FOCUS ON POLAND IN CHINA
On December 11th the Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival begins. This year the audience in China can expect a lot of events devoted to the Polish documentary cinema: retrospectives, exhibitions, Q&As. Polish productions will also be pitched and presented in the competition.
This year 4239 films from five continents and 113 countries were submitted to the GZDOC Festival. After three months of hard work the selecting commission chose 200 films which got to compete for the Golden Kapok award in the semi-final. There were six Polish productions among them: ”Volte” by Monika Kotecka and Karolina Poryzała, ”Miss Holocaust” by Michalina Musielak, ”Fortunately” by Piotr Januszkiewicz, ”American Dream” by Marek Skrzecz, ”Two Worlds” by Maciej Adamek and Polish-French coproduction ”Winnie” by Pascale Lamche. ”Two Worlds” by Maciej Adamek went further to the final and the director will present his film in China in person.
The festival will host the Focus on Poland programme which is organized by the Krakow Film Foundation with the support of the Polish Film Institute, the Polish Filmmakers Association and the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage as a part of the Polish Docs / Polish Shorts International project and in cooperation with the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Guangzhou .
As a part of the programme we will see in China a retrospective of a Polish documentary master Marcel Łoziński as well as film screenings of three Polish documentary filmmakers and cinematographers: Wojciech Staroń, Marcin Koszałka and Bogdan Dziworski, followed by the exhibition of their photographs.
Marcel Łoziński was born in 1940 in Paris. He graduated in Film Directing from the Łódź Film School. His documentary movie ”89mm from Europe” was nominated to the European Film Academy Awards and the Oscars in the Documentary Feature category. He is currently a leading tutor at DOK PRO Documentary Programme in Wajda School. In China we will see his film ”89mm from Europe” and also: ”Anything Can Happen”, ”Happy End”, ”How to Live?”, „Poste Restante”, ”Father and Son on a Journey” and ”So It Doesn't Hurt”.
Bogdan Dziworski is an author of over 40 short and documentary films and a winner of many awards at international film festivals. GZDOC will present 8 of his movies: ”Nordic Combination”, ”Ice Hockey”, ”A Few Stories about Man”, ”The Olympics”, ”Modern Pentathlon”, ”Skiing Scenes with Franz Klammer”, ”Sleep” and ”I Can See”.
The other guest in Guangzhou will be Wojciech Staroń, an acclaimed director, screenwriter and cinematographer, winner of various awards including the Silver Bear at Berlinale. In his retrospective we will see four films: ”Argentinian Lesson”, ”For a While”, ”The Siberian Lessons” and his last documentary ”Brothers” which won Grand Prix at the DOK.Leipzig Festival – the Golden Dove and the main award of the La Semaine de la Critique section at the Festival in Locarno.
The forth retrospective in China is the one of Marcin Koszałka. The GZDOC audience will see ”The Declaration of Immortality”, ”The Existence”, ”Let's Run Away from Her”, ”The Lust Killer”, ”Till It Hurts” and ”User Friendly Death”.
Bogdan Dziworski and Wojciech Staroń will personally present their works at the festival and will meet with the audience.
It is not yet the end of Polish presence at GZDOC. A documentary film project ”Underage Astronauts”, directed by Aleksandra Skowron and Hanna Polak, was accepted for the China Stories international pitch, which is the main event of the DocuMart GZDOC market. The film producers are Aleksandra and Mirosław Skowron from Mediolia company who will personally present their project in Guangzhou.
Focus on Poland means also that the representatives of Polish film industry will visit China. Among the GZDOC Festival guests invited by the Polish Filmmakers Association there are following producers and filmmakers: Małgorzata Staroń (Staron-Film/KIPA), Michalina Fabijańska (Munk Studio), Grzegorz Brzozowski (Munk Studio), Kamil Skałkowski (Kalejdoskop Film) and Krzysztof Gierat, the president of the Krakow Film Foundation, who will be the festival jury member.
More information about the festival is available at the GZDOC website.