[Guido] The modest achiever

The most incredible person I have ever met is surely Roman Gutek, founder of the Warsaw Film Festival, co-founder of the Gutek Film and owner of a  Poland’s largest art house cinema in the city of Wrocław. 

Guido Giacomo Gattai

And that's not because he's famous or important, but because he is a very curious and particular famous and important person. The first kind of important people that I met were basically blues men from US, because my first journalism job was in a blues italian magazine. After that I worked for a web tv and organizing the FilosoFestival of Florence; for both those activities I had to deal with Italian politicians, writers and philosophers.

All those people are really different of course but they do certainly have a thing in common: they think to be somebody. They feel that they are important. Very important. And that's pretty normal because they all reached something in their life, I mean: they all reached something that normally people try to reach and do not arrive to. It IS impressive.

But the bad side of it is that they feel superior and they want to be treated consequently. Conversely, this is totally not the description of Gutek. He has his own film producion, a lot of cinemas and during the communism he even had some problem with the regime for propaganding "capitalist movies" so I haven't reached his position without crossing some obstacle. So when I was waiting to meet him I expected somebody in suit and cravat with a huge escort security men and people bringing briefcases for him. Nothing like that. Not at all.

First of all he is perfectly on time, not like those people that try to make you feel like you are just one of their appointments for the day and they have no time for you. He has no security service, he dresses completely in black without any cravat, he salutes everyone in the cinema as an old friend asking befitting questions about families and so on. He has just a little camping backpack and he carries it by himself, he smiles and when he asks for a tea at the bar of his own cinema and... he even pays for it!

In conclusion I think that people want you to treat them like gods only when they had success for a lucky strike, people who had it working very hard and already know that they deserve what they have don't need you to confirm it to them all the time. They can afford to be humble.

Guido Giacomo Gattai from Italy