The film screening, followed by a talk with the director, takes place at the Tribeca Film Center, and will be accompanied by an exhibition of Rolke’s photographs at the Cristina Dos Santos Gallery. The event has been organized by the Polish Filmmakers NYC.
A Diary of a Journey is a story of friendship between Tadeusz Rolke, an 82-year old legend of documentary photography and a 15-year-old novice, Michał Gonicki. The story revolves around a photographic project – the titular journey around Poland, which the two protagonists venture upon. They travel for one month in an old camper van, equipped with a darkroom, and take portraits of residents in small towns and villages. They present the final prints to their models. The younger photographer experiences the journey as an initiation, and his master takes it as an opportunity for recapitulating his life.
The process of photographic education in this case simply stands as an excuse to tell the story of a master-student relationship, the backdrop for all tasks that Rolke makes up for his accomplice. The director Pior Stasik says in an interview for the Polish Radio Program 3:
I come from a small village and when I was a teenager, I used to dream, while digging potatoes up, that a master would come to teach me. No one like that has appeared in my life, but years later I made my wish about a journey with a photographic virtuoso come true by making this movie.
In his review for Culture.pl, Bartosz Staszczyszyn writes:
Rolke and Michał's journey is both nostalgic and comical. With existential depth and room for slack, and owing much to its cinematography by Stasik and Tomasz Wolski, A Diary of a Journey portrays Rolke's bittersweet life, and attempts to answer what makes a photograph ravishing and moving.
The screening of A Diary of a Journey is accompanied by an exhibition of photographs by Rolke, Straight from a Darkroom / Prosto z ciemni. The character of the exposition is going to be unusual, Stasik says – the photographs, hung on clips, will create an impression that we are in a darkroom of a master who had just finished his work. They will present scenes from life in the times of the People’s Republic of Poland, portraits of well-known artists and models. Some of these photographs are going to be shown to a wider public for the first time.
The New York premiere of the film, together with the artist talk and the exhibition, take place thanks to Polish Filmmakers NYC, and organization set up by Agata Drogowska. The idea behind this initiative is to consistently expose the New York audience to the masterpieces and current works of Polish cinema. The screening takes place at the Tribeca Film Center, a venue founded by Robert de Niro and Jane Rosenthal, which serves integration of the New York film industry.
Piotr Stasik (born 1976) is a documentary filmmaker, a graduate of the Institute of Applied Social Sciences at the University of Warsaw and of the Wajda School, as well as president of the Association of Creative Initiatives “ę” in Warsaw. He has directed One By One / Po kolei, 7 x Moscow / 7 x Moskwa, Above the Pavements / Ponad chodnikami, The End of Summer / Koniec lata, and Not for Everyone / Nie dla każdego. He has received a Golden Frog award at the Camerimage Festival in Łódź for cinematography in The End of Summer.
You can find more information at: nywift.org
Sources: own materials, nywift.org, stopklatka.pl, nina.gov.pl, polishfilmmakersnyc.com, ed.: Jakub Nikodem, 19.07.2013, transl.: AM, 22.07.2013