SPECIAL GUESTS
Flavia Borawska
Flavia Borawska is a graduate of the prestigious gastronomic school Le Cordon Bleu. She has worked in several of the world’s finest restaurants including the famous Noma in Copenhagen and Il Teatro Del Sale in Florence. Recently, she was hired as a guest resident chef in Warsaw’s Opasły Tom. Her style embraces authentic Polish flavours and contemporary European aesthetic.
Jakub Gierszał TBC
The leading man in not one, not two, but three films in this New Polish Cinema segment, Gierszał is one to watch! In 2012 he won the EFP Shooting Star prize at the Berlin International Film Festival and since then has worked steadily in both Poland and abroad.
Artur Haftman
Haftman has been playing the piano since the age of seven, and at eight years-old he made his concerto debut with the Koszalin Youth Symphony Orchestra. At sixteen he played Chopin’s Concerto No. 2 during the Chopin Festival of Szczecin in 2010. These days he’s busy studying at both the Royal College of Music in London with Professor Dimitr Alexeev and La Schola Cantorum in Paris with Professor Maurizio Moretti.
Michael Holden
Michael Holden is a writer working for both print and screen. He has been a columnist and contributor for The Guardian & other newspapers, is a contributing editor for Esquire in the UK and has rewritten screenplays for major Hollywood productions and independent films including Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016) and Sherlock Holmes (2009). He has scripts in development and optioned in the US and UK and made Tracking Board’s list of Hollywood’s top 100 New Writers of 2016. Michael lectures on screenwriting at the London Film Academy.
Pamela Hutchinson
The editor of Silent London, Pamela Hutchinson is also a freelance writer for the Guardian, Little White Lies and Sight & Sound among others. Her book Pandora’s Box was published last year as part of BFI Film Classics.
Rafael Kapeliński
Writer/director Rafael Kapeliński has been making short films since 2006 and has been a regular at film festivals around the world including Austin, Berlin and Cyprus. Now he’s is fresh on the scene with the debut of his first feature Butterfly Kisses (2017). He has two films in the pipeline and a promising career in film ahead of him.
Andrzej Klimowski
One of the fathers of poster design, Klimowski studied sculpture and painting at St Martins School of Art in London and poster design under Professor Henryk Tomaszewski at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. He taught at the Royal College of Art in London from 1983 to 2016, from 2006 as Professor of Illustration. He is a Visiting Lecturer at the Polish/Japanese Academy of Digital Technology in Warsaw.
Joanna Kos-Krauze
With only four director and writer’s credits in her dossier, Kos-Krauze is already one of the most talked about Polish filmmakers working today. Like a cinematic archaeologist, she tells truthful stories about times gone by and people who in their day made a small but culturally significant impact.
Michał Pieńkowski
Michał Pieńkowski was interested in Polish pre-war cinema since he was a child. His hobby turned into passion, and then into profession. Now for the last 9 years he’s been working at the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute in Poland, where he researches for the pre-war film collection. He lectures and runs workshops about early cinematography, alongside preparing his doctorate about the phonographic industry in interwar Poland.
Maria Sadowska
Director, writer and actress, Sadowska is a triple threat in the industry today. Her latest film, The Art of Loving. The Story of Michalina Wisłocka (2017) was nominated for a Golden Frog and Golden Lion at the Camerimage and Polish Film Festivals respectively.
Lili Stern-Pohlmann
A very special guest, Lili Stern-Pohlmann has accepted our invitation to introduce The Warsaw Ghetto (2009) as part of our Polish History in Film segment. The story centres on the children that were saved during WWII, something which Pohlmann actually experienced as a child when she was saved by Andrzej Szeptycki from the Holocaust.
Christine Stevenson
The pianist enjoys playing as a recitalist and concerto soloist all over the world. Her concerts continually draw critical acclaim for her virtuosity and musicianship. She is a director and tutor at the annual Summer School for Pianists in the West Midlands, and is on the staff of the Junior Department of the Royal College of Music in London. Since 2010 she has been writing her blog, Notes from a Pianist.
Krzysztof Zanussi
Director, writer and Polish film legend, Krzysztof Zanussi has been making films since he was nineteen years-old and now at seventy-eight he’s showing no signs of stopping. The director has eighty-one credits to his name so far, including Ether which he’s currently filming. Catch some of his earliest works including Camouflage (1977) and Illumination (1973) on MUBI until the 23rd of March.
Closing Night Gala musicians
Pianist and composer Taz Modi (Submotion Orchestra, Matthew Halsall) directs some of the UK’s most forward-thinking musicians, to perform a live, improvised soundtrack alongside the film. Including the award-winning and fearlessly unpredictable Matthew Bourne on piano and synthesisers, Duncan Bellamy from Mercury-nominated Portico Quartet on drums and live sampling, and Chris Hargreaves and Simon Beddoe from groundbreaking electronica group, Submotion Orchestra, on bass and trumpet.
Happy to announce that the workshop will take place at 6pm on March 28.
KINOTEKA opens this year on the 7th of March at BFI Southbank with a screening of Silver Lion winner at the Polish Film Festival Birds Are Singing In...