What Sunshine Saw
Modern Silesia, hot summer, three stories about dreams and reality. An orphan boy worships his late mother and is involved in petty trade. An amateur singer will take any job to earn money to go abroad. A fired miner lies to his wife that he is still employed and that he earns money. The characters' stories are intertwined all the time, but the link between them is completed only in the finale. This low-key, small, realistic film shows fragments of life. Subtle camera work and mature acting. The material was also used for three separate TV stories of one hour each, which allows us to observe the essence of contemporary parallel editing or film narration.
The film's screening will be accompanied by a presentation of the stages of editing What the Sun Has Seen, based on unique documents and memories of the editor, Krzysztof Szpetmański. We will have an opportunity to admire the mysteries of editing, both in the case of the entire work and of smaller formal units - the craft itself. Krzysztof Szpetmański will also speak about his professional experience at work with such directors as Krzysztof Krauze, Michał Rosa, Robert Gliński and Dariusz Jabłoński.
Jan Topolski
Born in Zabrze in 1963, he studied directing at the University of Silesia in Katowice. He has been appreciated by critics from the very beginning and his film Gorący czwartek obtained the best directorial debut award at the festival in Gdynia as early as 1994. Rosa became famous four years later with his film Farba. Later, his art explored the relations between past and present, as in Silence, referring to Kieślowski's style or very original and mature award-winning Scratch. Focused on realism, this director doesn't hesitate to touch on controversial issues, he is one of the few who can show fragments of the authentic Polish reality.
Filmography:
1991 Gry i zabawy wojskowe (kr.m. / short)
1993 Gorący czwartek (TV)
1997 Farba
2001 Cisza / The Silence
2006 Co słonko widziało / What Sunshine Saw
2008 Rysa / The Scratch