Oscar winning composer’s ecologically oriented festival features a Green Carpet as well as music competition.

The inaugural Transatlantyk International Film and Music Festival (Aug 5-13) gets underway today in Poznan, Poland.

150 films will screen during the festival, whose programme includes premieres, sidebars on German and Arab cinema, various documentary sections and a Milos Foreman retrospective as well as categories for culinary cinema and 1950s Hollywood B Movies.

Among the screenings are Cannes hit The Kid With A Bike and national premieres for Sam Garbarski’s A Distant Neighbourhood and Steven Silver’s The Bang Bang Club.

The brainchild of Oscar winning composer Jan A.P. Kaczmarek (Finding Neverland) - who is also festival director - has an ecological bent, and also features a music programme with seminars led by composers and a competition with a cash prize of $20,000.

The programme includes two international competitions: the Transatlantyk Film Music Competition and the Transatlantyk Instant Composition Contest, where participants will be asked to view a short film and compose a piano solo on the spot in front of a live audience. Both competitions are for composers only.

The jury for the competitions include Paul Broucek, Music President at Warner Bros. Pictures and Peter Golub, Director of the Sundance Film Music Program. In attendance at the festival will be composers Gustavo Santaolalla (Brokeback Mountain, Babel), Christopher Young (Priest, Rum Diary) and Clint Mansell (Black Swan).

Venues range from concert halls to nightclubs.