The Praga Koneser Centre in Warsaw is hosting an exhibition entitled “A Billion Viewers or: History and achievements of the Animated Film Studio”. The opening of the exhibition on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Animated Film Studio in Bielsko-Biała was attended by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage Piotr Gliński.

“Congratulations on your 75 years of great history. “Bolek and Lolek”, “Reksio”, ” Balthazar the Dragon” and many other works of the Animated Film Studio are classics of Polish animation”, said the minister during the opening of the exhibition.

The exposition presents the most eminent co-creators of the Studio, including Władysław Nehrebecki, Alfred Ledwig, Lechosław Marszałek, Leszek Lorek, Witold Giersz, Tadeusz Depa and many others, and brings closer the technique of making cartoon films and sound, showing how cartoons were made before the age of computers.

The exhibition also features the most important cartoon characters of the fairy tales “Bolek and Lolek”, “Reksio”, ” Balthazar the Dragon” and “Pampalini the Animal Hunter”, placed in a specially arranged space. The creators of the exhibition are also inviting the public to the Studio of the Future to view current projects (‘Bright Eyes’, ‘Vegetable Investigation Bureau’, ‘Hussar’) and the emerging OKO Interactive Fairy Tale and Animation Centre.

“It will be a multifaceted institution that will animate, entertain and educate – mainly the young, but also the older generations, as we have all been shaped in some way by the fairy tales and animations we watched as children. I hope that the opening of the Centre will take place as planned next autumn,” announced Minister Gliński.

Until 17 November, the exhibition is presented in the WARSZTAT space of the Koneser Praga Centre. Then, from 18 November, it will be moved to the PolishComicArt Gallery and the premises adjacent to the Gallery. The main exhibition will be accompanied by an outdoor exhibition on the Centre’s square.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński