Gdynia on the Horizon

“Gdynia on the Horizon” is an original special event prepared by Michał Oleszczyk, the Artistic Director of the Gdynia Film Festival. It will take place within partnership with the T-Mobile New Horizons IFF.

The annual cycle will be opened on 26 July 2014 during the 14. T-Mobile New Horizons IFF. Its aim is to show the Polish cinema as a part of the world cinematography, constituting an integral element of the entirety of the global film art.

The event will consist in a double film screening maintained in the American “double-bill” tradition. The viewers will watch two films: a foreign and a Polish one. The titles will be matched in such a way which will allow for a dynamic dialogue of the films (in terms of the theme, form, or cultural aspects). After the show, Michał Oleszczyk will hold workshops during which together with the audience, he will analyse similarities and differences across the two films. The meeting is aimed at demonstrating the fascinating tangle of artistic, formal and political factors that determine the final shape of a film work.

The films selected for the opening screening of “Gdynia on the Horizon” are two works from 1971, treating of loneliness and attempts at overcoming it: “Bleak Moments” by Mike Leigh and “Za ścianą” (“Behind the Wall”) by Krzysztof Zanussi.

“I hope to show that the Polish cinema is not a ‘poor relative’ of the world cinematography; that there were and are talents within it, which set directions of the film art development, entering into a global creative dialogue. In my opinion, the T-Mobile New Horizons Festival is a great place for a conversation on the topic, for the reason of the already long-standing tradition of disseminating the world artistic cinema and indicating the bonding network of cultural and aesthetic connections and relations,” says Michał Oleszczyk.

The photographs come from the collections of Filmoteka Narodowa (the National Film Archive)