The Baltic city of Gdynia is the venue of the 33rd Polish Film Festival, one of Poland's most prestigious events of this kind. For the second year in a row, the festival is making an effort to reach a wider public, by extending its offer to disabled film enthusiasts.
Joanna Najfeld reports
Disability access is becoming trendy in the Polish theater and movie industry. Increasingly often, producers make and effort to reach blind, partially sighted, mute, deaf and hear of hearing spectators. Special theater plays, movie screenings and DVD releases appear on the market, suited to the special needs of such audiences.
For the second year in a row, Polish Film Festival in Gdynia, which is among the most prestigious artistic events in Poland, decided to screen some movies with audio description - a system of an additional sound track with narration describing the visual aspects of the movie, to those who cannot see it.
'We started last year, it was for the first time at the festival in Gdynia. It was only one movie. A lot of people came, excited about the possibility to somehow watch, maybe just feel, good films and be here at the festival together with "normal" people. That's why we decided to do this - so that everyone can come and see Polish films,' said Małgorzata Rakowiec, spokesman of the Polish Film Festival.
Tomasz Strzyminski has been successful in promoting audio description in Poland for years now. Himself, a film lover who lost his sight eight years back, Tomasz has kept in touch with the organizers of the Polish Film Festival, to make sure the idea initiated last year is repeated in a developed form: 'This year we continue the project with some improvements. We have increased the number of screenings from one movie and one cartoon last year to two movies and two cartoons this year. The first screening this year was "Peter and Wolf", a fairy tale. Part of the audience were kids with a vision disfunction. So we can say, there is an interest on the part of the audience.'
Not just the audience, but also film makers present at the festival are an important target for promoters of audio description and other disability access features, says Tomasz Strzymiński: 'I hope to reach film producers present in large number at this festival, to convince them to pay more attention to non-sighted spectators. At the same time we are educating visually impaired people to take advantage of audio description and get more actively interested in culture.'
Małgorzata Rakowiec says the organizers of the Polish Film Festival are very enthusiastic about continuing the disability access project in future editions of the festival: 'For sure, for sure. We started last year, we continued this year and for sure we want to do it next year. Also because we want the Gdynia festival to be a place open for everyone.'
In the meantime, Tomasz Strzyminski and his colleagues at audiodeskrypcja.pl are trying to set up a foundation which would work actively for the promotion of disability access to art and culture in Poland. They are looking for donors and sponsors. For more information, contact Tomasz at audiodeskrypcja.pl