A new competition, changes in the rules and regulations!
On 17th March 2015, the Organizing Committee of the Gdynia Film Festival approved the new rules and regulations according to which, first and foremost, the formula of the Festival competitions will be changed.
Since 2015, the Visions Apart section, which was introduced in 2014 as a review of films with a special artistic formula, will be a competition. The main award in the section addressed to the creators of films that are inter-genre, experimental or hard to unambiguously define, is the Golden Claw. The statue of the new award was designed by Andrzej Pągowski and Andrzej Renes. The award “in recognition of the courage of form and content” has the financial value of PLN 30,000 (PLN 18,000 for the director and PLN 12,000 for the producer).
Beginning from 2015, the Young Cinema Competition will be a section that presents only feature short films and feature diploma films of the students of film schools. In the Competition, similarly to the past years, two prizes will be awarded: the main award in the amount of PLN 10,000 and the special award in the amount of PLN 5,000.
The Organizing Committee decided to resign from the Polish Independent Cinema Review. Since 2015, Short Feature Film Competition will be an integral part of the Festival, and it will present Polish feature short-length films, excluding short films and diploma films of film schools. The award for the best short-length film amounts to PLN 10,000.
The character of the Main Competition remains unchanged. In relation to the foundation of the „Visions Apart” Competition, the Main Competition resigns from the Special Award.
These decisions are caused by the transformations the current Polish cinematography is subject to. Michał Oleszczyk, the Artistic Director of the Festival, comments the changes in the following way:
„These changes are the result of my one year’s experience as the Director, as well as current observation of what is going on upon the Polish film stage. The reinforcement of „Visions Apart” with a separate jury composition, a statue and a financial award seemed a necessity to me. Poland is the place of making films that in various ways experiment with the form, and their place is not necessarily the Main Competition. Such films – often more modest in terms of production – either are not selected for the Main Competition, or vanish in it, overburdened by their spectacular competition. In the reinforced “Visions Apart”, such films will have the chance to shine, also thanks to the Golden Claw which will be awarded at the main closing ceremony of the Festival. I believe that this will increase the presence of such films in the Polish cinemas and in the conscience of Polish viewers.”
Asked about the reformulation of the Young Cinema Competition and the new Short Feature Film Competition, Oleszczyk adds:
„In the Young Cinema Competition, there used to be a certain inaccuracy: alongside school films, it admitted films that were de facto professional, e.g. those made in Studio Munka. I had the impression that this disturbed competition equality. And the formula of the Independent Cinema Review was so unclear that it was time for a farewell. In the new Competition, there is a place for short-length feature films of any provenience – it can be Studio Munka, or it can be an independent producer. All but school films, for which the Young Cinema Competition is intended (thereby standardized). Those two competitions will be united only by the jury composition but besides that, they are fully separate.
The 40th Gdynia Film Festival will take place from 14th to 19th September 2015. The beginning of the film submission procedure will be announced in April 2015.
