American Film Festival 2011

The 2nd American Film Festival will be organized in Wroclaw 15-20 November 2011 by the Association of New Horizons. During this year’s festival, which takes place in the Helios cinema, 76 films will be shown, of which 40 will be Polish, and 6 European premieres.

In The Highlights section one will see demonstrations of the latest, high-profile titles with the stars of American cinema. The film opening of this year’s festival will be “Dark Horse” which is Todd Solondz’s latest film, screened at this year’s Venice competition. Wrocław audience will be the first in Poland who will see the latest films by Gus Van Sant (Restless), Kevin Smith (Red State) and Miranda July (The Future). The festival will also include such events as: Jack Goes Boating a comedy drama and an outstanding directing debut of the actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, Blue Valentine by Derek Cienfrance, a film about the breakup of the marriage of a young Ryan Gosling go-ahead creation and Oscar nominee of Michelle Williams and Last Night the intimate drama of the all-star cast (Keira Knightley, Eva Mendes, Sam Worthington). The festival will be closed by the original comedy Damsels in Distress by Whit Stillman, which ended this year’s festival in Venice.

In The Spectrum section of viewers one will see Somewhere Tonight by Michael Di Jiacomo starring John Turturro – a strange story about a couple of New York loners who meet on the sextelephone; The Dish and the spoon by Alison Bagnall starring a go-ahead rising star of the American cinema Greta Gerwig as a betrayed wife, who spontaneously runs away from home and moves in crazy love of travel and Love by William Eubank – like the recent Moon, an arthouse project of alternative rock band Angels & Airwaves, metaphysical poem about loneliness.

Among the documentaries in the American docs there will be: a winner (chosen by audience) of the competition of last year’s festival in Austin, SXSW Marwencol by Jeff Malmberg, and The Other Word “F” by Andrea Blaugrund of rockers, who turned the crazy life of musicians to calm paternity, and Something Ventured by Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine, about the road of the technological giants to the top of American economy. Among this year’s films there will also be autothematic works, such as the American Grindhouse the exploitation of the history of cinema, among others with Quentin Tarantino. In the section there will be also the latest provocative work of a document master, Errol Morris – Tabloid, a funny-scary movie about the power of colour press. Another film about media is Page One: A Year Inside “The New York Times”, whose author Andrew Rossi spent a year with a camcorder in the editorial office of one of the world’s largest newspapers.

PROGRAMME

The heroes of retrospectives at the 2^nd AFF will be: born in Sucha Beskidzka, a classic of American cinema and a winner of six Academy Awards Billy Wilder (The Apartment, The Seven Year Itch, Sunset Boulevard), Todd Solondz – a great American independent creator (Happiness, Palindromes), filmmaker – philosopher Terrence Malick – the author of the legendary Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line, a winner of the Golden Palme at this year’s International Film Festival in Cannes for Tree of Life, Joe Swanberg, representative of the mumblecore mainstream, who wins young audience and festivals. During the festival we will also see the latest film by Nicholas Ray – experimental “We Can’t Go Home Again”, reconstructed by his wife Susanne Ray.