To a Good Start: 10,000 Tickets and Passes, 41 Screenings, and Masters of Film, Theatre, Cuisine, and Music.

To a good start: 10,000 tickets and passes, 41 screenings, and masters of film, theatre, cuisine, and music.

The second day of the TRANSATLANTYK Festival 2012 is primarily the beginning of a great cinematic feast. For film enthusiasts, there were as many as 41 screenings in three festival venues: Multikino 51, the Muza cinema, and the comfortably equipped Bałtyk Open-Air Cinema. The organizers prepared the best documentaries of the past year for this day, such as 'Love Free or Die', 'The House I Live In', and 'American Passages', as well as Polish premieres and special screenings of feature films, including 'Reality' (Grand Prix of the Cannes Festival), the hugely popular 'Chicken with Blueberries', and the film 'For Ellen' featuring Tim Roth, which attracted true crowds of viewers to Poznań. So far, nearly 10,000 tickets and free passes have been issued for all titles scheduled in the TRANSATLANTYK program.

Thursday was also the first day of the highly popular Master Classes, especially among young people. On August 16, the festival audience gathered at Multikino 51 and Concordia Design could participate in a discussion panel led by Graham White, an activist addressing the issue of mass bee die-off, a lecture by Hollywood filmmaker Waldemar Kalinowski, workshops at Alvernia Studios, and cinematography workshops by Łukasz Bielan. The most anticipated meetings were undoubtedly the Master Classes conducted by two outstanding composers: Rolfe Kent and Richard Bellis. The first of them proved to the audience that he is certainly not an artist 'with his head in the clouds', although he did create a soundtrack for a film of that title.

Thursday evening belonged to three extraordinary personalities – British actor Julian Sands, Basque musician Felipe Ugarte, and Polish master chef Krzysztof Rabek from Hugo Restaurant. The first of the festival guests arrived in Poznań with a monodrama 'A Celebration of Harold Pinter', prepared in collaboration with John Malkovich. His performance at the Polish Theatre was met with a standing ovation. After the show, Julian Sands met with the audience, answering questions about Harold Pinter and the specifics of working on the monodrama.

Felipe Ugarte's performance, the protagonist and simultaneously the co-director of the film 'Mugaritz – The Flavors of Music', along with the culinary displays of Krzysztof Rabek (such as the extremely delicate tartare or the melt-in-your-mouth rainbow trout) inaugurated the Poznań Culinary Cinema, prepared similarly to last year in collaboration with Thomas Struck from the Berlinale Festival. The first screening, along with a dinner themed 'In search of', turned out to be an event where culinary art intertwined not only with film but also with music. A symbolic conclusion to the second day of the festival was a mini concert by Felipe Ugarte, who played for the participants of the Culinary Cinema on a traditional Basque instrument - txalaparta.

At the same time, at the TRANSATLANTYK Festival Club in Concordia Design, attendees could listen to more DJs. From 10 PM until 4 AM, Boogie and Burn Reynolds played for the gathered audience.

Photos from this day can be found at: fotoportal.poznan.pl/galeria/transatlantyk2012