The last week of the festival!
This is the last week of Fotofestiwal! The jubilee, twentieth edition will definitely go down in the history of the festival and the cultural history of the entire city. Before we summarize, however, we invite you to the next events – among others re-lighting of the historic neon at Plac Wolności, film screenings of Mariusz Wilczyński and documents from the Łódź Film School, and the opening of new exhibitions, discussions, audiovisual shows and meetings with authors.
We will begin the last week of the festival with a screening of the latest film by one of the most talented contemporary directors and animators, Mariusz Wilczyński, from Łódź. On June 22, at 7:30 p.m. in the Szpulka cinema, his full-length animated film “Kill it and leave this town” will be screened. It was awarded twice in Gdynia and at the prestigious Annecy festival. It is an autobiographical work, evoking the atmosphere of communist childhood and growing up in post-transformation Poland, taking on colors. The author himself will tell more about it during the meeting after the screening, which will be conducted by Józef Robakowski.
Wednesday will be devoted to the history of Łódź photo shops and … neon lights. On June 23 at 8:00 p.m., in the Pop’n’art cafe, Ola Woźniak will talk about Lodz neon signs, incl. about the FOTO neon from the 1950s, which – on the occasion of Fotofestiwal – will light up again on Plac Wolności after more than a decade of shutdown. Immediately after that, we will open an exhibition devoted in the main part to the oldest, continuously operating – since 1903 – Łódź photographic studio A.A. Bielski. The exhibition will present the incredibly interesting history of the photo shop, we will show the most interesting portrait photos from its collections and selected portraits of other Łódź photo shops, selected from the Wikimedia Commons collections and the free multimedia repository – Museum of the City of Łódź.
From the numerous events of the closing weekend, we recommend unveiling the works of Marta Łącka on the facades of buildings at Żytnia Street. The photos were taken in collaboration with the residents of the district and will become a visual memento of this artistic interaction. On Friday at 8 p.m. in the unique building of the Poleski Ośrodek Sztuki – where you can still see two festival exhibitions – there will be a multimedia event under the suggestive title “Rubble”, prepared by versatile artists: Aleksandra Chciuk, Filip Gabriel Pudło, Tomek Roszczybiuk, Mateusz Wysocki and Bartłomiej Talaga. In turn, on Saturday at 5:00 pm, we will give the floor to the Łódź… punk. At 5 p.m. in Art_Inkubator there will be the premiere of the book “Oi! Oi! Oi! It’s a punk from the city of Łódź ”and a meeting with their authors, Dariusz Jędrasiak and Piotr Wawrzak. The rest of Saturday will remain counter-cultural. At 9 p.m. there will be a film screening prepared by a local propagator of B class films up to Z. Moryc Helms will present his original mix of “Nights of the Living Dead” with excerpts from newsreels from the Educational Film Studio and a live voiceover. At the last event of the festival, part of our organizing team will play the role of a DJ. The exhibition producer, curators, guest coordinator and audio-visual specialist will play for the audience in Niebostanie, from 10 p.m., as the Disko Zakvas collective.
Sunday will be the last chance to meet the authors and curators of exhibitions, including those from the City Program section. At 12:00 a meeting with Marek Szyryk at the Art Propaganda Center, at 2:00 p.m. a tour of the “Panopticum” exhibition at the Wschodnia Gallery, and at 4 p.m. of Bogdan Konopka’s exhibition at the Imaginarium Gallery in ŁDK. Then we invite you to Art_Inkubator, where – apart from further guided tours of the exhibitions – at 4 pm there will be a discussion “Photography and women”. Photographer Agnieszka Rayss (Sputnik Photos), curator Karolina Puchała-Rojek (Archeology of Photography Foundation) and moderator Weronika Kobylińska will answer the questions why we read so little about women photographers in the pages of contemporary studies on the history of photography and how the position of women looks like in the world of contemporary Polish photojournalism? The festival will end with a concert by Łukasz z Bałut and free talks between the organizers and the audience over badminton, ping-pong or simply on comfortable sun loungers.
ph. Łukasz Szeląg
