"JUREK" AWARDED IN TEPLICE AND LĄDEK-ZDRÓJ
"Jurek" by Paweł Wysoczański achieved new successes. The film won the main award at the Mountaineering Film Festival in Teplice, the Czech Republic, and two awards at Mountain Film Festival in Lądek Zdrój.
At the 32nd edition of the International Mountaineering Film Festival in Teplice nad Metují, "Jurek" won the Grand Prize, the festival's most important award. It is one of the oldest festivals which presents films from around the world, dedicated to mountain climbing and other extreme sports.
However, at the 20th Andrzej Zawada's Mountain Film Festival in Lądek-Zdrój, "Jurek" was awarded twice. The documentary film by Paweł Wysoczański was chosen the Best Polish Film. The jury appreciated "Jurek" for the film technique, the precise and very extensive choice of archival material and the way in which the main protagonist of the film was depicted - without unnecessary pathos, with a sense of humour and distance to the main character. "Jurek" also got the Audience's Award.
"Jurek" presents the story of Jerzy Kukuczka, who died on 24 October 1989 during the Lhotse expedition. It was the first time when we went to the Himalayas with money, equipment, and as a really famous person. The documentary by Paweł Wysoczański does not, however, concentrate on the mystery of the Himalayan mountaineer's death. It shows a person who climbs up, higher and higher - literally, but also metaphorically and symbolically. From a bootblack to a millionaire, from a socialist worker to an international media star, from the man who climbs without any money and equipment to the real competitor of Reinhold Messner in the competition to climb the Crown of the Himalayas and the Karakoram. Interviews with family and friends, archive materials, photographs, recordings, excerpts from television programmes and interviews make up the portrait of the Himalayan mountaineers in 1980s. It is also the image of the times in which they lived - hard and colourful at the same time, when idealism was more valued than fame.