Grand Prix for Diary of a Beholder at the 21st Art Film Review
The Art Film Review in Zakopane dates back to 1968. The festival, then an "add-on" to the March Salons, was initiated by Grzegorz Dubowski and Władysław Hasior. After 1988 there was a break and, despite a one-off revival in 1996, the festival disappeared from the film events map for 20 years. It was brought back to life in 2016, but only this year did it return to a format centred on a film competition and the race for awards. What sets this year's festival apart from previous editions is above all its openness to various fields of art, not just the visual arts. Many filmmakers entered this year's competition, submitting 161 films. The Selection Committee – Urszula Dubowska, Jerzy Armata, Maciej Wojak – chose 31 titles, which were screened to the public at Zakopane's Miejsce cinema and competed for the awards. The jury – Jan Kanty Pawluśkiewicz, Zofia Gołubiew, Jan Wierzejski, Beata Majcher, Lidia Rosińska-Podleśny and jury chairman Sławomir Idziak – voted unanimously for our film, honouring it with the main GRAND PRIX of the Art Film Review Zakopane 2018 and a cash prize of PLN 10,000. The award was presented to the director at a gala ceremony by the Secretary of the City of Zakopane, Grzegorz Cisło.
"Jacek Sroka – an outstanding painter and printmaker – is authentic in my documentary. His paintings, which he talks about in the film, are observations of people and the world. When Dorota Wąsik and I were working on the English subtitles, I came across the saying 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder', which can be read as meaning that the perception of beauty is subjective. How closely this matches what I heard from Jacek Sroka – that it is also important to him for viewers to discover their own meanings and interpretations in his works, because, as he says in the film, 'a painting is something conventional'. In an earlier short film made in 2012, The Sexuality of Kwiatów Polskich Street, the artist called himself a day observer and a night observer. The title of a later exhibition of his work at the Oscar Niemeyer Museum in Curitiba (Brazil, 2013) – 'Observador diurno observador noturno' ('Day observer, night observer') – convinced me that the phrase was very apt and no accident. That is why I decided that the film version of the 'Artist's Diary' written by Jacek Sroka in 1996 should bear a title befitting his work – 'Diary of a Beholder' (Polish: Dziennik Obserwatora).
In the film, the artist shares his observations with the viewer, talking about selected paintings. Between these stories, he submits to my observations of his life, whose short scenes let the viewer get closer to his inner world and hear his thoughts. To spend time with him. To understand and accept. In my view, it is a unique film, if only because we enter into a very close relationship with the artist as a person, a father and a husband. As a result, anyone who focuses on watching the film is not just a viewer. They are an observer – an observer of Jacek Sroka and his work. The film is absorbing, but it is not one to watch with friends over coffee or crisps. At times it amuses, at times it makes you think, but it certainly demands concentration, which allows you to experience it from the right perspective from beginning to end – and in my view only a cinema and a big screen make that possible", explains Jarosław Migoń, the screenwriter, director and producer of the award-winning film.
Diary of a Beholder was already honoured in 2017 by the international jury of the World Media Festival in Hamburg with three awards. It was also selected for the main competition of the Polish Film Festival in America 2017 in Chicago. The Art Film Review 2018 is the first festival in Poland to recognise our production and honour it with a cash prize. The film was made as a co-production with the Chilean company Krakovia Producciones and is an independent production. It received no funding from any Polish or foreign institution.
