Films

• 8562518’25’’

  Production: PL 2014

  When it comes to expression, this documentary is built on: its protagonist's narration, painting, and the director's music. The verbal layer consists of Zbigniew Kołakowski's memories of war. As a teenage boy he survived two concentration camps: in Sachsenhausen and in Flossenburg. He worked at the crematorium. When he got there he thought it would postpone his death by two weeks (that was how often they changed the crematorium staff). It is a powerful film, in the protagonist's own words. And thanks to the protagonist himself – one that gives hope.

  

  

  

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  Authors:

  • Maciej Jarczyński
• Shepherd’s Song30’

  Production PL 2014

  Somewhere in the high mountains of Armenia, there lives the blind shepherd Khachik. In spite of all the adversities, he has set up a family and leads a quiet life, single-handedly herding his goats on the steep slopes. However, when it turns out that his only son is losing his sight too and has to move to Yerevan to attend a school for the blind, Khachik faces a dilemma: should he keep on living the life of a humble shepherd, or should he move to the capital city too to be with his son? This is a difficult choice for him as he strongly believes that blindness is a curse hanging over his family, and that the only living a devout life in the mountains can lift it.

  

   

  

   

  

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  Authors:

  • Vahram Mkhitaryan
• RekonGrodek17’

  Production: DE/PL/USA 2014

  “What clues are you looking for? What clues? The death of Georg Trakl, insanity, hallucinatory prophecy, the nightmare of history, a vortex filtering reality through a morbidly confused mind. What clues are you looking for?” These questions are brought up by the experimental “RekonGrodek,” whose authors, through dark imagery, relate to the assumed suicide of poet Georg Trakl. It happened in a military hospital in Cracow in 1914. Conscripted in August, Trakl participated in one of the first battles: the unbelievably bloody battle of Gródek. Drafted as a pharmacist, he did not have a chance to help the dying and the suffering. His last poem, “Grodek,” was written after these events.

  

  

  

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  Authors:

  • Devin Horan
  • Margherita Malerba
• Touch of Freedom11’38’’

  Production: PL 2015

  Poland has a tradition of coal mining existing for more than 200 years. After the excruciating hard work inside the deep, dark, hot and claustrophobic environment of the coal mines, some of the Polish miners return home to nurture a hobby that makes us wonder about the journey they make every day to earn their living and also to nurture a special passion - they raise postal pigeons. The film observes, without using any words, the dark strong contrast that exists in the two spaces that the miners traverse every day - the pitch-black darkness of the mines and the open skies the miners gaze at as their pigeons fly everyday to keep fit. What does it say about the miners? What does it say about us as human beings?

   

  

  

  

   

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  Authors:

  • Sardar Arshad Khan
• The Crow8’

  “It was raining. I was studying for my natural philosophy exam. Noise was coming from outside. I looked out the window. What I saw intrigued me enough to turn on my camera and document the unfolding event.” This is how the author of “Wrona” describes the origin of his short documentary observation. The film is a record of a certain story seen from the window of a block of flats overlooking a park. In a concise manner, it shows human attitudes toward the unusual behaviour of a young crow. This formally simple documentary, recorded from a single angle, forms a universal tale about mankind.

  

  

  

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  Authors:

  • Przemysław Jan Chrobak