15 minutes: Belarus!

Abstract

In 2011 Stowarzyszenie Młodych Twórców – “Ku Teatrowi” – the ‘Towards Th eatre’ Association of Young Artists in Poznań, began the ‘15 minutes: Belarus!’ project. Initially this was to embrace only the production of 6 to 8 short documentary fi lms each of 15 minutes. We invited the best documentary fi lmmakers from Belarus, professional and non-professional directors who for many years had been documenting the work of the democratic opposition in Belarus. Th e series of such documentaries was to be a type of cinematic précis of contemporary Belarus in terms of the creative documentary. Krzysztof Kopczyński persuaded me to develop this project by including Polish documentary fi lmmakers. Th is has borne fruit in a cooperation lasting over several years between Polish and Belarus directors, as well as a battle for every cinematic second capturing the world in the documentaries that arise in the course of our project.