As soon as on May 29 starts the 56th Krakow Film Festival. As every year, the event will be accompanied by many industry events, dedicated to film professionals present at the festival. We would like to invite you to familiarise yourself with the programme.

One of the main events of the KFF Industry Zone is Krakow Film Market – a digital video library, in which, throughout the entire festival week, one can watch the latest films from around the world, which are looking for cinema festival and television distribution. In this year's catalogue, there are about 250 documentary, short and animated films, including the festival's competition films and sections prepared by the partners: East Silver, DOK Leipzig, Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, Swiss Films, Visions du Reel and Swedish Film Institute.

For the second time DOC LAB POLAND – workshops for directors and producers of Polish documentary films – will be held in Krakow. DLP ends with two pitching sessions: DOCS TO START and DOCS TO GO!. DOCS TO START is a presentation of Polish projects at the stage of development, whereas DOCS TO GO! is a presentation of Polish documentary films at the stage of editing or post-production, and ends with the meetings with festival programmers and sales agents. Organised for the producers looking for production partners, DOC LAB POLAND Coproduction Market includes individual meetings with international decision-makers from the film industry and foreign producers, who are open to co-operation with Poland.

There is also a new event – sneak previews of Polish documentary films, closed to the public – DOCS TO BUY. After the screenings, there will be meetings between producers and international distributors and sales agents, invited specially for this occasion. This section was founded at the initiative of Polish Film Institute and the developing KFF Sales, a new department of Krakow Film Foundation, which will deal with the sales and the search for various distribution channels for Polish documentary films on international markets.

Traditionally, the FILM PRO INDUSTRY MEETINGS will be held. These are daily consulting individual meetings with experts (distributors, sales agents, buyers, film festival programmers), dedicated to filmmakers, producers and people working in film distribution. The meetings are organised in co-operation with the magazine FilmPRO.

An important event will be the Master Class of this year's winner of the Dragon of Dragon award at the 56th Krakow Film Festival – Marcel Łoziński, one of the most acclaimed documentary film-makers, frequently awarded at international film festivals. During the Master Class, the director will tell about the ways of "condensing" the reality in order to extract its essence. This subject matter will be illustrated using the examples of the films "Happy End," "How to Live?" and "89 mm from Europe."

This year, the programme of KFF Industry Zone includes also science documentary films. During DOCS+SCIENCE DAY organised in co-operation with the Foundation for AGH (AGH University of Science and Technology) and the Czech Academia Film Olomouc, there will be presentations, panel discussions, case studies and screenings of documentary films. The section aims to present to the wider audience documentary films, the subject matter of which is connected with science, discoveries, innovative technologies, but also with the people creating science – scientists, discoverers, enthusiasts.

The special guest at this year's 56th edition of Krakow Film Festival is the cinema of Sweden. The programme "Focus on Sweden" includes screenings of selected latest Swedish documentary, short and animated films. An important event of the section is the Conference, the aim of which is to present the model of contemporary Swedish cinema (from production to promotion and foreign distribution). The guests of the panel are Swedish producers, distributors, TV editors, representatives of institutions financing film projects and representatives of Swedish film festivals. Key note speakers include, among others, Sara Rüster (Swedish Film Institute), Antonio Russo Merenda (Swedish Film Institute), Lars Säfström (SVT), the director Jerzy Śladkowski, who has been working for years in Sweden, the director Stig Björkman, the director and producer Sara Broos and Maja Lindquist (Doc Lounge / Nordisk Panorama).

Also short films will have their special event within the frames of KFF Industry Zone. In Pauza In Garden, there will be a discussion panel, dedicated to short film distribution, with Derry O’Brien – Irish distributor with over 20 years of experience, who can boast fourteen short films nominated for the Academy Award, three of which won the Academy Award in the last six years. During the conversation, the participants will learn where to look for a distributor and whether one can make money on short films. The organizer of the meeting is Munk Studio, operating by the Polish Filmmakers Association.

In the programme of KFF Industry Zone, there must also be a place for animated films. Within the frames of the section Animated in Poland, there will be a pitching of Polish short and animated films in the final stage of production. The representatives of the selected projects will have a chance to show their excerpts and to talk about their films, before they are shown at Polish and foreign film festivals. Animated in Poland includes also the Student Project Market, within the frames of which this year the participants will hear the lecture by Robert Jaszczurowski (Grupa Smacznego) and Mateusz Michalak (Fumi Studio) who will tell how to go from the idea for a film to its realisation, as well as a case study of children's animated film series: "Agi Bagi" and "The Flying Bear and the Gang." Tomek Niedźwiedź will tell how to bring an animated film project to the stage of development, how to create workflow, build a team, supervise it in order to sell the series to 40 countries in Europe and around the world.

For the second time in Krakow we will look closely at the audiovisual storytelling in the age of digital technology. Within the frames of the programme KRK Interactive, there will be the presentation of 2 interactive projects with the active participation of the audience. The aim of the event is to show the wide range of phenomena in the interactive documentary film genre. This year, the main subject matter of KRK Interactive will be VR – issues related to virtual reality and its use in the film storytelling. Apart from the presentation of the project by the team Unit9, Carl Guyenette, the British multimedia artist, who worked, among others, on special effects in such blockbusters as "The Dark Knight," "Harry Potter," "X-Men," "Captain America" and "Skyfall”, will talk about his work. The event is organised in co-operation with the Institute of Documentary Film.

Participation in all events is available to the owners of accreditations of the type: INDUSTRY MARKET, MEDIA; Some of the events are open to the public, in case of others, it is required to book your seat beforehand.

You can find the programme here. More details on www.krakowfilmfestival.pl ->INDUSTRY

fot. Tomasz Korczyński

MAY 2016