One of the most significant events is the Krakow Film Market (1-6 June 2010) which has become more important on the international map of events for film professionals. The Market is the meeting place where professionals share their experiences and establish new contacts. About 1300 films, documentaries, short films and animations were entered in this year's edition of the Market, out of which the organizers have chosen 350 films, including an extremely impressive Polish section. All qualified films will be in a specially prepared catalogue, and during the Market they will be available for viewing in the digital video collection. Extremely efficient, unique software for watching films, introduced by the organizers 4 years ago, was a pioneer enterprise in Europe and one of the first system of this kind in the world. The system, apart from a multifunctional browser of the films amassed on the market's server, has a system of tools enabling the viewer to have a direct Internet contact with the person possessing copyrights to the film, and to save comments and notes regarding the watched films, which are immediately sent to the e-mail address of the registered user. The system requires the viewer to assess the watched film, and his assessment is recorded in the summarizing report for the producer/distributor, who receives via e-mail daily reports enabling him to check how many people and who exactly has watched his film - and if is interested - contact this person immediately. After the end of the Market the producer/distributor receives a complete report, summing up his film's presence at the Market.
The second important event is Dragon Forum - the annual workshop of documentary film in the middle of Europe ending with pitching of film project in the early production phase, looking for new financing sources. The aim of Dragon Forum is to help film-makers making author's cinema, which is also committed and honest documentary cinema, discovering the true reality in the development and production of documentary film dedicated to the international audience. Organizers work based on a group of trusty Polish and foreign lecturers. Hitherto, the following lecturers visited the Dragon Forum, among others: Jacek Bławut, Heino Deckert, Zbigniew Domagalski, Marcel Łoziński, Katarzyna Maciejko-Kowalczyk, Dorota Paciarelli, Leena Passanen, Marijke Rawie, Dorota Roszkowska, Rada Sesic, Stefano Tealdi, Vita Żelakeviciute. These lecturers provide consulting with regard to production and marketing of documentary films. The workshop's aim is to reconcile the film-makers' aspirations with the audience's expectations and at the same time help in coping with the demands of the contemporary market. The most important distributors, consultants, editors and documentary film producers from television channels and film institutes come to the pitching in Krakow.
In addition, this year, thanks to cooperation of Dragon Forum and Documentary Campus, one of the largest training programs for producers and documentary filmmakers, the Conference Virtually Yours will be held. During the conference the invited experts will be considering a new opportunities brought by digitalisation into the field of production, promotion and distribution of documentary film.
A special accent on this year Industry Zone is Focus on Israel Conference - the event promoting recently-popular documentary Israeli cinematography. The main axis of the conference will be the presentation of the model of functioning of the Israeli cinematography nowadays (from production to promotion and distribution). The guests of the panels and meetings will be the Israeli producers, distributors, representatives of institutions financing film projects and representatives of Israeli film festivals. In the programme, there are also individual meetings aimed at the possibility of co-production with Israel.
As every year Industry Screenings will take place - special closed screenings for accredited guests and the press, during which part of the festival films can be seen. There are also meetings with producers, distributors and film-makers - if possible - and one can get informational materials about a given film. At the Industry Screenings one can also watch films, already finished, whose projects were developed during the workshops and Dragon Forum pitching last year. The Industry Drink takes place daily, in traditional informal meetings, with a glass of wine, where the festival's guests - interested filmmakers, producers, distributors have the opportunity to talk with the representatives and programmers of the largest international documentary and short film festivals, e.g. Sundance, DOK Leipzig or Rotterdam FF. The sponsor of Industry Drink is the magazine FilmPro.
Workshops for young filmmakers - cameraman and editor in the documentary film will also take place. Restricted workshops for a narrow group of participants, addressed mainly to young film-makers or film lovers. The subject of the workshops, run by recognised Polish filmmakers - cameraman and documentarian Marcin Koszałka and editor Anna Wagner, will be widening of practical knowledge, among others, about using the video camera, photography composition, usage of light, the basics of editing in the documentary and animated film. The workshops will be accompanied by open lectures by experts, during which Marcin Koszałka and Anna Wagner will talk about the various stages of cooperation on editing on the example of their two most recent production of documentaries.
The organizers also planned the panel entitled "Is it still a documentary, or fiction?" It will be a discussion about blurring of the boundaries between the documentary and feature film - recently-fashionable hybrid genres, such as mocumentary, docufiction, animated documentary. The film journalists and documentary filmmakers will participate in the discussion.
Industry Zone events will take place for the first time at International Cultural Centre (MCK, Rynek Glowny 25) and traditionally at the Manggha Centre of Japanese Art and Technology (ul. Konopnickiej 26), and Kijów.Studio (al. Krasinskiego 34).
Accreditation for the festival is open until May 15.
