Freedom Film Festival

Introduction
IThe American Cinema Foundation is committed to recognizing achievement with a conscience.
The Freedom Film Festival made its reputation presenting films and television productions from the ex-Iron Curtain countries of formerly Communist Europe. Since those founding days, the festival’s interests have expanded to digital and internet events, as well as the quest for freedom in other areas of the world. The U.S. screenings have made a significant contribution to the film community’s understanding of freedom.

The Freedom Film Festival has received the rare endorsement of The Motion Picture Association of America. In spring 2005, we held a weekend teach-in on the end of Communism in one country, Yugoslavia, and commemorated the 25th anniversary of 1980, a momentous year in film, politics, and the eventual end of the Cold War.

In 2006, acknowledging the vast changes that have taken place in eastern and central Europe, the Freedom Film Festival shifted its focus to areas where this struggle is still in doubt. But recognizing the enduring importance of Europe’s newest democracies, ACF supported the developers of a new Los Angeles film festival devoted to maintaining a watch on the predominantly ex-Communist countries of southern Europe and the Balkans, SeeFest. They continue the Freedom Fest’s tradition of bringing these films to Hollywood’s attention. The Freedom Film Festival will be presenting special events as they happen.
http://www.seefilmla.org

Freedom Fest invitations are sent to various Hollywood organizations and guilds

The Andrzej Wajda Freedom Prize

The award first presented to Andrzej Wajda himself in 1999 became an annual prize given in his name to filmmakers of outstanding courage and commitment to freedom, presented in East Berlin. In 2006, the city and film festival of Berlin fulfilled its role as the emblematic meeting point of East and West by awarding Germany’s highest film prize to Mr. Wajda, the Berlin Golden Bear.

This fulfills part of the ACF’s mission in presenting our own Wajda Prize, as it had always stood for the recognition of the moral horror of what had happened in the east, recognition that that was felt by most European audiences but seldom seen in film, television, and the popular press. History has redeemed the memories of some of the true heroes of the arts in the 20th century.

Regretfully, it also represents what we consider, for the time being, the passing of a high water mark for Western European appreciation of American ideas about freedom. There still may be a place for a future Freedom Prize, though.