Films

• The Argentinian Lesson / Argentyńska lekcja56'
  Wojciech Staroń, POL 2011, 56’

  The wife of the film's author becomes a Polish language teacher in Azara, Argentina. The whole family – the married couple and two children – goes to South America. Azara is a modest town where it always rains. The Starońs’ eight-year-old son, Jasiek, becomes friends with Marcia Majcher, the daughter of a descendant of Polish emigrants. Marcia is mature beyond her age: her father, for financial reasons, lives on a plantation far from the family home, her mother has emotional problems. The girl tries different occupations: she tries to start a shop, works at brick production. Jasiek accompanies and helps her, for him she is a guide to the strange world of another country and another continent. His mom's contract is about to end.

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  Authors:

  • Wojciech Staroń
• Nocturne #2 | Nokturn #212'
  Pieter Geenen, BEL 2012, 12’

  A static shot of an alley in Tehran. Minimal changes in brightness. A view of an empty street, at the end of which we can barely make out figures moving. The traffic lights are flashing and the absence of life becomes overwhelming. A four-lane street: luminous, full of light points: blocks of flats. The centre, apogee of the light is Azadi Tower (Freedom Tower), around which the events from the most recent history of Iran concentrated: the Iranian Revolution 1979, nationalist and patriotic demonstrations during the war with Iraq, protest following the 2009 presidential elections. The film was made with a mobile phone camera in Spring 2011. During the Arab Spring the regimes defended themselves against the protesters by cutting them off from telephone and Internet connections.

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  Authors:

  • Pieter Geenen
• At Least We’ve Met / Wreszcie się spotkaliśmy15'
  Marko Grba Singh, SRB 2012, 15’

  The camera follows homeless Zoran who wanders through Belgrade in the evening. He tries to sell an icon, asks for a cigarette. The present is the way it is. Zoran laughs to the camera. Behind his smile, the lines around his eyes and the entourage of the homeless, the filmmaker unveils a human story, entangled in this part of Europe, entangled in all the rest. A couple of economics students cheerfully comment on the bleak macroeconomic situation. For them, Zoran is a good example for such deliberation. Zoran for Zoran: “Here we are... What I am. Who you are... Here I go again...”

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  Authors:

  • Marko Grba Singh
• Man of Iron / Człowiek z żelaza2'
  Angelika Herta, POL 2011, 2’

  It could be a fragment of a TV report from the People's Republic of Poland. Fanaticism, toughness, complete devotion. Close-up of a workman's face: craggy, with a moustache so popular in the '70s and '80s. Work is carried out with commitment, no slacking off, although the hammer’s changing rhythm may cause wonder. The following shots uncover the convention of the situation being filmed: the workman’s hammer is hitting the air, he himself is standing in a rectangle painted on the ground. The industrial hall (the place of action) is fully authentic, with a very strong symbolic meaning. It is the hall of the Gdańsk Shipyard. The production is something in between documentary film and video art.

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  Authors:

  • Angelika Herta
• No Reason to Leave / Nie ma powodu by stąd odejść18'
  Gregory Portnoy, POL 2012, 18’

  Snow, monotonous music, trains passing by. A trip? In the scenery of a neighbourhood that could be found in any place in Europe, people go in various directions. An attentive voyeur spies on them, knowing nothing about them (?). They can be your/my neighbours. Behind the curtain: maybe it is you? Everyday beauty, boredom, bustle, anxiety, or maybe a perfectly arranged system, in this case one of a film? Should you ask great questions and build a universe? Should you count the rectangles of balconies? Focus on the patterns: of a carpet, of the curtains, of the structure of snow? Find the right detail? The beginning and the end of the trip, and what is in between.

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  Authors:

  • Gregory Portnoy