This year, the nineteenth celebration of the art of oral storytelling will take place on November 20-24 in Warsaw, at the Mazovian Institute of Culture. The most outstanding artists of the world storytelling scene will take part. The Powszechnego Czytania Foundation has become the patron of the event.
MFSO is currently the most significant event in the field of storytelling not only in Poland but also in the whole of Central Europe. Thirteen festival seasons to date have gathered around 45,000 viewers, during which narrative performances from very different traditions have been presented, all of them of a very high artistic level and original stage form. The Festival is organized by a group of artists of the living word, educators and researchers of oral traditions - the "Grupa Studnia O." Association. This is the longest-running association in Poland involved in the practice and promotion of the art of storytelling.
This year's edition of the "Elements of Imagination" festival will focus - using Olga Tokarczuk's formula - on "imagination, which is the greatest gift of man". It is probably the strongest element to which storytellers of all times refer. The one who tells a story, activates his own imagination and the imagination of the listeners, using words and gestures, builds images that are displayed before our eyes.
Once again, the Festival will feature a master of storytelling – Jihad Darwiche from Lebanon, permanently associated with France. This time, he will be accompanied by his younger daughter Najoua Darwiche.
Also featured will be Montreal storyteller and performer Nadine Walsh, as well as Welsh storytellers Daniel Morden with a haunting, macabre and humorous “A Thief’s Tale” from the Celtic tradition, and Phil Okwedy, who draws on his dual ancestral heritage of Nigerian and Welsh oral tradition.
Among the Polish storytellers there will be Anna Woźniak, who will introduce us to the world of surreal imagination of Erna Rosenstein, Mirella Gliwińska. BabaBaya with the Kazakh lyrical epic by Kozy Korpesz and Bajan Sulu, Witold Vargas with the Kolberg Variations, and Jerzy Szufa with his own philosophical fables. The Night of Stories will be like a real collective daydream this year, to which the "Lullabies from the Past" performed by the artists from SENJAWAZABAWA will lull us, but also awaken us. The event will be accompanied by an exhibition of imagined worlds by Barbara Wilińska.
During the Festival there will also be two events associated with the Universal Reading Foundation.
November 22nd Pan Tadeusz. Pictures from Soplicowo / 14+
Fragments of Mickiewicz's poem transferred into the dimensions of oral storytelling, performative reading and musical improvisation. The starting point for work on the performance was a book by Jarosław Kaczmarek Pan Tadeusz. Pictures from Soplicowo, published in cooperation with FPC as part of the "Book Without Borders" project.
November 23rd ETR Reading: Pan Tadeusz. Elements of Storytelling
Meeting about the mentioned book Pan Tadeusz. Pictures of Soplicowo, in which twelve Polish writers have prepared original adaptations of well-known literary works with a form and content adapted to people who experience difficulties in reading and understanding books (due to disability, neurodiversity, old age or health conditions), as well as with migrants reading in a second language that is foreign to them in mind.
A detailed program and tickets are available on the website www.festiwalopowiadania.pl.
Organizers: Association "Grupa Studnia O", Mazovian Institute of Culture
Author of the festival's visual identification: Wiola Pierzgalska
The festival was co-financed by the Capital City of Warsaw, by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Cultural Promotion Fund and by the Mazovian Voivodeship Self-Government.
