POLISH FILMS AT AMERICAN SXSW

Three Polish films were selected for this year’s programme of the American South by Southwest Music and Film Festival. The festival, that is one of the biggest and most important music festivals in US, apart from the abundant programme of music events every year hosts an impressive film selection. During nine SXSW festival’s days 130 films produced all over the world will be screened in Texas.

This year three Pol­ish doc­u­men­taries will rep­re­sent Poland at the fes­ti­val. “Writ­ten in Ink” di­rected by Mar­tin Rath was se­lected to com­pete in the short doc­u­men­tary com­pe­ti­tion. Rath’s film, pro­duced at Pol­ish Na­tional Film School in Łódź, is a poignant story of a man, who after many years apart longs for con­tact­ing his sis­ter again. “Writ­ten in Ink” shows the con­se­quences of all the ir­re­versible choices one makes in life. Two times awarded doc­u­men­tary (Abu Dhabi FF and Short FF San­ti­ago de Chile) is re­ceiv­ing more and more ap­pre­ci­a­tion abroad. Only in March the film will be screened in the com­pet­i­tive sec­tions of the fes­ti­vals North­ern Wave IFF in Ice­land, GO SHORT in Dutch Ni­jmegen and Span­ish Mecal In­ter­na­tional Short Film Fes­ti­val.

An­other short doc­u­men­tary – “Con­test” by Jakub Cuman will be screened in SX Global Shorts sec­tion. The screen­ing at SXSW will be the first Amer­i­can ap­pear­ance of Cuman’s film that so far screened at New Hori­zons FF in Wrocław, Toronto Pol­ish Film Fes­ti­val and Za­greb Dox in Croa­tia. Film pro­duced in frame of “First Doc­u­men­tary” pro­gramme ran by Munk Stu­dio in co­pro­duc­tion with Kosma Film is a doc­u­men­tary ob­ser­va­tion made dur­ing the In­ter­na­tional Fry­deryk Chopin Piano Com­pe­ti­tion Pre­lim­i­nar­ies in 2010.

The last Pol­ish film in this year’s pro­gramme of SXSW is going to be screened as a part of SX Global sec­tion. Full-​length Pol­ish – Ro­man­ian co­pro­duc­tion “The Path to Be­yond” by Anca Damian was based on true story of the Ro­man­ian Claudiu Crulic, who died in the prison in Krakow after going on a hunger strike to protest against ques­tion­able ac­cu­sa­tions of his ar­rest. Film brings to­gether var­i­ous an­i­ma­tion tech­niques, the doc­u­men­tary in­sight and the fic­tional, first-​person nar­ra­tion. “The Path to Be­yond” was screened so far at more than ten fes­ti­vals and awarded in Lo­carno, Cot­tbus and Jihlava to name just a few.   

It is not the first time, when Pol­ish films are present in the pro­gramme of the Texan SXSW. Last year “The screen­ing at the Tatry cin­ema” by Igor Cho­jna made its way to the short doc­u­men­tary com­pe­ti­tion, “Beats of Free­dom” by Leszek Gnoiński and Wo­j­ciech Słota was screened in the full-​length com­pe­ti­tion while SX Fan­tas­tic fea­tured “George the Hedge­hog” by Wo­jtek Wawszczyk, Jakub Tarkowski and Tomasz Leśniak.   

This year’s edi­tion of SXSW will be held be­tween 9th and 17th March 2012.

More in­for­ma­tion can be found at the of­fi­cial SXSW web­site