At this year’s edition of the festival DOK Leipzig, there is a retrospective of Polish documentary film entitled „Seven sins and other confessions in Polish documentary films.” Almost 30 films will be shown in Leipzig!

It is one of the largest reviews of Polish documentary film abroad. The programme includes films made in the half of the 1950s, belonging to the so-called "black series," as well as the latest documentary films produced in 1990s and at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Among them, there are the classics of the genre, such as: Krzysztof Kieślowski, Marcel Łoziński and Bogdan Dziworski.

On the website of the festival DOK Leipzig we can read that those who seek disobedience in documentary film inevitably arrive at its Polish school. Its representatives have always been agitators in the best multiple sense of the word: courageous and radical, they sounded out the political and artistically creative limits, then transcended them. Displaying a proximity to fiction film, an openness in form and an affirmation towards staging, the Polish documentary film creates style characteristics all its own and assumes a unique stance internationally. The programmes in this series refrain from placing the films in a correlation to film history and instead opt for a thematic, often provocative context. They consequently provide entertaining looks at and astute insights into universal themes, for instance the perpetual conflict between generations, the fear of the unfamiliar, and the demise of the individual within the system. References to religion, nation, family and censorship are also present.

During the retrospective, the following films will be shown:

A Few Stories About Man | Bogdan Dziworski | 1983

Tale of the Man who Filled 552% of the Quota | Wojciech Wiszniewski | 1973

Birthplace | Paweł Łoziński | 1992

Day After Day | Irena Kamieńska | 1988

Everybody Knows Who They Are Standing Behind | Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz | 1983

From a Night Porter's Point of View | Krzysztof Kieślowski | 1977

Happy End | Marcel Łoziński, Paweł Kędzierski | 1972

Hear My Cry | Maciej Drygas | 1991

Holiday | Zbigniew Rybczyński | 1976

Hope | Tadeusz Pałka | 1988

Hospital | Krzysztof Kieślowski | 1976

How to Live | Marcel Łoziński | 1977

I am bad | Grzegorz Pacek | 2000

I Love Poland | Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz, Joanna Sławińska | 2007

Intensity of Watching | Andrzej Sapija | 2016

Look Out, Hooligans! | Edward Skórzewski, Jerzy Hoffman | 1955

Practice Exercises | Marcel Loziński | 1984

Psychodrama | Marek Piwowski | 1969

Silence | Małgorzata Szumowska | 1997

Slopping Fields | Władysław Ślesicki | 1970

Such a Nice Boy I Gave Birth to | Marcin Koszałka | 1999

The 24 Hours of Jadwiga L. | Krystyna Gryczełowska | 1967

The Musicians | Kazimierz Karabasz | 1960

Tomorrow. April 31 – May 1, 1970 | Wojciech Wiszniewski | 1970

Warsaw 1956 | Jerzy Bossak, Jarosław Brzozowski | 1956

Wave | Piotr Łazarkiewicz | 1986

Workers ’80 | Michał Bukojemski, Andrzej Chodakowski, Andrzej Zajączkowski, Katarzyna Maciejko, Halina Paszkowska, Jacek Petrycki, Witold Popkie | 1980

The programme was created in co-operation with Krakow Film Foundation and Polish Institute in Berlin/Leipzig supported by the Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation. The festival DOK.Leipzig starts on October 31 and lasts until November 6. The detailed programme of the retrospective will be available on the festival's website.

SEPTEMBER 2016