The film Sower directed by Yury Kalina received a golden Copernicus statuette and award of Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage at Edukino, the Polish festival of educational films.
Its jury made a point of the educational activities of Doroteusz Fionik, the main character of the documentary, as well as his desire to convey traditions to the rising generation of the Belarusian minority in Poland’.
The award was handed to Aleksandra Kalina, the daughter of the film director.
It is the ninth award that Sower has won at international film festivals.
Sower (English subtitles)
Doroteusz Fionik is an inhabitant of the Studziwody district in Bielsk Podlaski. He is Belarusian, Polish citizen through family history, alumnus of a Christian Orthodox seminary and active psalmist, a founder of the Little Motherland Museum in Studziwody (the material base consists of a traditional Podlaschian homestead formerly owned by his grandparents and restored by the protagonists, as well as a house saved from being demolished), editor of an ethnographic publication “Bielski Gosciniec,” author of history books about the region, founder of an authentic folk band “Zemerwa,” managed by his sister, Anna Fionik, he organizes cyclical ethnographic-folkloristic happenings in the Podlasie province, which include folk bands from Podlasie and the Belarusian Polesie.
During ethnographic expedition in this region, Fionik records authentic folklore and publishes recordings of forgotten songs. He is also a farmer, maintaining several hectares of land in a traditional way with the help of his family. He cuts wheat with sickle and scythe, and threshes it with a flail. He sows it with his own hands. However, he considers it his highest duty to spread the spiritual and material culture of Podlaschian Belarusians, so that, following the evangelical sower’s example, this seed “fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown” (Matthew 13:8).
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