The 9th edition of WARSAW JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2011, Nov.8 - 13
dedicated to Mrs. Agnieszka Holland
Kinoteka Cinema - center of Warsaw culture and Festivals life!
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honor to invite you to the 9th Warsaw Jewish Film Festival and inform you that the Honorary David Camera of this year's edition is
dedicated to Mrs. Agnieszka Holland, a Polish film and TV director and screenwriter. Best recognized for her highly political contributions
to Polish cinema, Holland is one of Poland's most prominent filmmakers.
Mrs. Agnieszka Holland is awarded Honorary 2011 David Camera for Outstanding and Uncompromising Film Work Dealing With The Most Difficult Subjects.
This year among the other titels, we would like to present you the interesting feature narrative production SARAH`s KEY with a great role of Kristin Scott Thomas
as well as touching feature documentary, German - Palestinian production NACH DER STILLE, which will be presented during annual
Palestinian Evening
, November the 10th, 2011.
Commercial clips of Festival patrons, partners
Dear Festival Friends and Festival Audience,
Let me invite you to the 9th edition of our Festival dedicated to Mrs. Agnieszka Holland, who was awarded Honorary 2011 David Camera for Outstanding and Uncompromising Film Work Dealing with the Most Difficult Subjects.
We will present you outstanding new productions of narrative features and documentaries awarded and officially selected by the most important film festivals.
As some films relate not only to Jewish issues, our Festival has for a few years now organized meetings with minorities living in Poland. When an Israeli documentary JOURNEY OF VAAN NGUYEN was shown in 2006, a Vietnamese Evening was held with a martial arts ballet performance by Nam`a Group from Warsaw.
What has invariably been a part of our program for some years now is the Palestinian Evening. It seems that it is hard to avoid mentioning Palestinian history while bringing up Jewish issues, and all the more so because many of our festival audience who live in Poland and speak Polish are of Palestinian origins. Apart from that, we strongly believe that this is also a way of building peaceful relations and tolerance among people which may then help resolve all contentious issues.
We regret that this year's Festival can screen so few films. That is due to the fact we were refused funding from the majority of public institutions responsible for grants (twice in 2011 from the City of Warsaw, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, Polish Film Institute, Srodmiescie District of Warsaw), for which we unfortunately do not know the reason.
The Festival is held in the center of Warsaw's cultural and festival world, in KINOTEKA, and in KINO SWIT TARGÓWEK.
We are the first ever Jewish film festival in Poland and this part of Europe. Even the pre-war Poland with a 3.5 million Jewish population did not see a festival of this type. That is why we are aware of the responsibility we bear while representing the heritage, which we wish to cultivate and present through films. Our Festival was first organized in 2003 and is a dedicated festival, i.e. we screen exclusively the movies which bring up or relate to Jewish issues. We try to show good movies only and those which were not presented before at any other Jewish festival in Poland.
Since 2003, we have managed to present to the country's audience over 510 productions from 28 countries from all over the world. The films we have screened include tens of Oscar nominees, several Oscar, Palm d'Or and Emmy winners, one film awarded in Karlove Vary, several movies awarded by the Israeli Film and Television Academy and one awarded by the Swedish Film Institute. 'West Bank Story', which was the winner of the 1st Award David Camera at our Festival, was the Oscar winner in the same category three months later and two other films presented at our Festival, Polish 'Katyń' and Israeli 'Beaufort', were the Oscar nominees three months later.
The winners of our David Camera include: Paul Mazursky (Honorary 2010 David Camera given in his office in Beverly Hills), INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS by Tarantino (awarded with Special 2009 David Camera in Universal Studio, USA), Janusz Kamiński (2006 David Camera for cinematography to MUNICH by S. Spielberg), Agnes Varda and others.
The Warsaw Jewish Film Festival is a co-founder of the Cinema Jenin Association which reconstructed a cinema building, the Centre for Culture and
Piece, in the Palestinian city of Jenin. We must say with graet satisfaction that the cinema was officially opened on the 5th of August 2010.
We hope that this place will contribute to the peak development of the culture among the citizens of Jenin.
We would like to express our regret due to the fact that the Jewish legacy, the part of which is our festival, is not cultivated
by various cultural institutions in our country which has been so strongly connected with the Jewish society, history and culture for
the last 900 years. It seems that these institutions should be obliged to an objective support of events such as ours which has been the first
to come into existence in our region since the World War II. The honorary support is often not enough to accomplish the organization of
an international film festival which was recognized by such great authorities as Mr. Paul Mazursky.
