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, set up in 1997, 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 was 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 in 2008 - also the Office of the City of Białystok.


The Waga Brothers International Festival of Nature Films

The initiators of the Festival were: the undersigned Joanna Wierzbicka - a film director, and late 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, organized 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). We all very well know 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.

The Fourth Festival was held in October 2006 in Rajgród and at Kozłówka near Rajgród: autumn on the Red Marsh - flocks of cranes.

The Fifth Festival - under the patronage of the Senate Commission for Culture and Media, Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Director of the Polish Film Institute, Marshal of the Podlasie Voivodeship and President of Białystok - was held on April 02-06, 2008 in Tykocin and Białystok. The hospitable walls of the historical Alumnat Hostel became home to the filmmakers and journalists, but also photographers, biologists, teachers and wildlife guides. We had guests from Finland, India, Germany, Poland, Sweden, Ukraine, Great Britain. Unfortunately, not all the finalists were able to present their work in person - and we were showing films from Australia, Austria, Estonia, Holland and - for the first time ever - from Belgium, Israel and the USA.

The film shows - on the big screen, in the stereo version - were held in the school sports gym. Apart from the participants and the festival guests, the screening room was filled by the local school goers. At times, we were scurrying around to find extra chairs, benches, whatever, to host the successive viewers from Wizna, Mońki, Zawady, Bajki Stare... six, seven schools at the same time.

Already the first edition of the Waga Brothers Festival brought us 80 films from 19 countries - noteworthy here are entries from Australia, New Zealand and 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, Uzbekistan and Great Britain.

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) brought together some 2000-2200 persons in all. 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. In this way the Festival has been a staunch promoter of the Biebrza Marshes and the maze of the Narew floodplain - a sanctuary of many birds threatened with extinction - as places of particular interest to many filmmakers looking for subjects. In recent years films have been made here by Japanese, German, Dutch and British crews.

One of the lasting effects of each Festival are, always available free of charge, 50 sets of a school CD library, each consisting of 25-35 film finalists.

The Festival's first replicas were held in May during the UROCZYSKO Arts Festival in Supraśl (all-night screenings in the open air), followed by shows in the cinema and at the environmental education centre in Ełk, at the Białystok Philharmonic, in Nowa Sól and in Zielona Góra and its neighbouring localities, in Sieradz. The recent invitations include Żywiec, Ciechanów, Suraż, Drozdowo and many other small localities in Podlasie and Mazovia. Our screenings - always shown to packed audiences - are held in libraries, schools, welfare centres, penitentiary facilities, military barracks. We are very happy to show the films awarded by our Jury, promoting at the same time 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. On three occasions Special Awards for her amateur films were won by Prof. Simona Kossak - a scholar and an artist - who died in 2007. We are always keen to show good amateur films. Marti Arano Oller from Spain, a truck driver by profession, won at our event the Audience Award for his first film. Today his films are shown by Barcelona Television.

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 was upgrading the standards of publications dealing with ecology, particularly in the sphere of television programmes. Our aim was to reach to the wider groups of people by enhancing the contents, broadening the subject-matter, improvement of the form. Conducive to these ends were 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 included primarily journalists from Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, but also those from the Czech Republic, Latvia, Estonia, Spain and Germany.

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

Unfortunately, we had to say good-bye to EKORAJ. For several years now Euro Region NIEMEN has not offered any tendering procedures on Poland-Belarus-Ukraine projects and it does not seem possible they will be re-opened soon. And it is precisely in these countries that we have our partners. Recently we were forced to leave the ex-school building at Kozłówka we were holding as the base of EKORAJ - we felt there so much at home.


Our other initiatives.

Both the Waga Brothers Festival and the EKORAJ Forum - on the strength of adopted resolutions - oblige us to take further actions. So, for instance, the participants in the Second Festival adopted a Resolution which helped our colleagues from Latvia to win a decision from the Riga authorities to preserve in the city centre a colony of terns which had made their home on the rooftop of an old printing house.

Following the ideas expressed in the Resolution adopted by the participants of the III Forum EKORAJ, we are trying to set up family shelters for dogs - let's add - dogs abandoned by their owners in the forests of the Biebrza National Park, frequently tied up to a tree. This is an uphill struggle, but the dogs we find are never left without care.

Yet, you can't win them all... At their symposium held on April 3rd, 2004, the participants of the Third Festival adopted the following Resolution:

"We, film-makers, journalists and naturalists - participants at the Third Waga Brothers International Festival of Nature Films, gathered here at Goniądz, north-east Poland.

Having viewed the shocking documentary under the direction of Klaus Tuemmler of Germany, entitled "Flight into the Trap", and thus being reinforced in our convictions as regards an issue already known to us,

Do hereby seek to inform Members of the European Parliament of our profound conviction as to the need for immediate efforts to counteract the barbaric extermination taking place on both sides of the Pyrenees of flocks of migratory birds returning south each autumn from their breeding grounds in Northern Europe and Siberia.

We consider that the lives of all migratory birds crossing our continent - without exception - should be safeguarded, not merely the lives of those few species so far afforded legal protection.

We trust that our motion will be given your full consideration as you go about your parliamentary business, such that we may not have to wait too long for an act of law that proves mutually satisfactory"

The Resolution, signed by all the Festival participants, was sent to Mr. Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Ms. Monica Frassoni - Co-Chairpersons of the European Greens Party.
Unfortunately, we have never received any reply.

Another Resolution about this issue was adopted and sent to European Parliamentarians half a year later by the participants at the Second International Ecological Forum EKORAJ, To no avail, either. We hope we can take more energetic actions, finding ally organizations during the Sixth Waga Brothers Festival.


At the Fifth Festival (Tykocin 2008) our symposium of filmmakers and journalists was entitled: A lesson written with a camera or a work of art? Some were surprised at this query: why, there is no difference between a nature film and any other, a film may be either good or bad. Whether it is a work of art will be decided by the public. Yet, in our country the genre continues to be treated with neglect. Sometimes even our own filmmaking community shows deplorable indifference. And this, in turn, translates into a lack of interest on the part of television decision-makers (and not the viewers, of course) in our output, terrible transmission times and resulting poor viewing figures - and here the vicious circle completes its round. The production and financial conditions do not allow do not allow us to enjoy the flair of our colleagues from the West. But is it really most important? This was tackled by Petteri Saario (Finland): Sometimes a small film carries away the audience and passes the message. There are low-budget films which are filled with emotions. There are big-budget films which offer nothing - just pictures. A good idea is always based on emotions. It shows the world from the author's perspective. Let us then make films going from heart to head and not from head to heart. What can we do? We intend to sharpen the criteria of the pre-selection commission accepting films for the final, pay more attention to the director's concept, to the story... Nonetheless, despite the resistance on the part of television decision-makers we note in recent years also in Poland, particularly in towns, a marked growth of ecological awareness. But many undesirable phenomena continue to persist. We hope that actions undertaken by the NAREW Society do, even if only in a small degree, help to consolidate the beneficial changes. For this is what is most important for us

Please, take a look at our link site "Reports", offering a story about our participation in the 7th Baikal Film Festival MAN AND NATURE.



Joanna Wierzbicka
President NAREW Society


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