The festival retrospective under the title “15 years of cinema from the region” is a summary of the 15 years invested by Tofifest into promoting regional cinema. The selection for this section has been based on the best short films made in the last 15 years and awarded at festivals in Gdynia, Slamdance in the USA, Cinema du Reel in Paris, or the ones that have won BAFTA Awards. In all of them, you will find a portrait of contemporary Poland and Europe at the beginning of the 21st century, shown using various film techniques. The films featured in the retrospective are connected by the region of Kuyavia and Pomerania, where all their authors live.
The province stretched along the Vistula River and has two capitals — Torun and Bydgoszcz — and long-time film traditions dating back to 1897. The province has been a cradle for such film stars as Boguslaw Linda, Grazyna Szapolowska, Leonard Pietraszak, Malgorzata Kozuchowska, or Kuba Gierszal, but also Paul Wegener of German descent, who is the author of “The Golem: How He Came Into the World” classic piece of cinema (1920). Torun was also a birthplace of Kazimierz Serocki, who composed the score for “The Deluge”, and Boleslaw Michalek, one of the most famous film experts.
The region was a thriving film centre, before the Second World War. It was exactly in Torun, where Aleksander Ford, who would later become the author of “Knights of the Black Cross”, made his “Vistula People” (1938). Bydgoszcz is proud to have had two film production companies and twenty cinemas. Torun had its own production company, too: it was called Marwin Film. The region has also spawned many films that had an impact on Polish cinema, including, for example: “Rejs / A Trip Down the River”, “Prawo i pięść / The Law and the Fist”, “Czterej pancerni i pies / Four Men and a Dog – In a Tank”, “Tatarak / Sweet Rush”, or popular television series, such as “Lekarze”, “Prawo Agaty / True Law”, and “Belfer”. Krzysztof Zanussi chose Torun to make his “The Year of the Quiet Sun”, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice IFF, back in 1985.
The turn of the last century has produced a number of new excellent film-makers in the region: Maciej Cuske, Marcin Sauter, Marcin Gladych, Jacek Kosciuszko, or Monika Kuczyniecka — they are all artists, who won awards at numerous film festivals. Tomasz Wasilewski was awarded a Silver Bear at Berlinale, while Rafal Kapelinski has won a Crystal Bear at the very same festival, this year. Our “little homeland” has also given birth to magnificent actors of the young generation, namely: Piotr Glowacki, Olga Boladz, and the already mentioned Jakub Gierszal.
All of them create the great power of cinema with the “Kujawsko-Pomorskie” trademark, and you will have a chance to see their films in the “15 years of cinema from the region” section at Tofifest.