Special guests ______________

The Aukso Chamber Orchestra

was established in 1998 thanks to the initiative of Marek Moś and talented young players from the Karol Szymanowski Music Academy in Katowice. It consists of graduates of the Faculty of Instruments who share their passion for chamber music. The repertoire of the band encompasses classical, romantic and contemporary works, with a particular focus on Polish music. Aukso can also brilliantly combine the worlds of classical and pop music by co-operating with artists such as Leszek Możdżer and Tomasz Stańko.

Jacek Bromski

(born in 1946) a director of hugely popular classics 80’s KILL ME COP and THE ART OF LOVE. Bromski's following films - Children and Fishes and In Heaven as is on Earth - turned out to be hugely popular comedies in the context of Poland's new reality after 1989. His feature God’s Little Garden (2007) was seen by over 300,000 cinemagoers. Bromski’s latest film is a critically acclaimed Entanglement. Since 1988 Bromski is head of the Film Studio "Zebra". In 1996 he became the President of the Polish Filmmakers Association.

Agnieszka Holland

(born 1948) is best known for her Oscar-Nominated Angry Harvest, Europa, Europa, Olivier, Olivier and the The Secret Garden. In recent years she directed Copying Beethoven, Julia Walking Home and in 2011 In Darkness, nominated for The Best Foreign Film Oscar® 2012. She also directed several episodes of cult TV series The Wire, The Killing, and Treme.

Ronit Kertsner

(born in 1956) an award winning documentary filmmaker - director, producer and editor. After her military service she was admitted to the Cinema Department at Tel Aviv University. Upon completion of her course, Ronit began working as a professional editor of documentaries and features for TV and other media. Ronit has edited dozens of documentary films over the years. For the last 10 years Ronit has directed and produced 4 documentaries The Secret, I the Aforementioned Infant, Menachem and Fred and Torn.

Zygmunt Miłoszewski

(born 1976) Author of best-selling series of crime novels including Entanglement (published in English in 2010) and A Grain of Truth (forthcoming in English in August 2012).

Marek Moś

(born in 1956) Conductor and violinist, artistic director of the Aukso orchestra. He was also the founder and a long-time leading musician of the Silesian Quartet (Kwartet Śląski) – a band, which soon became one of the most outstanding string quartets in Europe. His artistic output includes many archival recordings for the Polish Radio and Television and for phonographic companies (CD Accord, Olympia, Partridge, Thesis, Wergo). Currently, apart from intensive concert and recording activities, Moś is also a professor at the Karol Szymanowski Music Academy in Katowice. Moreover, he is the artistic director of the Summer Aukso Philharmonic festival.

Krzysztof Penderecki

(born in 1933) a composer and conductor. He gained international fame early thanks to works with unique arrangements using unconventional sound emitting techniques, such as Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima (1959–61). In the 1960s, he was one of the founders of the “Polish school of composers”, then he left musical avant-garde ideals behind by creating music according to the principle that “you cannot start music from scratch”. During the 1970s and 1980s, he was regarded in Western Europe as the only free artists behind the Iron Curtain. His works, which „respond to the horror of history”, such as Te Deum (1979/1980) or The Polish Requiem (1980–84), have become symbols of freedom in art. Penderecki’s music was used in many films, most notably for The Shining, The Exorcist and The Children of Men as well as original film scores for Katyń and Shutter Island. He was awarded many honours, among them three Grammy Awards in 1987, 1998 and 2011.

Agnieszka Polska

(born in 1985) a Berlin-based Polish artist working in video, referencing art historical motifs as she collages them with more prosaic found images. In doing so she questions the veracity of archives and the historical narrative they seek to provide. She is currently preparing for solo exhibitions at Kunstmuseum Cottbus and Bunkier Sztuki in Kraków.

Małgorzata Szumowska

(born in 1973) best known for award winning 33 Scenes from Life (2008) (Silver Leopard Special Jury Prize at the Locarno, Best Director at the 2008 Polish Film Festival in Gdynia). Her feature film debut Happy Man was nominated for the European Film Award in 2000. She received another EFA nomination in 2005 for Stranger. Her latest film Elles starring Juliette Binoche premiered at Toronto International Film Festival.

Robert Więckiewicz

born in 1967) a Polish film and theatre actor. He starred in critically acclaimed Little Rose and Dark House Most recently Więckiewicz starred in Agnieszka Holland’s In Darkness, in which he plays a Polish sewer worker who saves a group of Jews from the Nazis and in Greg Zgliński’s Courage where he plays a brother torn by a dilemma.

Romuald Jakub Weksler-Waszkinel

(born in 1943) Polish catholic priest and philosopher of Jewish descent, a lecturer at the Catholic University in Lublin. Born in a ghetto near Vilnius from Jewish parents, Jakub and Batia Weksler, he was given away to the Polish family of Piotr and Emilia Waszkinel to be hidden and saved from the Holocaust. He was baptised as Romuald Waszkinel. His parents and brother died in concentration camps. In 1966 Romuald Waszkinel became a priest and started studying at the Catholic University in Lublin. While performing his duties as a catholic priest he found out about his Jewish origins. Currently he lives and works in Jerusalem at Yad Vashem Institute and he continues his duties as a Catholic priest in Mazury Lake District, Poland.

Helena Włodarczyk

(born 1945), is a Polish art historian and film director best known for her documentaries about artists Alina Szapocznikow (Ślad, 1976) and Leon Tarasiewicz ( Stacja Waliły-Wenecja, 2004). Her critically acclaimed debut feature Bluszcz (1982) was one of the first feminist films made in Poland.