Norway may be not the warmest country in the world, but surely its culture hot season lasts all year round. June 16th, one of most interesting film events - The Norwegian Short Film Festival (Kortfilmfestivalen), Grimstad - had its opening.
The festival is especially attractive for young, independent Norwegian directors who have a great chance to show the most innovative projects. In the international competition directors from other countries can also show their short productions from different corners of the world.
Apart from the official festival program, organizers prepared a range of special events accompanying the festival.
One of them is a section The Cold War Seen From Two Different Perspectives which aims to show this dark period of Europe from two different perspectives of contemporary directors. Cold War divided Old Continent for over 40 years and was an important part of the European history. Still the subject stimulates many thoughts and discussions.
The organizers invited two films that show that time and people who were destined to change the history.
First of them is "War Games and The Man Who Stopped Them" by Dariusz Jablonski about Polish Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski, the second: Oscar-nominated "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers" by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith.
After the screenings Per Egil Hegge, the journalist and correspondent who worked in Moscow, Washington DC and London, author of several books and autobiographies, will lead the Q&A with Dariusz Jablonski.
The screenings will take place on Friday, June 18th, at 2 pm in Grimstad. The official festival website: www.kortfilmfestivalen.no
The project is supported by Freedom of Expression Foundation.
"War Games and The Man Who Stopped Them" is a uniquely constructed portrait of the Polish Colonel Ryszard Kukliński, who provided the CIA with more than 40,000 strategic documents from the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War. Was he a traitor, or the savior of Poland? The Polish documentary filmmaker Dariusz Jabłoński begins his story of the colonel in 2004, when he was supposed to interview him for the very first time. It turns out that Kukliński has just died, and at the request of the colonel's wheelchair-bound wife, Jabłoński agrees to take care of his ashes. He talks with a considerable number of closely involved ex-servicemen - from the U.S. head of espionage General William E. Odom to the Warsaw Pact Commander-in-Chief Viktor Kulikov, the Polish General Wojciech Jaruzelski, and former Polish President Lech Wałęsa. These interviews paint a picture of an idealistic man who saved Europe from a Third World War, but who also led a tragic life.
"War Games and The Man Who Stopped Them" has been invited by numerous international festivals. As the first Polish film opened the biggest documentary film festival IDFA 2009 in Amsterdam. The film was selected for Hot Docs, Toronto and Dok.fest in Munich as well as shown in French-German TV ARTE and Polish Television as a 5 - episode series. "War Games" were also invited to be shown at special screenings around the Europe.
"War Games and The Man Who Stopped Them" was produced by Apple Film Production, in co-production with Polish Televison S.A., ARTE, Trigon Production. Financially supported by Polish Film Institute, Ministry of Culture in Slovakia, MEDIA Programme.
www.war-games.pl
