A book “40 years of the Gdynia Film Festival”

In 2005, the Polish Filmmakers Association published in the KINO Foundation a book entitled “A statek płynie… 30 lat Festiwalu Polskich Filmów Fabularnych Gdańsk – Gdynia” (“And the ship goes on… 30 years of the Polish Feature Film Festival Gdańsk – Gdynia”). The new publication, although using the contents included in the older book, will be slightly different in character. There will be a larger number of photographs (especially from the last decade) and archives, printouts and relics from the older editions of the Festival. The publishing of the book was supported by the Polish Film Institute.

The Artistic Director of the Festival, Michał Oleszczyk, emphasizes the joy caused by the planned publication: “The older edition of the album has had its special place on my desk for a long time, and since the moment of my appointment for the director’s position, I have been reaching for it practically every day. The new edition will be a priceless compendium of information about the most important film event in Poland but also an idiosyncratic chronicle of the transformations of the Polish cinematography in the last four decades. It will be a magnificent summary of the 40-year-long history of the Festival which I have the honour to be part of.”

The Polish Filmmakers Association was among the initiators of the foundation of the Polish Feature Film Festival in Gdańsk (currently – the Gdynia Film Festival). “We did not want to confront one another, or even the critics, we wanted to present our work to an authentic audience as it was its voice that mattered. We wanted not so much a cosmopolitan festival as a thorough review of the current Polish film work and a confrontation of our output with the viewers,” Jerzy Kawalerowicz, the first Chairman of the Polish Filmmakers Association and the co-founder of the event, wrote in the book “A statek płynie…”. The Association is the co-organizer of the Gdynia Film Festival and each year it engages itself in such significant parts of the programme as „Gdynia for Children” of the Polish Filmmakers Association Forum.

The book, prepared by a team composed of a few specialists, was edited by dr Anna Wróblewska, PhD, the Spokesperson of the Gdynia Film Festival, an academic employee of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw. The book’s premiere is planned to take place during the 40^th Gdynia Film Festival, which will be held between 14^th and 19^th September 2015.