The 8th Warsaw Jewish Film Festival 2010 was dedicated to Paul Mazursky, American director, actor,
screenwriter and film producer whose movies many a time were nominated to OSCAR and other international awards...more here!
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I had the honor to invite you to the 8th Warsaw Jewish Film Festival and informed you that the Honorary David Camera of this year’s edition wass
dedicated to Mr. Paul Mazursky, American director, actor, screenwriter and a film producer whose movies were repeatedly awarded and nominated for
an Oscar as well as other international awards. I would also like to invite you both to a Paul Mazursky retrospective and a Q and A session with
Mrs. Malgorzata Zajaczkowska, a head of this year´s jury and an actress starring in "Enemies" by Paul Mazursky. The Warsaw Jewish Film Festival
was established in 2003 and has been the first Jewish film festival both in Poland and in this part of Europe. The aim of this event is to present
only these movies which were not previously screened at any other Jewish festivals in Poland and are considered to be an artistic success.
Since 2003 the repertoires of the subsequent editions of the Warsaw Jewish Film Festival has encompassed several dozen films nominated for an Oscar,
a dozen or so American, Israeli and Sweden Film Academies laureates, as well as productions awarded in Cannes and Karlove Vary. "West Bank Story" by
Ari Sandel, which was awarded the first prize at the 2006 WJFF, received an Oscar in the same category three months later. Concomitantly, two other
films presented at our festival, Polish "Katyn" by Andrzej Wajda and Israeli "Beaufort" by Jospeh Cedar were later nominated for an Oscar.
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 also like to inform you that a more modest size of this year´s festival than in the first editions (e.g. only four movies by the
laureate of the Honorary David Camera – Paul Mazursky) is a result of a difficult situation connected with dishonest organizers of the other
similarly specialized festival which was established in Warsaw as the second one. We hope that a current lawsuit will clear the air
and clarify this unfavorable situation, thereby having a positive effect on the development and interest in the Festival.
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.
Enjoy the Festival!
You are most welcome!
Sincerely,
Daniel Strehlau
Festival Director with Festival staff
