WE WERE INVITED

To the VII Baikal International Film Festival MAN AND NATURE, held in Irkutsk on 8-15 September, 2008. And we did get there - the undersigned: Joanna Wierzbicka and Maciej Faflak - owing to the immense kindness of Mr. Piotr Marciniak, Poland's Consul General in Irkutsk.

FILMS AND AWARDS

The Final screenings featured 40 films (out of over 80 submitted) from Russia, including North Ossetia, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Estonia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Greece, Germany, Austria, Belgium and the United States, and were held in the heart of Irkutsk, in a representative cinema (which sometimes functions as a theatre as well), on the main street, which once was called Great, but continues to bear the name of Karl Marx. Here, in the big hall with a balcony accessible to all and sundry, held were the festive opening ceremony and equally festive closing session during which the award ceremony took place.

While Irkutsk was enjoying several days of showings, bringing together people of different ages and estates, some 60 kilometres away, a once wooden tourist base recently turned into a luxurious hotel hosted the deliberations of the Jury. It was presided over by Vladimir Ilyich Bazin, director of a film production company in Sankt Petersburg, and its members - apart from Russians - included a Brasilian woman-journalist living in Moscow and a Pole, that is the chairman of the Jury of our festival.

The Grand Prix was awarded to Austria's "Prince of the Alps" by Klaus Feichtenberger and Otmar Penker, dealing with the fate of the red deer, Cervus elaphus, inhabiting those mountains. Two awards - For Cognitive Values and Special Jury Award - went to "Wolverines - Hyenas of the North", known to us from the 4th Waga Brothers Festival in Rajgród (2006), revealing unknown facts from the family life of wolverines (Gulo gulo), by our colleague from Germany - Oliver Goetz. Those who were in Rajgród will remember not only this film and Oliver himself, but also his very pretty wife and two very good daughters.

We were equally happy for Christian Baumeister, also a prizewinner at our festival this year, who won in Irkutsk an award for the same film "Megafalls of Iguacu".

The Polish entrants were successful, too. The Award for the Best Popular Science Film went to Tomasz Ogrodowczyk from the Forest Film Studio at Bedoń, near Łódż, for his film "Marshes and Wild Areas". And Dorota Adamkiewicz won one of the Special Awards for her film "A Short History of Everything", the winner of Grand Prix at the 5th Waga Festival in Tykocin this year.

Another award went to Slovak-Austrian "High Tatras - Wilderness Frozen in Time", a film by Pavol Barabas and Tomas Hulik. Thus, we had not only the Slovak but also Polish mountains shown by Hulik's excellent camerawork. Incidentally, the same day "High Tatras.." triumphed at the Festival of Mountain Films in Zakopane.

Since we have wandered into the mountains, let us mention yet another exceptional Special Award given to Aleksadnr Kovrigin, a very young pupil of a children's home, for the courage shown during mountaineering in the role of cameraman in the film by Andrey Pavlenko "The First Highpoint". The award was provided by the Polish Consulate.

"The Return of the Musk Ox", an animal resembling a small bison but considered by taxonomists Ovus muslimon - the largest sheep, was shown in a film made jointly by Estonians and Russians. The Musk Ox did not so much return as was introduced from Alaska and Canada to the Taimyr Peninsula, the northernmost piece of the Asian continent. The Musk Ox is doing well, and the humans returned from their expedition in good shape too, since the authors of the film - Vasily Sarana and Riho Vastrok - despite extremely difficult conditions - safe and sound received their award in person.. The important conclusion is that that territory, until recently closely guarded by the military, has again become accessible to man.

The public interest section was largely dominated by Russians. The award here went to a film from North Ossetia by Soltan Tsoriyev, a man of an incredible sense of humour. Other films dealt with various regions: in Europe - from the Azov Sea to the Novgorod North surrounding Sankt Petersburg, and in Asia - as far as the geysers in Kamchatka.

The formula of the Irkutsk Festival is much broader than ours, it also includes ethnographic films. The award in this category went to "Women of Dorfak", an austere documentary from Iran by Mohammad Nami and Kamal Farhang, presenting a small tribal community isolated from he external world. When their women, in a typical oriental way, carry on their heads heavy loads, they are in the form of blocks of ice cut out of a shady crater of an extinct volcano: their only source of water. We have arranged for this film to appear at the next 6th edition of the Waga Brothers Festival.

A significant portion of the stuff shown in the Final dealt with Lake Baikal - "the holy sea" of the Buryat people. It appears that everybody has finally understood that Baikal must be clean, that it is "to be or not to be" of the Siberian future, for this world's largest reservoir of clean freshwater, teeming with endemic animals, is so unique that is must catch the interest of international science and international institutions in charge of shaping the public opinion.

The Irkutsk Festival was organised by the local "Kinofond", a film production company similar to our Warsaw-based Documentary Film Studio, and the local branch of the Russian Filmmakers Union, a counterpart of our Polish Filmmakers Association.

Let's just express hope that our filmmaking community may prove more generous to nature film and our endeavours.


Maciej Faflak


THE WAY IT WAS

From the fifth floor the view is breathtaking. The wide expense of the waters of the Angara, and beyond - Lake Baikal itself, the origin of the river, with forests all around; the mountains - not so far away, it would seem, yet in the distance of full 40 kilometres. The air of such purity I had seen only once, many years ago, in Mongolia. And at an arm's length the green boards of time-worn tourbase...I remember such shelters from old and hardly safe - as they were illegal - hiking expeditions across the USSR; at that time more comfortable for us were abandoned huts in the deserted villages on Lake Onega. The new "tour-base", that is an elegant hotel - I admit - was a genuine surprise, but the greatest pleasure for us - arriving at 4 a.m. - was the smile on the face of Lena, already quite awake and in full make-up, the good spirit of the Festival. You knew right away: things would turn out fine! Guests are welcome in such a style only at very solid festivals.

One of my tasks was to establish new contacts and promote our own festival. I have brought back lots of addresses and filled-in declarations of participation in the 6th Edition (Tykocin 2010), as well as several CDs for pre-selection. One of them is the award-winning "Neighbours", a 3-minute film by Sergey Mahov from Belarus. Well, sometimes you have to travel very far to get to know your next-door neighbour...Later on, I saw little Buryats and Russians in the village of Ust'Orda who laughed heartily watching this film. I hope the Polish children will also enjoy it.

The Jury concluded their work, public screenings continued in Irkutsk, and all of us were moved onto a ship - very much unlike those I once used to sail across Onega or Ladoga.

A two-day excursion. I am unable to describe the beautiful sights, the taste of pure water or the smell of taiga which hit our nostrils when we were touching land at Bolshoye Goloustnoye: a large village with extraordinary cottages and among them - Madame Irene's Polish house, the destination of guests from Poland who come for holidays here. The local school built - like everything here - of wood. 58 pupils. And again we show them festival films, and again the atmosphere here resembles the excitement we know som well from our film sessions - at Wizna, Goniądz or Tykocin. That's why an idea comes to mind: let's organise a summer exchange of children between Bolshoye Goloustnoye and a village school in Podlasie. But can this purpose be achieved?

We touch land once again. This time we go into the taiga. Peat swamps, marshes, birch trees - just like in our lands. The same flowers in cottage gardens. Cosmos, dahlias, marigolds, lark-heels still in blossom. A warm golden autumn. And suddenly a shocking view: skyscraping factory chimneys, a mess typical of olden years. It is all very confusing: are they building something or - to the contrary - dismantling it? This factory is a chemical plant necessary in the times of the cold war, today it is hard to understand what is its production profile, yet it continues to poison the world. The forty-year-old town of Baikalsk. 17 thousand inhabitants, out of which 13 thousand derive their subsistence from the factory. We meet with the local authorities and discuss the dramatic problems facing Baikalsk, their plans for the future - are they realistic? A local journalist asks me: What do people in Poland think of the Baikalsk factory? This is a meaningful signal. Now I understand why the Irkutsk Festival abounded is so many public interest entries.

The Festival comes to an end... For another few days we move to Irkutsk. We go sightseeing around that incredible city. We meet with Consul General, Mr. Piotr Marciniak, we visit "Kinofond" and discuss plans of further cooperation. Here, in Siberia, Poles are welcome guests. Let's remember then that in a year's time Irkutsk will host another festival and our entries do not have to be only about wildlife; ethnographic films from Poland will surely meet here with interest. We promised that Polish filmmakers would not let the organisers down. I encourage our friends from the West, too! And those who will come to present their film in person, will never regret it!


Joanna Wierzbicka


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