From 18th to 22nd November 2009 Culture Center Zamek will host an International Film Festival Off Cinema. In past years the festival showed a broadly understood off, it means noncommercial film production. However, since last two years the festival has been focused only on documentary films directed by young artists (under 35). Being faithful to idea of off we are going to present the independent and noncommercial productions but limited to the category of a documentary film.

 

In the main competition we are going to show 40 films made by directors from eleven countries: Poland, Germany, Finland, Slovenia, Macedonia, Slovakia, Israel, Portugal, Iran, Denmark and Holland, which were had selected from 150 documentary films sent for the competition.
The Jury chaired by an outstanding Polish documentary film maker – Maciej Drygas will grant the authors Golden, Silver and Bronze Zamek. In the jury will also sit: Edyta Wróblewska (a documentary films director), Michael Brookes (an English film theoretician and critic, an expert on Middle European cinema), Andrzej Kołodyński (a film critic and editor in-chief of Kino magazine) and Piotr Kotowski (an originator and vice-chancellor of Summer Film Academy in Zwierzyniec).
A holiday of documentary film will begin on 18h of November at 5 pm. with a screening of first block of films taking part in the competition. At 7.30 p.m. will take place an official opening dignified by a screening of a silent film The Iron Horse directed by John Ford (USA 1924) accompanied by a chamber orchestra conducted by a composer – Rafał Rozmus.
Following days will be filled with screenings, except for the competitive films we are going to present the most interesting Polish documentary films produced last year and a revue of the films made by the members of jury and the meetings with them. A novelty of this year’s edition of the festival is an academic conference entitled Polish documentary cinema at the turn of 20th and 21st century (18-19.11.09). The winner of the 12th International Film Festival Off Cinema will be announced on 21st of November. After the announcement of the jury’s decision his/her film will be show.

www.offcinema.pl