Skip to main content
News

Male Eye, Female Heart

By 14/07/2023No Comments

Male Eye, Female Heart

Polish School of Animation

Organizer:
Fundacja Promocji Kultury Artystycznej, Filmowej i Audiowizualnej Etiuda&Anima  (International Film Festival Etiuda&Anima)
Indirizzo: ul. Morawskiego 5/220C, 30-102 Kraków, Polonia
www.etiudaandanima.plwww.fundacja.etiudaandanima.pl

Project curator: Katarzyna Surmacz

This project is co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland from the Culture Promotion Fund and by the Polish Film Institute.

PROGRAM
August 25, 2023
h.23.00 – Giardino dei Limoni di San Benedetto

Tango, real./dir. Zbigniew Rybczyński (1980, 8’)
Ichthys, real./dir. Marek Skrobecki (2005, 15’)
Ex Animo, real./dir. Wojciech Wojtkowski 2013, 6’50’’)
Hipopotamy / Hippos, real./dir. Piotr Dumała (2014, 12’30’’)
Ab Ovo, real./dir. Anita Kwiatkowska Naqvi (2013, 5’18”)
III,  real./dir. Marta Pajek (2018, 12’)
3 geNARRACJE /3 geNARRATIONS, real./dir. Paulina Ziółkowska (2021, 9′)

Tango
dir. Zbigniew Rybczyński, music: Janusz Hajdun, prod. Studio Małych Form Filmowych Se-Ma-For, Poland 1980, 8’
People enter the small room in turn. Firstly, one by one, then the sequences of rhythmical moves start looping and overlapping, but characters do not interfere with each other. It is accurate time compression within a limited space. Tango won the very first Oscar in the history of Polish cinema.

Zbigniew Rybczyński, born in 1949 – graduated from the film school in Łódź. He is a cinematographer, scriptwriter, and director of animated and experimental films. He left Poland after receiving Oscar for Tango. He went to the U.S. where he was acclaimed as the „pope of the video art”.

Ichthys
dir. Marek Skrobecki, script: Antoni Bańkowski, phot. Mikołaj Jaroszewicz, music: Wojciech Lemański, prod. Se-Ma-For, Wytwórnia Filmów Dokumentalnych i Fabularnych, Poland 2005, 15’
It is a puppet animation linked with an additional 3D computer technique. Ichthys is a metaphorical parable about human’s dreams, expectations, and grit. A young man comes to the restaurant in the sacred-like building. A waiter with a cherub-like face takes an order and goes away. The client is waiting patiently. Time is passing. When the waiter shows up again, the man cannot enjoy a meal evermore.

Marek Skrobecki, born in 1951 – graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and the film school in Łódź. He is a scriptwriter and director of animated films, including puppet animation mainly. He is the laureate of many international festivals. He collaborates with many other artists as for instance with Suzie Templeton on the Oscar winner Peter and the Wolf.

Ex Animo
dir. and script: Wojciech Wojtkowski, music: Tomasz Opałka, prod. Fumi Studio, Poland  2013, 7’
An animated impression. Images conjured up by the animator form a two-dimensional reality of their own. Absurd and unrelated scenes describe the rules governing the world confined to a sheet of paper and animation technique. The relationships between the characters seem strangely familiar.

Wojciech Wojtkowski, born in 1956 – a graphic artist, press illustrator, animator and storyboard artist, director of animated films, and actor. He is a co-author of numerous films for children (including animated series). He made his own artist films: Gra (The Game, 1988) and Ex Animo (2013) – a production that won awards at many festivals including Grand Prix of a Providence festival.

Hipopotamy / Hippos
dir. and script: Piotr Dumała, phot. Mateusz Michalak, music: Alexander Balanescu, prod. Fumi Studio, Poland 2014, 12’
A film based on observations of the behavior of hippos. A group of women and children swimming in the river is approached by some men. The most determined male gets close to one of the women. When she rejects him, there is a sudden outbreak of group aggression.

Piotr Dumała, born in 1956 – graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He is a scriptwriter, director of animated and feature films, writer, actor, graphic artist, and pedagogue. He is the most important artist of the third generation of the Polish School of Animation. Dumała is interested in surrealism and prose of Fyodor Dostoyevsky or Franz Kafka and he tries to reflect the atmosphere of their novels in his films.

Ab Ovo
dir. and script: Anita Kwiatkowska-Naqvi, music Goerge Antoniv, prod. PWSFTviT , Poland 2012, 5’18’’
A film originating from the unique experience of femininity. The power of fertility becomes the source of both distressing and beautiful experience. A visually convincing perception of the surprising and uncontrollable transformations of a woman’s body.

Anita Kwiatkowska-Naqvi, born in 1986 in Krakow, animation graduate and PhD student at Lodz Film School, Poland. In her short films she takes a novel approach to traditional animation techniques, using unusual materials to create hypnotising, poetic worlds. Her films gained worldwide recognition, including the award for the best diploma film in Annecy for “Ab ovo”. Co-founder of LeLe Production.

III
dir. and script: Marta Pajek, music: Aleksandra Gryka, prod. Animoon, Poland 2018, 12’
A sudden meeting of a Man and a Woman begins a hypnotic act – a game of pleasure and discomfort.

Marta Pajek,  born in 1982. Film director, graphic artist, and painter. A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, she studied at the Animated Film Studio headed by Jerzy Kucia. She also participated in a traineeship under the tutorship of Priit Pärn at the Turku Arts Academy in Finland. She has directed short animations, such as After Apples (2004) and Behind the Wall (2005), and an award-winning film Sleepincord (2011). The latest part of her triptych Impossible Figures and Other Stories III was qualified for the short film competition at the Cannes 2018 festival.

3 geNARRACJE /3 geNARRATIONS
dir. Paulina Ziółkowska, music: Naybi Suyua Esparza Luna, prod.: Fumi Studio, Poland 2021, 9′
A child is born. A daughter becomes a mother. The mother becomes a grandmother. The grand-mother …. she just wants to die. A generation change. The family members have to try walking in someone else’s shoes, assume new roles. But is it really so? Is it just a step to take or an invitation to a strange dance of generations? One step forward, two steps back so as not to turn into your own mother.

Paulina Ziółkowska – born in 1988 – a polish film director, 2D Animator and illustrator. She studied animation at Lodz Film School in Poland and at Filmuniversity Babelsberg. Her debut film “Oh Mother!”(2017) was screened in many festivals worldwide, won many prizes. Her next film “Bless you!”(2018) amongst others has won a special mention at 68th Berlinale and a special mention at AnimaFest in Zagreb. Her films have been shown at festivals like: Clermont-Ferrand, Annecy,  IFF Etiuda&Anima, Krakowski Festiwal Filmowy, Melbourne IFF, Ottawa IAF, Stuttgart.

The Polish School of Animation project was initiated on the occasion of the Polish Presidency 2011 and since then we have presented it during animation and short film festivals in 36 countries, including: Germany, China, Japan, Bulgaria, Portugal, Estonia, Brazil, Mexico, Finland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, USA, Korea, Sweden and Ukraine. The project aims to popularize Polish animation around the world, illustrating various trends, developments and changes taking place in this field over the last 70 years.
Although the Polish School of Animation was born only after 1945, next to the films of the Polish School, the Grotowski Theater and the Polish School of Posters, animated cinema was for decades one of the most important showcases of Polish culture abroad. The program prepared by the Foundation recalls the most valuable achievements of our national school, shows films by poets and satirists of the image, master puppeteers and cut-out virtuosos, painters, cartoonists: Walerian Borowczyk, Zbigniew Rybczyński, Jan Lenica, Mirosław Kijowicz, Daniel Szczechura, Ryszard Czekała, Julian Antonisz or Jerzy Kucia.
In addition, it presents the most interesting achievements of the generation that came to prominence in later years, continuing, often polemically, the work of Polish masters, including films by Mariusz Wilczyński, Marek Skrobecki, Tomasz Siwiński, Tomek Ducki, Wojciech Sobczyk. The aim of the project is also to draw attention to our young artists, to show the huge difference that currently prevails in the animation industry compared to the last century, where men dominated. It emphasizes the huge role of women in the world of animation and the colossal difference in subject matter and gender proportions since the times of the People’s Republic of Poland. Currently, it is mainly women artists, including: Wiola Sowa, Anita Kwiatkowska Naqvi, Marta Pajek, Karolina Specht, Weronika Szyma, Paulina Ziółkowska, who create the recipient’s sensitivity to the world.
In their films, there are completely different topics strongly related to women’s lives, the female body, as well as physiological and physical changes that occur in it during life (e.g. puberty, sexual experiences, pregnancy, aging). The contemporary wave of films made by women, after years of male dominance in the industry, has brought a pleasant breath of fresh air to Polish animation.