Still from Bartek Konopka and Piotr Rosołowski's "Art of Disappearing"
Poland’s biggest documentary festival enters its 10th edition, showcasing 150 documentaries from around the world
Maciej Drygas, Bartek Konopka and Piotr Rosołowski and the Sasnals are among the best names of Polish documentary filmmakers. At Planete+Doc, they present their latest works. Art of Disappearing, filmed by Bartek Konopka and Piotr Rosołowski, the creators of the 2010 Oscar nominated Rabbit à la Berlin, shows socialist Poland through the eyes of Haitian voodoo priest Amon Frémon, whose visit to the "strange" country was the idea of Jerzy Grotowski. When Frémon meets General Jaruzelski, he is convinced that the Polish leader is possessed by the wicked demon of Baron Samedi. When martial law is declared on the 13th of December 1981, Frémon performs a voodoo ceremony to help free the General from evil spirits. Art of Disappearing is part of a special series of documentaries, Guide to the Poles, that explain contemporary Polish trends through their role in the communist era, and are produced by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
Planete+Doc hosts the premiere of Maciej Drygas’ Abu Haraz, a cinematic essay on a small village in Sudan. A documentary filmmaker who worked as assistant to Krzysztof Zanussi and Krzysztof Kieślowski right after finishing his studies, Drygas follows protagonists in his new work whom he'd gotten to know over a period of six years, treating the topics of longing and loss. Abu Haraz is also represented at the 61st Cannes Film Festival’s Marché du Film, the industry's market for promising new films. The director comments at a press conference,
Why Abu Haraz and not some other place? That was an accident: first of all that I ended up in Sudan. Once I was driving a car and listening to a radio station. [...] One of the archeologists, now I know it was the famous archeologist Bogdan Żurawski, was talking about excavation works taking place in Sudan and that the people in power in Sudan asked archeologists from all over the world to dig and show what is burried deep in the ground before the whole terrain is floded by water.
Aleksander, a full-length 2013 production by Anka and Wilhelm Sasnal, talks about "a place where chaos reigns even though the days pass quietly; where people do not have work even though they are always busy with something, and nothing ever changes". A film in which the distance created by the camera starts disappearing, it shows the lives of the protagonists and that of the filmmakers. Aleksander was shot in the same village as the Sasnals' jarring first feature film, It Looks Pretty from a Distance.
With over 30,000 viewers, Planete+Doc is Europe’s third largest documentary festival. Screenings take place in Warsaw’s Kinoteka Cinema and Kino Iluzjon, the festival’s main location, with additional showings taking place in Wrocław at Dolnośląskie Centrum Filmowe between the 12th and 19th of May. Screenings are divided into different thematic sections, including Political Sciences, Fetish and Culture, Intimate Stories or LSD: Love, Sex & Dreams. Concerts, exhibitions, and meetings with filmmakers, organised in conjunction with Planete+ Doc Film Festival, are part of the packed programme.
Foreign titles at the 2013 edition include Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing, called by Werner Herzog "the most powerful, surreal and frightening documentary I have come across in a decade". The film received the Public Award at the 2013 Berlinale. Oppenheimer managed to convince former members of Indonesian death squads to re-enact some of their many murders that took place 50 years ago. International titles also include Mike Lerner and Maksyma Pozdorownik's Pussy Riot. a Punk's Prayer, Dror Moreh's Guardians, Jean-Paul Jaud's GMO. We Are all Lab Rats, Bruno Hullin's 3D Fire, and Klaartje Quirijn's Anton Corbijn. Na wylot.
For more information on the festival see: Planete+Doc
Sources: original article on Culture.pl, Planete +Doc
Editor: MJ, 24.04