Idea
Camera Action Festival is an event for cinephiles, where talking and writing about cinema is as important as making it. Four days of screenings, discussions, workshops at the Film School in Lodz and four days online.
Camera Action Festival was established in 2010. The event was born out of pure love for cinema. The project has become the only festival in Europe dedicated to film criticism. It is both a place to meet and talk around cinema, attracting film-minded people, while not excluding any voice from participating in the discussion.
Year after year, FKA gathers a growing number of viewers and film lovers, who are treated as partners in discussion with critics and filmmakers. There is no denying that discussion is one of the key elements of the festival. FKA’s mission is to break down barriers at the level of language and film knowledge by establishing mutual relations between different groups focused on cinema. The festival’s goal is to popularize the free exchange of ideas without a sharp division between experts and laymen.
Camera Action is made up of people with extensive experience in organizing film events. The festival’s more than 10-year tradition and the fading boundary between professional criticism and active participation in film culture have necessarily influenced the development and evolution of the festival. Camera Action opens to a broad approach in understanding audiovisual culture.
The Critic Writes Contest, the Critic Speaks Contest and the International Authors Spotlight Contest allow debutants and budding filmmakers to take their first steps in the audiovisual world.
For the past few years, FKA has been expanding its activities to include educational projects whose main goal is to popularize film culture among Lodz residents, including keeping alive the memory of Lodz’s forgotten traditions as the cradle of Polish critical and filmmaking thought and the place where postwar production developed. To date, the Foundation has implemented, among others, the Academy of Cultural Animators, Action Education, Celebration of Film Lodz. 75 Years of Cinema History, The Great Test on Film Lodz and New Horizons: Camera Action. The Festival’s activities are a unique proposal for an interdisciplinary and innovative program for film lovers.
The seventh edition of “Camera Action” proves that it takes years to create the formula for an ideal film event. From a small event a few years ago, the Lodz festival is now transforming into a significant and prestigious meeting place for Polish critics and industry representatives.
Mateusz Góra, Kultura Liberalna
Impressively, the organizers were ahead of the trends in Polish film criticism when tackling the topic of video essays.
Bartosz Marzec, krytyk filmowy, Ha Art
Since I’ve been coming to Camera Action!, and I’ve been coming for several years regularly, I’ve been amazed to see that at these discussions, which touch on almost hermetic topics, the room is full. The audience is tightly packed with mostly young people, cinephiles, greedily catching every word of the conversation, relaxed, critical, having the time.
Anna Wróblewska, portalfilmowy.pl
The new form of expression is becoming an increasingly important phenomenon for film history, theory, criticism and practice, and is beginning to attract the attention of both the academy and the cinephile world. In Poland, too, an increase in interest in videosexism can be observed, although its development is proceeding more quietly than in the West. One of the first to discuss the phenomenon was the Camera Action Festival Film Art Critics Festival in Lodz. (…) as Elsaesser wrote, the festival circuit drives the film industry, influencing the functioning of various elements emblematic of cinema and film culture, as evidenced by the Camera Action Film Art Critics Festival.
Patrycja Chuszcz, Kwartalnik Filmowy, nr 104 (2018)
Record promotional outreach, sold-out passes, full rooms at all screenings, and above all, dozens of inspiring meetings and discussions, which are as popular as the film screenings every year. Such a result is proof that Camera Action, as the only feature film festival in Lodz, has become a permanent fixture on the map of Poland’s most important film events.
Jakub Izdebski, Interia
I’ve been rooting for the Lodz film criticism festival “Camera Action” since the first edition. And I’m always there! I love the energy of the organizers, their passion, ideas, diligence and grace.
Łukasz Maciejewski
Camera Action is in a class of its own, and attending panels about computer games and workshops about costumes, sensational blocks of video essays with curatorial commentary and much more – is a dream come true for any film critic, i.e., someone for whom talking about cinema is damn important and who is constantly trying his best to understand and feel the medium in order to share his reflections with readers and viewers afterwards.
Sebastian Smoliński
