51st Krakow Film Festival

Apparently life begins at fifty... What awaits us during the 51st edition of Krakow Film Festival?

The festival is to be inaugurated by Life in a Day – a film experiment executed by 80,000 internet users from 197 countries who sent short films to Youtube illustrating a day in their lives (24 July 2010). The idea was born in the heads of Ridley Scott and Kevin MacDonald – it was they who invited the collaboration of internet users and then, aided by a full team of selectors, gave the film its final shape. The project created a sensation at the Sundance Festival.

The festival is dominated by three competitions, both Polish (the Golden Lajkonik) and international – for documentaries (the Golden Horn) and shorts (the Golden Dragon). These are judged by jurors’ committees. This year, the jurors include Tue Steen Müller, regarded as one of the most distinguished creators of European documentary cinema and a member of the Danish Film Board; director and camera operator Marcin Koszałka; winner at the 50th KFF (for Beyond This Place), Kaleo La Belle; director, screenplay writer and co-creator of Ode to Joy and Side-Track (a winner in Kraków) Anna Kazejak-David; and also author of the NIKE 2010 winner Our Class, Tadeusz Słobodzianek.

Ten premiering shorts and ten medium-length titles have been selected for the International Documentary Film Competition. “The most important problems with which the world has to cope are reflected here, as if in a mirror, but perceived from the perspective of the individuals’ travails. So there will be films about the problem of paedophilia among the priesthood, about life in a virtual world, addictions, including those of the less damaging kind, such as a passion for Harlequin books and rivalry in the quest for excellence, both artistic and divine, and also films about identity problems, including those related to our own bodies” – comments the festival’s director Krzysztof Gierat. Over thirteen representatives of three film genres are participating in the short film competition this year: documentaries, features and animations from all over the world (including Great Britain, France, Sweden, Russia, the USA, Lithuania, Greece, India and Brazil). The Polish competition features 35 titles, of which seven will also be competing concurrently in the international competitions. It’s worth emphasising that feature-length documentary Polish films will be involved in the competition for the first time. The organisers emphasise that more and more Polish films created outside Poland are appearing – this year our directors will be introducing us to images from Russia, Argentina, Cuba and Cambodia.

We already know that the recipient of the Dragon of Dragons (a prize awarded since 1998 for lifetime achievement) will be one of the greatest masters of global animation, Piotr Kamler, the remarkably feted and international-prize-winning director of over a dozen films (Chronopolis, The Labyrinth, The Green Planet, Heart of Relief, The Hole, Mission Ephemeral). Although the majority of his films were created in France, he regards himself as a Polish director. “High time for a laurel in his homeland” – as the organisers put it. The award ceremony takes place on 24 May at Kijów.Centrum. Apart from this, a retrospective of Kamler’s films, an exhibition of his works and a chance for the public to meet the director are planned.

What else besides the competition section? Focus on the Netherlands – after last year’s review of Israeli cinematography we can this time watch six of the latest documentaries straight out of Holland: John Appel’s The Player; a bold film about a community of black mafiosi – Crips. Strapped‘n’Strong; Farewell – a report from a trip around the world taken by a Graf Zeppelin airship dating from 1929; Newspaper, directed by Eline Flipse, about a journalist who creates his own newspaper in a Russian province; Carina Molier’s My Long Distance Friend; and a film by Marjoleine Boonstra, Among Horses and Men, about seven men who take part after their release from prison in a special project taming wild horses destined for auctions. It will also be possible to talk about the films in a panel discussion featuring the likes of Claudia Landsberger from the EYE Film Institute, Pieter van Huystee (producer of Crips. Strapped’n’Strong and Farewell) and director of the largest international documentary film festival , the IDFA in Amsterdam – Ally Derks.

The KFF also has something for music lovers. Appearing in the The Sound of Music section are two documentaries, Rock’n’Roll… Of Corse!, about one of the initial members of The Police, Henry Padovani and also The Klezmatics: On Holy Ground, which focuses on the members of a group which has appeared in Kraków many times during the Jewish Culture Festival. We can also discover more about the beginnings of Goran Bregović’s career – Bijelo Dugme looks back at the history of a rock group whose leader was once a Yugoslavian composer.

As part of the Festival Laureates cycle, films will be screened that have already been honoured in other countries such as Vodka Factory by Jerzy Śladkowski, the creator of Two Rembrandts in the Garden, or Eran Paz’s Jeremiah, which won an award in Jerusalem and relates the story of Russian Jews who, on deciding to emigrate to Israel, find themselves battling with alienation, depression and alcohol problems.
On the 30th anniversary of the death of esteemed artist and documentary maker Wojciech Wiszniewski, who received a posthumous award at the Krakow Film Festival in 1981, a retrospective of his output has been prepared.

However yet more pearls await us, including Somewhere in Europe, film school screenings, Short Matters, Night of the Music Videos and exhibitions as well as discussions, meetings with artists and representatives of the festival’s partners and for professionals – the Krakow Film Fair and Dragon Forum.

KFF traditionally takes over the whole of Kraków – film screenings will be taking place in Kijów.Centrum, Mikro, the Pod Baranami Cinema and the ARS Cinema. The Manggha Museum is hosting workshops and the Dragon Forum, the PWST State Drama School is hosting conferences and the Cracovia Hotel, the fair.

The Krakow Film Festival most certainly makes moviegoers lives easier. For a golden week they can abandon themselves to the by no means “guilty pleasure” of watching films. Without constraints or reproaches or putting themselves through undue hardship.