Biography

Goran Trenchovski (also spelled as Trenčovski; Горан Тренчовски, b. April 24, 1970 in Strumica) is a Macedonian-born director, writer, artistic leader, founder, lecturer, humanist. He is the current head of AsterFest, and lives in Great Britain. Born on Good Friday. As a child he has published poems and has loved reading and collecting comic books. As a young adult he began making photographs.

Trenchovski graduated from the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad with an emphasis in film and theatre directing, in the class of acclaimed prof. Boro Drašković. After decay of SFRJ he became the youngest director on the Balkans known for directing projects on a range of subjects. He directed numerous film and TV projects in different genres as well as stage performances with a number of plays by both classical and modern auteurs. Among the short film subjects he has directed Beggars and Placards, Krecho and Play and Save. His second TV fiction movie, Ghoul Quest acquaints the audience with the fate of an authentic assortment of heroes torn from Balkan iconography, picturesquely sculptured and psychologically represented with all their good and bad sides. He also directed middle-length film projects Slander, Under, and A Step Ahead of Time, series Chubbies, Candidates, Martin from the Stairs, Love and Betrayal, and documentaries I Believe in Macedonia (transferred onto 35mm) and The Spirit of my Father. His multi-awarded cinematic feature film Golden Five is based on true story about unsolved murder of five students in 1951. This film is reviewed by British critics as "a profound and moving film" and as "a mystery thriller of chilling proportions", under "crafty direction encourages us to think".

He lived and researched for one year in Prague, Czech Republic and attended postgraduate studies at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University (Faculty of Philology) in Skopje where he has prepared the master thesis “Cinesthetic stories of Solev and Čingo (adapted into films by Rusomir Bogdanovski)” and completed doctoral studies in the field of literature and film. He defended the doctoral thesis “Intermedial verifications of the novels ‘The Red Horse’ by Tashko Georgievski and ‘The Gentle Barbarian’ by Bohumil Hrabal”.

He directed Sound Imagery, Slavic Orpheus, Infernal Machine, Libretto Wagner, Leonce and Lena, The Spirit of the Can, From the First Breath, Beggar's Opera and Endgame, as well as plays by Aeschylus, Witkacy, Dostoevsky, Ibsen, Andreyev, Havel, Beckett, Ionesco, Pinter, Albee, Adamov and Arrabal. He was engaged as chief of the department for directing in MTV in Skopje. He was a selector at the IX and X edition of the Festival of Chamber Theatre when he paid tribute to Risto Šiškov's film decalogue. He was professor in the University of Audiovisual Arts - European Film Academy, EFTA Skopje-Paris-Essen-Rotterdam. He also established short-lived Seraphin Tanz group and Academic Theatre Laboratory in the spirit of Artaud, Barba, Grotowski, Kantor and Brook investigations.

Trenchovski also has experience as a producer and publisher. He was editor-in-chief of the Trend magazine and editor of the Shine magazine. Since its inception in 2005, he is founder and artistic director at the International Film Festival AsterFest dedicated to auteur-directed short film subject. The festival has gained an international reputation, thanks to Trenchovski's networking as well as his involvement with the Tiberiopolian Film Alliance - Institute for shorts & docs and collaboration with Revolution Production. He has seven books related to the performing arts, cinema and autopoetics written in Macedonian, and a collection of writings in English. He is also editor of the anthology of dramaticules Carnival Sighs (1998), the monograph Steps on the Star Planks (1999), the special Beckett 100 (2006), the reader Director's Notes (2013) and translator of the Jiří Menzel's texts Faith and Doubt (2000). He has also directed radio dramas The Lie and The Executioners.

His directions are screened, staged and awarded on festivals in many European countries, as well as in UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Russia, India, Turkey.

He is a member of the European Film Academy and British Comparative Literature Association.

Participates at events, workshops, symposiums and conferences. Lectures on cinema, drama and intermediality.

He introduces and promotes his “Poetics of (De-)Thronization”.