„Jerzy Bos­sak, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Mar­cel and Paweł Łoz­iński. Without them Pol­ish doc­u­ment­ary would not be the same” – said Ally Derks, the dir­ector of Inter­na­tional Doc­u­ment­ary Film Fest­ival Ams­ter­dam (IDFA), dur­ing this year’s 51. Krakow Film Festival. (...)

“Vakha and Magomed”, dir­ec­ted by Marta Prus,will be screened at the most import­ant doc­u­ment­ary fest­ival in Ams­ter­dam (IDFA). In an inter­view with Bolesław Racięski, the dir­ector talks about the prot­ag­on­ists and the dif­fi­cult situ­ation they are in. (...)

Zdeněk Blaha from the Insti­tute of Doc­u­ment­ary Film had a chance to talk with Michał Mar­czak about the unique remote world “at the edge of Russia”. (...)

The 9^th IN THE PALACE Inter­na­tional Short Film Fest­ival in Bul­garia suc­cess­fully came to an end in the early morn­ing of June 26^th. Dur­ing the Fest­ival Valentina Bozhich­kova had a chance to talk with Pol­ish film­maker, Rafał Skal­ski, the author of fre­quently awar­ded “52 per­cent” and recent film “Lov­ers” which was screened in Bul­garian Balchik. (...)

Daniel Stopa talks to Woj­ciech Staroń about mak­ing ‘Argen­tinian Les­son’, music inspir­a­tions and ways of doc­u­ment­ing ‘simple matters’. (...)

In “Far from the city” by Maciej Cuske an idyllic atmo­sphere of a vil­lage and the pas­sion of cre­ation are com­bined with a reflec­tion of grow­ing up, related to the very first ques­tion asked of him­self and then of the world. Bolesław Racięski has spoken to the dir­ector about the documentary. (...)

On the steppes of the far-​away Repub­lic of Kalmykia rises vast Chess City. This is the cre­ation of Kirsan Ily­umzhinov. He is the country’s pres­id­ent, a mil­lion­aire, and, above all, an acclaimed chess player who wishes to fill all of the Republic’s cit­izens with his pas­sion. Mag­dalena Pięta has set off to “Planet Kirsan” so as to tell the story of both its leader, and its young­est inhab­it­ants for whom chess may be the only way to the bet­ter world. (...)

In her pre­vi­ous doc­u­ment­ary film Marta Minorow­icz observed the cre­ation of the bond between an eld­erly man liv­ing in the wil­der­ness of Bieszczady Moun­tains and his grand­son. In “A Piece of Sum­mer” the cam­era encap­su­lated the man and his emo­tions. Equally, or even more intim­ate is the atmo­sphere of her next doc­u­ment­ary “Decres­cendo”, in which the viewer is a wit­ness to the relation-​building between the res­id­ents of the rest home and their younger vis­it­ing psy­cho­lo­gist Tomek. Find­ing one’s way in and part­ing with life, youth and old age, the will of exist­ence and the accept­ance of time passing – these are the ant­onyms that char­ac­ter­ise this remark­able film. (...)

“A decres­cendo is in fact a cres­cendo, because the less time we have got left, the more mean­ing­ful everything is, and emo­tions become more intense” — says Marta Minorow­icz, author of short doc­u­ment­ary film “Decrescendo”. (...)

„Returns”, the most recent doc­u­ment­ary by Krzysztof Kadłubow­ski, may, to put it mildly, sur­prise the audi­ence who fol­lowed the events related to Smolensk air crash in television. (...)

‘I was in a dilemma upon decid­ing what can be shown in the film. The sight of two paddles of a defib­ril­lator in dir­ect con­tact with heart doesn’t ter­rify me, I’ve got used to it. But is the viewer ready for such scenes?’ Daniel Stopa speaks with Tomasz Wol­ski about the film “Doctors”. (...)

In the years 1971 – 1987, Przemysław Kwiek and Zofia Kulik worked together as an influ­en­tial artistic duet known as “KwieKu­lik”. Part­ners not only at work but also privately, they were fam­ous as avid crit­ics of the real­ity in the Pol­ish People’s Repub­lic and one of the most import­ant avant-​gardists in the coun­try. After 1987 they split up leav­ing vast archives – a true treas­ury of inform­a­tion on their joint activity. (...)

‘Today the KwieKu­lik duet is con­sidered one of the most import­ant expo­nent of the Pol­ish avant-​garde dur­ing Pol­ish People’s Repub­lic. We wanted, how­ever, to show their works in a way that would allow to notice not only the artistic dis­course but also the images of their private, sexual rela­tion­ship and the com­plic­ated rela­tion­ship with the real­ity of Pol­ish People’s Repub­lic’, says Anna Zakrzewska, one of the authors of ‘KwieKulik’. (...)

“I look at the sky, high above the hori­zon. It smiles at me with its beauty. I’m close to you. You ask if we are meant for each other” – with this frag­ment of the lul­laby the story of Israeli Ilan, who lives in Cam­bodia with his Khmer woman and her daugh­ters begins. At the same time, those poetic lyr­ics intro­duce us to the world that is both immersed in dreams and burdened with an oppress­ive secret. (...)

When I first saw „Slowly” (2010) the doc­u­mantary made by Tomasz Wol­ski it reminded me of a nearly twenty five years’ older doc­u­ment­ary „The Fam­ily of Man” that Władysław Śle­sicki shot in 1966, awar­ded the Golden Hobby Horse in Krakow and Golden Lion in Venice. Both films, apart from the sub­ject – a pic­ture of life in the coun­tryside – are brought together by the sim­ilar poetics. (...)

The Ex Ori­ente Film work­shops took place in Warsaw from 28 June to 4 July. (...)