Our Story So Far

It was autumn. On the Atlantic coast, near the old stronghold of La Rochelle, my ears caught the un-mistakable flute notes. The curlew! Earlier, I heard it once in the Siberian tundra: dreary Vorkuta, June, snow was beginning to melt in the former labour camp. The bird was also the centre figure of one of our films about the Biebrza Marshes. - It should take place in spring ,here on the Atlantic - Siberian Flyway - I thought. And so it happened.

The NAREW Society, a non-profit association set up in 1997, and now also enjoying the status of a Public Benefit Organisation, is the executive producer of the Waga Brothers International Festival of Nature Films - the first international film festival of this kind in Poland. It is also the initiator and organiser of the International Ecological Forum EKORAJ (ecology in the media). The co-organisers of both events are local self-governments, the Biebrza National Park or the Narew National Park, and in the case of the Waga Brothers Festival also Telewizja Polska S.A., represented by its Białystok Centre, and now - at the initiative of Mr. Tadeusz Truskolaski, the President of the City of Białystok - also the Office of the City of Białystok.

The Waga Brothers International Festival of Nature Films, organised bi-annually in the Podlasie Voivodeship, was thrice held during the spring migration of birds from the Atlantic towards the Siberian tundra. The first two editions took place at Wizna on the Narew (in 2000 and 2002), the third - at Goniądz on the Biebrza (in 2004).

The Fourth Festival - under the patronage of the Senate Culture and Media Committee, Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Marshal of Podlasie Voivodeship and District Administrator of Grajewo - was held in October 2006 in Rajgród and at Kozłówka near Rajgród (autumn on the Red Marsh). Let's add that most popular among the nature filmmakers are those festivals where nature can be seen not only on the screen but also in the real. In our case, quite uniquely, it means swarms of birds literally outside the doorstep.

Already the first edition brought us 80 films from 19 countries - noteworthy here are entries from Australia, New Zealand an Japan - rarely presented at European festivals - and the presence of 38 filmmakers from Austria, Belarus, China, Czech Republic, Holland, Lithuania, Germany, New Zealand, Poland, Republic of South Africa, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

At the successive festivals, our guests included filmmakers also from Croatia, Finland, Spain, India, Latvia, Macedonia.

At each festival, the typical 9 - 12 sessions (competition screenings of films in the Polish-language versions, meetings with their authors, taking 2-3 hours each) brought together some 2000-2200 persons. Their participants, next to the filmmakers from Poland and abroad, included journalists, photographers, teachers, representatives of the self-government and a large group of school-going youth. All along, held were shows and eco-fair entitled "In Harmony with Nature", exhibitions of nature photography, the school youth presented happenings "In Defence of All Creatures", the participants went on birdwatching and sightseeing trips. One of the lasting effects of the festival are, always available free of charge, 50 sets of a school CD library, each consisting of about 30 film finalists.

The Festival's replicas were held during the UROCZYSKO Arts Festival in Supraśl (all-night screenings in the open air), as well as in the cinema and at the environmental education centre in Ełk; recently also in Białystok, Nowa Sól, and lately - in Zelona Góra and the neighbouring localities.

The initiators of the Waga Brothers Festival were: the undersigned Joanna Wierzbicka - a film director, and Maciej FAFLAK - a scriptwriter. Following the systemic changes, we participated -as authors of i.a. nature films - in a number of European festivals. .But Poland was missing on that map. So we concluded that it was precisely Poland, which for many years had been an intermediary in the contacts between naturalists from the West and from the East, should become the meeting-place of authors of high-class nature films from different parts of Europe and the world. The Festival is also promoting the Biebrza Marshes and the maze of the Narew floodplain -the sanctuary of many birds threatened with extinction - as a place of particular interest to many filmmakers looking for new subjects. In recent years films have been made here by Japanese, German and Dutch crews. We are also promoting the Polish nature film which, after many years of collapse, has been painstakingly pulling through. The Grand Prix of the Third Festival and one of the Main Prizes of the Second Festival were awarded by the International Jury to Poles.

We shall soon see what the Fifth Festival holds in store...

The International Ecological Forum EKORAJ was held thrice ( in 2001, 2004 and 2005), also in the Podlasie Voivodeship, in Rajgród and at Kozłówka near Rajgród, in the county of Grajewo. The Forum's objective is upgrading the standards of publications dealing with ecology, particularly in the sphere of television programmes. Our aim is to reach to the wider groups of people by enhancing the contents, broadening the subject-matter, improvement of the form. Conducive to these ends are competition screenings of films and television programmes, presented by their authors and evaluated by all the participants in the Forum, as well as symposiums and field workshops. The Forum participants include primarily journalists from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, but also those from the Czech Republic, Latvia, Estonia, Spain and Germany.

The EKORAJ Forum is held under the patronage of Euro region NIEMEN and is co-financed by the European Union. It has also enjoyed the support from i.a. the Marshal of the Podlasie Voivodeship, President of the Voiveodeship Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management in Białystok, District Administrator of Grajewo, Mayor of Rajgród.

Both the Waga Brothers Festival and EKORAJ Forum - on the strength of adopted resolutions - oblige us to take further actions. For instance, following the Third Festival we started a campaign in Euro-Parliament aimed at a universal protection of all migratory birds which are murdered on a mass-scale in the south of Europe.

Recent years have seen, also in Poland, and particularly in towns, a noticeable increase in the sphere of ecological awareness. Which is not to say that many undesirable phenomena have ceased to persist. We do hope, however, that the activities undertaken by the NAREW Society will help consolidate, if only to a small degree, the beneficial changes in this field.




Joanna Wierzbicka

President
NAREW Society



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