Internet archive of Polish artistic films: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Filmoteka Muzeum
curator: Łukasz Ronduda
cooperation: Adrian Antoniewicz, Aleksandra Kędziorek, Łukasz Mojsak, Bartosz Stawiarski
Inauguration: 2 March 2012
Filmoteka Muzeum of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw operates with the goal of digital protection and distribution of outstanding audiovisual works from Polish visual artists of the 20th and the early 21st century. Filmoteka is also a research and educational project embracing the media-related dimension of Polish art. Our mission is both to develop an archive within the Museum and to make films available on the Internet for the purposes of education and propagation—on behalf of the artists and under the imperative of unrestricted access to knowledge.
The project of Filmoteka Muzeum pivots around preserving artistic films threatened with destruction, produced and stored by their creators mainly at their private archives, in relatively amateur and extra-institutional conditions—films often existing in a single, much exploited copy. These films often count as some of the most outstanding achievements of the Polish art of the 20th century. The project consists in preparing high quality digital copies, which will then be stored by means of appropriate, purpose-built technical infrastructure. Apart from the digitalisation, propagation and education embracing historic film productions, the years to come will see the curators of Filmoteka Muzeum constantly select for archiving and digital protection the films of currently active Polish artists which have been considered as essential for Polish contemporary culture. At the moment, the Filmoteka website offers a selection of 400 films, with 1500 titles planned in total.
Filmoteka Muzeum forms part of the film programme of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, comprising also the Film Award and the festival KinoMuzeum.
The Film Award of the value of 500 000 PLN for the purpose of producing a feature film in fully professional environment by an artist operating in the field of visual arts was funded jointly by the Polish Film Institute (PISF) and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. The award is to serve the goal of promoting experimental and artistic cinema, which is radical in doing away with conventional narrative solutions and established ways of building film form. The intention is to promote formal innovativeness merged seamlessly with radical artistic imagination and intelligence. The Award shall support works that originate from a permanent confrontation of various types of aesthetics, knowledge and formal solutions provided by contemporary art and cinematography. As agreed by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Directing, the winner of the competition shall be obliged to attend a course in directing during the work on the awarded project. The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw shall co-produce the awarded projects and include them in its own collection of works of contemporary art. Details available at:
