The best student films from across Europe at UG! On 4 December at the Andrzej Wajda Film Centre, we were able to see the creativity of students from SEA-EU partner universities on the big screen. During the SEA-EU Film Festival, young filmmakers from UG received awards and presented their works, and SEA-EU representatives talked about the benefits of cooperation within the European Universities initiative.
‘Our alliance is very much based on European values, including inclusivity, community, and attentiveness to otherness. What I like most about the alliance is that we are building a team,' opened the event Vice-Rector for Cooperation and Internationalisation dr hab. Anna Jurkowska-Zeidler, prof. UG. ‘We are extremely proud of the community of students we are creating. The University of Gdańsk has 22,000 students and our European University has 150,000.'
SEA-EU Office Manager Natalia Lubinska invited festival participants to take part in the Alliance's numerous initiatives aimed at the UG academic community. ‘We organise not only sporting and cultural events, but also courses, webinars, and workshops to allow UG students and staff to brush up on various competencies. If you would like to conduct research, use the sports infrastructure or write your thesis under the guidance of a foreign researcher, this is also on our offer,’ she said.
The Director of the Andrzej Wajda University Film Centre dr Paweł Biliński thanked all the filmmakers from the University of Gdańsk and emphasised that the largest number of applications for the SEA-EU Film Festival came from students of the University of Gdańsk.
The main highlight of the programme was the screening of all 11 winning films of the festival. Among the productions presented were a story about a girl who discovers that she can attract metal objects (Metal Girl, Main Prize), a music video for a French song about ecology (L'écologie en vers) or an adaptation of the Maltese short story L-Għarusa by Trevor Żahra.
The screening was followed by a meeting with the creators of the Polish productions awarded in the competition. The young filmmakers talked about their creative process and inspirations, and shared stories from the set. All panellists received awards and thanks for their participation in the festival from prof. Anna Jurkowska-Zeidler.
Dr Pawel Bilinski asked the panellists about their impressions of films made at other SEA-EU partner universities.
‘I really liked the film about the guys in Kazakhstan and the film that preceded it about the guys in Croatia. They were both about fixing a car, and yet they were very different from each other,’ said Michal Sus, director of the film Stempel, about the films Stranded in Kazakhstan by students at Kiel University and RADNA NEDJELJA by students at Split University.
‘As for the Croatian film in which the protagonists were fixing a car, I have no idea what captivated me about it, but I just love it and I don't know why. Is it this perspective, or these frames, or maybe the fact that this film is supposed to be a bit about nothing,’ said Mateusz Toruński, author of CHAOS.
In closing, dr Piotr Kurpiewski from the Department of Film and Media emphasised that the UG students' submissions to the SEA-EU Film Festival were of a really high standard. ‘We have nothing to be ashamed of,’ he added.
