exhibitions were in Rome (Hands Up, Hendrik C. Andersen Museum), Haifa and Milan (Tarin Meets Gartner, Galleria Artopia; The Wall, Galleria Inga Pin). She had participated in many group exhibitions as Crossing (Pecci Museum, Prato, Italy), Interwoven in Landscapes (The Open University, Raanna, Israel), The Gate of Mediterranean (Palazzo del Piozzo, Rivoli, Italy), Shot and Go (San Servolo, Biennale of Venezia), Quote Rosa (Fabbrica del vapore, Milan, Italy) and Human Landscapes (Haifa Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel). Tarin Gartner lives and works between Milan and Haifa.