The spring sun slowly comes over Poland and days are getting warmer and warmer. People have long been eager to spend their free time outside. Therefore, with the first breath of spring air, myriad of festivals have started. In May, all cultural events have their great beginning.
A few weeks ago, numerous filmmakers from all over the world came to Krakow to attend the Offplus Camera, where they could present their movies and take a part in a competition. Nevertheless, I would like to share with you my experience related to another event – Krakow Film Festival (KFF) dedicated to short and documentary movies.
KFF was not only a great opportunity to watch movies rarely shown in cinemas, but also an excellent place for networking and commencement of new professional relationships with people in the industry.
Nearly one hundred movies were presented. These 8 days passed very quickly in a homey atmosphere. The opening ceremony took place on 25th of May and it was honoured with premiere of a film “Sen o Warszawie” (“Dream about Warsaw”) about the life of a great Polish singer – Czesław Niemen.
The rest of the week was a time, when we could see competing movies in the categories such as: DocFilm music, documentary, short films and national film. I was particularly impressed by a variety of techniques used in these films. Not only traditional cinema, but also animations, which are really noteworthy. Due to my responsibilities as a photographer, I could not be present and admire all of movies. Therefore, I watched only a few of them. I was surprised by their dissimilarity to everything what I watched before in my life. For instance “From Earth and Ink” by Jonatan Laskar is a short story, which brought up a topic of difficult relationship. Seemingly, there is nothing unexpected about this choice. But it has been made using technique of pictures, we can see two different solutions , it’s application of drawings and characters made from clay at the same time.
In my view, particularly informative and interesting were Q&A sessions with authors, where audience could discuss their impressions and ask questions directly to filmmakers. That was a great idea, because very often after a movie séance we have a lot of questions of technical nature. Q&A sessions revealed us “the secrets of production”, gave us a comfort of getting answers immediately and gaining more knowledge related to production from people in the field.
Apart from the competition part of festival, there was also a time for showing “Stanley Kubrick. A life in pictures” and meeting with Jan Harlan, the producer of Kubrick’s movies and at the same time director of this documentary. It was definitely my favourite event during this week, even though it was really late in the evening and I had already watched 5 short stories. However, with the moment when the documentary about the great artist began, the whole tiredness disappeared. He was obsessed with cats. For example, have you ever heard that Stanley Kubrick used to provide his children several dozen pages of detailed instruction “how to take care of cats” when he had to travel and leave kids with his cats ?
As I mentioned before, during the KFF there was also a time for other cultural and social events, diverse parties, banquets and concerts (for example, a concert of the Polish band called “HEY”), time for talking and meetings provided with delicious snacks, drinks and accompanied by the great music.
For most of us, it was a shame that closing ceremony came so fast, but definitely it was a happy day for authors of awarded films – “Deep love”, “Domino effect”, “Return to Homes”, “Do you believe in love?”, “Songs of Redemption”, “Borders” and others.
KFF is over, but all is not yet lost, pack your luggage and come to Poland to be a participant of another cultural events like Audioriver, Reggaeland, T-Mobile New Horizons, Transatlantyk, Open’er Festival and much more!