„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.

If you were to name three things that come to your mind while think­ing about Pol­ish doc­u­ment­ary, what would that be?

Ally Derks: First of all it is always cine­ma­to­graphy. Then doc­u­ment­ary decline since 1992 – when it was clearly vis­ible how things went really bad with Pol­ish doc­u­ment­ar­ies. I also always think about the Krakow Film Fest­ival, recall­ing the moment when I came here for the first time and met Andrzej Kołodyński, who was the festival’s dir­ector back then.


It was in 1990 dur­ing the 27^th edi­tion of the fest­ival when you were a jury mem­ber .

A. D.: Yes, but refer­ring once again to your ques­tion I always asso­ci­ate Pol­ish doc­u­ment­ary with such dir­ect­ors as Jerzy Bos­sak, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Mar­cel and Paweł Łoz­iński. Without them Pol­ish doc­u­ment­ary would not be the same.


And how did this par­tic­u­lar interest in Pol­ish film grow?

A. D.: I think that the story star­ted actu­ally here, at Krakow Film Fest­ival. Then, with the idea of show­ing Pol­ish films in Hol­land and organ­iz­ing the ret­ro­spect­ive screen­ing I went to the National Archive in Warsaw and a dozen of dif­fer­ent archives and filmschools all over the coun­try. It was a dif­fi­cult quest. There was basic­ally no trans­la­tion so I was com­pletely depend­ent on the inter­preter. All in all it was worth the effort as I man­aged to find some very inter­est­ing films.


There were pre­cisely 165 films screened at IDFA so far– some pro­duced in the six­ties, sev­en­ties – remind­ing of the Pol­ish doc­u­ment­ary school, the oth­ers made in the last few years. Is there any com­mon fea­ture that you find espe­cially excep­tional about those films?

A. D.: Obvi­ously those films can­not be clearly com­pared because of the fact that they were made in a dif­fer­ent time and they stem from dif­fer­ent polit­ical and social cir­cum­stances. In the 60ties and 70ties the filmic lan­guage was obvi­ously dif­fer­ent from what it is like now. As film­makers were try­ing to avoid the cen­sor­ship inter­fer­ence, the con­tent was expressed in the meta­phors and sym­bols. I think that the storytelling was more secret­ive even though the cinema of that time was very polit­ical and this sub­ject was always per­cept­ible. Even now I find this kind of secret­ive­ness really Pol­ish.


What was the reac­tion to those films?

A. D.: People were very intrigued. Espe­cially on see­ing films deal­ing with del­ic­ate prob­lems. To men­tion the earli­est films, made just after II World War like “Majdanek – the cement­ary of Europe” by Jerzy Bos­sak. He was the one who ven­tured to shown the con­cen­tra­tion camp in the doc­u­ment­ary film. I really find this par­tic­u­lar type of artistic cour­age and his uncon­di­tional need to show real­ity as it is truly sig­ni­fic­ant. As many may not remem­ber Ams­ter­dam used to be a Jew­ish city, and there were many Dutch Jews who got into the con­cen­tra­tion camps such as Dachau or Aus­chwitz so people’s reac­tion to those films was very emo­tional and they were truly over­whelmed by what they saw. What I can observe is that every time we screen films that deal with Jew­ish sub­jects the audi­ence is always very inter­ested and the screen­ings are sold out imme­di­ately.


Hence, there is a cer­tain interest in Pol­ish cinema.

A. D.: Abso­lutely, today I hap­pen to see four pitch­ing ses­sions at Dragon Forum and on hear­ing the present­a­tion of young Pol­ish film­maker I could imme­di­ately tell that he has cer­tainly a great tal­ent. So it’s com­ing back, the tra­di­tion is there and I do hope that many young film­makers will see those older films and get inspired by them.


As it hap­pens right now in Hol­land?

A. D.: I find Hol­land quite sim­ilar to Poland in a way that it has a genu­ine doc­u­ment­ary tra­di­tion and back­ground – to name just a few – Joris Evens, Bert Han­stra, Ham­mon Von­der Horst – that were pion­eers at the doc­u­ment­ary cinema. I always say – Czechow was not born in the Neth­er­lands, we lack this big heart and roman­ti­cism, our her­it­age is based on more of down to earth pil­lars. In the end we are a nation of eseists, real­ity paint­ers etc. So the doc­u­ment­ary fits this slot very well even today with such a tal­en­ted film­makers like Henny Hon­ig­mann, John Appel, or Jer­oen Berk­vens. We just love the facts (laugh)!



Inter­viewed and trans­lated by Zofia Ścisłowska



* After study­ing Dutch lit­er­at­ure and film and theater Ally Derks became coordin­ator of Fest­ikon, an annual edu­ca­tional Film and video fest­ival in Utrecht. In 1988, sup­por­ted by Neth­er­lands Film Insti­tute, she set up the Inter­na­tional Doc­u­ment­ary Film Fest­ival Ams­ter­dam (IDFA). Since 1989 she is the dir­ector of IDFA. Ally Derks is also dir­ector of the Jan Vrij­man Fund that sup­ports doc­u­ment­ary film­makers in devel­op­ing coun­tries since 1998. Ally Derks has been on many jur­ies, amongst oth­ers in Sund­ance, Krakow and St. Peters­burg. Over the past years she has won sev­eral awards for her con­tri­bu­tion to the doc­u­ment­ary field, such as the Life­time Achieve­ment Award at DocAviv in Tel Aviv (2007) and the IJ Prijs by the city of Ams­ter­dam and Price­wa­ter­house­Coopers (2008).


(18.10.2011)