The jubilee cycle of screenings, prepared to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Krakow Film Festival, reached its half-way point. In January, excellent animators and the cinema born of their imagination will reign on the screens in Małopolska.
The jubilee cycle of screenings, prepared to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Krakow Film Festival, reached its half-way point. In January, excellent animators and the cinema born of their imagination will reign on the screens in Małopolska.
So far, the viewers in Krakow, Tarnow and Nowy Sacz have seen three parts of the cycle: "Krakow scandals," "Prize hunters" and "Tales about a man". This month, of all the movies that once charmed and moved the audience and jury, we have chosen animations. At one time the artists used to use a pencil or paintbrush to create fantastic worlds on a white canvas. Then we found a way to animate these images. Today, computer technology makes possible for everybody to be an author of an animated film. However, a computer is just a tool, because the visions of (un)usual worlds hatch in the minds of artists and a wide range of available animation techniques only helps to get them into our reality.
Director Krzysztof Gierat says about January shows: “Since the first edition of the festival, documentary and animated films have been competing in the contests. Even though the documentary has recently became the dominating film form, widely understood cinema of imagination is still the quality sign of films presented in Krakow, to some extend above the genres. Some of the films are hard to define in terms of genre. This is author’s cinema, and the scale of the creators’ talents prevents us from forgetting Wiszniewski’s or Szulkin’s cinema after so many years. Today we return to films without which it would be hard to imagine Krakow screening in 1963 and 1981, but in the new 21st century as well.”
January screenings include 8 films (the screening time is 105 minutes):
LABIRYNT (Labyrynth), dir. Jan Lenica, Poland 1962, 14’ – Golden Dragon in 1963.
It is one of the most recognisable and titled Polish films. In the survey at the Annecy festival (1973) it was amongst the five best animations of the world. Philosophical reflection on the winged man’s journey in the labyrinth of horrifying and fascinating city. Lenica was the 1999 Krakow Dragon of the Dragons winner – for lifetime achievement.
DZIEWCE Z CIORTEM (Meiden and Divil), dir. Piotr Szulkin, Poland 1975, 14’ – FIPRESCI award in 1976.
The creator of Polish science fiction before his famous feature tetralogy. Fascinated by folk culture, he makes two wonderful films which are very successful in travestying folk ballads: „Dziewce z ciortem” and „Oczy uroczne” (“Charm eyes”). First of them was a great success in Krakow, and the ballad about Kasia, who has gone astray and had to do penance for her sins in hell, did not leave anyone indifferent.
OSTRY FILM ZAANGAŻOWANY. NON CAMERA (Deeply Involved Film. Non Camera), dir. Julian Józef Antonisz, Poland 1979, 7’ – Bronze Dragon and Golden Hobby-Horse in 1980.
Cracovian. This creator could not be imitated. He drew and painted directly on the film tape, wrote music on his own. His non-camera chronicles created a furore not only in Poland. In “Ostry film zaangażowany’ he hilariously defended the culture-forming role of liquidated round newspaper kiosks which – strangely enough – have recently returned to the Krakow Market Square.
ELEMENTARZ (ABC Book), dir. Wojciech Wiszniewski, Poland 1976, 8’ – Golden Hobby-Horse and the award for music and visual setting. Special Honorary Diploma and Silver Dragon for cinematography, FIPRESCI award in 1981.
The rain of awards for “Elementarz” and “Stolarz” (“Joiner”), films produced in 1976 and put on the shelves, fell on the genius director just after his death, during the most interesting festival of the communist times. The breath of freedom was felt in every nook and cranny of the Kijow cinema, especially during this ruthless vivisection of the state of Polish consciousness in the 1970s.
FILM ANIMOWANY (Animated Film), dir. Alexander Sroczyński, Poland 1982, 19’ – Bronze Hobby-Horse in 1983.
Cracovian. Before he went overseas, he marked his presence on several editions of the festival as a unique author and the perpetrator of events beyond the screen, for instance when he walked through the cinema’s foyer dressed as an Arab sheik and dragging his ‘slave’ on a chain. “Film animowany” is his artistic credo, full of sarcastic and absurd humour, fantastic jugglery of gags and quotations from opposing film genres.
AŻIOTAŻ BILETÓW NA CZAS, dir. Alina Skiba, Poland 1984, 20’ – Award for visual setting for Alina Skiba and award for music for Zygmunt Konieczny in 1985.
In repulsively grey, Orwellian year, a film is made, which is a geyser of artistic freedom. The adaptation of Bruno Schulz’s fiction conquers Europe, winning Grand Prix at the most prestigious short-film festival in Clermont-Ferrand. This short masterpiece congenially transports the words of the Drohobycz writer into the sphere of pictures and music. On the screen, district of Kazimierz which no longer exists.
DONTAŃCZYĆ MROKU (Dance Till Dusk), dir. Andrzej Warchał, Poland 1986, 10’ – Bronze Hobby-Horse in 1987.
Cracovian, legendary artist of the Piwnica Pod Baranami, he was a peculiar creator. His films are usually metaphorical reflections on human existence. This one also stops to look at human fate, making dance the metaphor of life – from the birth to its end. As common with this director, musical rondo by Zygmunt Konieczny orders the sequences into recurring pictures.
REFRENY (Refrains), dir. Wioletta Sowa, Poland 2007, 13’ – Silver Dragon, Silver Hobby-Horse, FIPRESCI award in 2008.
Cracovian. Rain of awards in Krakow and triumphal march through the world’s festivals confirmed the standing of Krakow animation school, this from the sign of Studio Filmow Animowanych, and this under the auspices of Akademia Sztuk Pieknych. Poetic miniature about a woman in three forms, woven subtly from sand, music and whisper, where pictures ordered into life tangle return like Proust’s madeleines.
The screenings’ schedule:
12th January / 6 p.m. / Mikro cinema, Krakow
18th January / 6 p.m. / Sfinks cinema, Krakow
21st January / 8 p.m. / Millennium cinema, Tarnow
26th January / 6 p.m. / Sokol cinema, Nowy Sacz
28th January / 7 p.m. / Kino Pod Baranami, Krakow
Update: the screening in Kino Pod Baranami will start at 7.10 p.m.
Kategoria: News.