The 13th T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival (July 18-28, 2013) is ready to turn over a few more of its cards. Some 340 movies will be screened, including about 190 feature-length films. Online sales of film and concert passes have already begun on the festival website. Screenings will take place at the Nowe Horyzonty cinema (formerly known as Helios). For the eighth time, the host of the festival is the city of Wroclaw, European Capital of Culture 2016. For the 11th time, the Polish digital telecommunications operator T-Mobile will be the festival’s partner.
Program-related news
New Horizons International Competition: the surreal hit at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, winner of a Hivos Tiger Award, Fat Shaker by Iranian director Mohammad Shirvani;
Films on Art International Competition: Dominik Spritzendorfer and Elena Tikhonova’s Elektro Moskva is a documentary about the history of electronic music in the Soviet Union, Mark Cousins’ What Is This Film Called Love?;
Panorama: the nostalgic Computer Chess, a film based on archival television programs by one of the most important independent American filmmakers, the mumblecore movement’s Andrew Bujalski;
Special screenings: Gustav Deutsch’s Shirley – Visions of Reality, which brings to life on screen 13 paintings by the legendary American artist Edward Hopper. Screenings will be held on July 19, 20, 26, and 27. Tickets cost 18 PLN are available for prepurchase at www.nowehoryzonty.pl.
The Polish premiere of the documentary The Story of Film: An Odyssey, directed by the film critic Mark Cousins from Northern Ireland. A monumental work, consisting of 15 hours of episodes based on his intriguing 2004 book, it is a subjective, multidimensional vision of the history of cinema. In taking a fresh, not-so-obvious look at our film heritage, the filmmaker cites hundreds of the most important films ever made from short works by the Lumiere brothers to the ultramodern Inception. Cousins will be a guest at the festival, where his latest film, What Is This Film Called Love?, will be screened as part of the Films on Art International Competition.
Cyberpunk: David Cronenberg’s cult body horror Videodrome;
New Russian cinema: Poslednyaya skazka Rity (Rita’s Last Fairytale), a dreamlike story directed by the cult actress Renata Litvinova;
New Horizons of Film Language: György Pálfi’s Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen;
Outdoor screenings on Wroclaw’s Market Square: the digital reconstruction of Ryszard Ordyński’s legendary 1928 silent film Pan Tadeusz, which will feature a special orchestral accompaniment conducted by Tadeusz Woźniak. The screening will take place on July 25 (free admission). The reconstruction was made from original copies stored at the National Film Archive and from materials found in Wroclaw in 2006 that contained previously unknown scenes from the film. The digital reconstruction was produced at the National Film Archive in 2012 using advanced 4K technology, as part of the NITROFILM project.
Arsenal Festival Club
- July 23: L.U.C and Motion Trio: Nic się nie stało (Everything’s OK)
In April 2013, the album Nic się nie stało (Everything’s OK) first saw the light of day. It was the result of a collaborative effort by the artist, producer, and performer Łukasz Rostkowski L.U.C, as well as the accordion trio Motion Trio. This is one of the most surprising cooperative efforts in the music industry this year, and they will hold their premiere performance together during the festival. Łukasz L.U.C is an artist who combines various technologies and artistic genres into one coherent presentation; he is an unorthodox rapper and a performance artist who has been known to play on board city buses, in boiler rooms, as well as at philharmonics, museums, and Poland’s National Opera theater in Warsaw. He has produced eight albums from the genres of jazz, trip-hop, hip-hop, electronic, and classical music. The members of Motion Trio, adored abroad, are master Polish accordion players who have pioneered the rebirth of this underappreciated instrument. They have collaborated with Krzysztof Penderecki, Bobby McFerrin, and Leszek Możdżer, among others.
- July 27: Diamanda Galás
One of the most original and extraordinary female vocalists of the past decade, Diamanda Galás is also an opera singer, piano virtuoso, composer, performer, and multimedia and audiovisual artist. One of her hallmarks are her smooth transitions from operatic vocals through to a full range of emotional howls, mysterious murmurs, theatrical whispers, and frantic screams right up to radical vocal experimentation, an area where she has no equals. In her creative work, she often takes on controversial or unpopular subjects, such as intolerance and all forms of social injustice. She has worked with, among others, one of the most important avant-garde composers of the 20th century, Iannis Xenakis; a jazz reformer, John Zorn; John Paul Jones, the bassist in the legendary rock group Led Zeppelin; and also with the very interesting synthpop duo Erasure.