Famous Polish TV personality Grazyna Torbicka personally supports FNE "For me its very very useful, I receive and read it every day.  It is very useful to know what's going on in the region and it was previously an undiscovered area.  FNE is doing a very good job.  FNE informs us about not only film but also TV and production.  Very often I am using some subjects from FNE in my TV programme"

Between the 2nd and the 9th of August 2008 Kazimierz Dolny and Janowiec nad Wisłą in Poland will turn into the picturesque backdrop for the second edition of The Two Riversides Film and Art Festival.   The festival's director is a personality already well known not only to Polish TV audiences to festival goers across Europe.

Famous Polish TV personality Grazyna Torbicka is best known to Polish audiences as TV journalist.  But she was always involved as a culture journalist and in cultural events.  She has done many gala events where she served as master of ceremonies including the annual Festival of Polish Film in Gdynia.

For 12 years she has been the presenter of the hugely successful film programme on TVP2, I Love Kino, which is dedicated to author's movies and films of cultural value.  She annually does documentaries reports about Cannes, Berlin and Venice Film Festivals where she interviews the world's most famous movie stars.  From 1997 to 2000 she was the moderator of the press conferences at Venice Film Festival and then for 6 years she worked for Taoromina Film Festival where she was a presenter at the Teatro Greco interviewing on stage many famous stars such as Hugh Grant and Jane Campion.

So it was inevitable that sooner or later Grazyna would have her own festival.  Two years ago she was invited to recreate the Two Riversides Festival which is dedicated to films connected to art.  The first edition in 2007 featured retrospectives of the works of Jiri Menzel and Bob Rafelson.

"The festival is a place where film meets literature, music and the visual arts," said Grazyna.  "The two rivers are a metaphor for the two sides of artistic creation, the artist and the viewer," she says, "these are the two sides and it is the connection between these two that makes real art."

Grazyna selects the films for the programme together with her team and she tries to select films that show new trends in cinema.  "We encourage the viewer to look at film as a piece of art," she said.  "You have to understand how to choose what is really important as a viewer."

This year the opening film will a world premier of "Nieruchomy poruszyciel" (Unmoved Mover) directed by Łukasz Barczyk, a film that takes a new look at  contemporary Poland.  There will also be a retrospective of the films of Gus Van Sant and a new section called "And God Created an Actor" launching this year with Polish star Janusz Gajos.

The program of this edition of Two Riversides festival will include films selected from among the contestants of this year's festivals in San Sebastian, Rotterdam, Berlin, Cannes and Koszalin, as well as those which are completely new productions and which have been recommended to us by our friends from Germany, Hungary, Italy, England, Turkey, Ireland, Spain and Czech Republic. They will be mostly the films representing artistic auteur and independent cinema, with the emphasis on young European cinematography.

(the photograph by Grzegorz Kondek presents Grazyna Torbicka and Bob Rafelson at "Two Riversides Festival" edition 2007)