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Post by Johnny-Come-Lately on Mar 10, 2019 3:12:19 GMT
I just didn't realize there were so many good Polish films. I was born in Canada, so I learned Polish secondhand. I just tended to watch the more popular Polish films.
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gw
Junior Member
@gw
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Post by gw on Mar 10, 2019 9:37:01 GMT
I have seen a few animated shorts from Poland. Walls, Stairs, Jan Lenica's Labyrinth and Chick. There are a couple notable features but sadly made outside of Poland from expatriots. Chronopolis is great and Lenica's films Adam 2 and Ubu and the Grande Gidouille are fairly good, especially the first. Ubu had so much material that it became hard to follow the plot.
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Post by petrolino on Mar 10, 2019 23:51:52 GMT
I have seen a few animated shorts from Poland. Walls, Stairs, Jan Lenica's Labyrinth and Chick. There are a couple notable features but sadly made outside of Poland from expatriots. Chronopolis is great and Lenica's films Adam 2 and Ubu and the Grande Gidouille are fairly good, especially the first. Ubu had so much material that it became hard to follow the plot.
Please feel free to share your views on anything made by Polish ex-pats if you'd like to. I think I've only really seen short animated films from Poland, from the 20th century.
Have you seen Tomasz Baginski's Oscar nominated short 'The Cathedral' (2002)? I've not seen it but read some interesting trivia on wikipedia : 'In May 2011, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk gave several gifts to American President Barack Obama for his tour in Europe, as is the custom. One of those gifts was an iPad loaded with The Cathedral.'
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gw
Junior Member
@gw
Posts: 1,519
Likes: 557
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Post by gw on Mar 11, 2019 5:18:55 GMT
I have seen a few animated shorts from Poland. Walls, Stairs, Jan Lenica's Labyrinth and Chick. There are a couple notable features but sadly made outside of Poland from expatriots. Chronopolis is great and Lenica's films Adam 2 and Ubu and the Grande Gidouille are fairly good, especially the first. Ubu had so much material that it became hard to follow the plot.
Please feel free to share your views on anything made by Polish ex-pats if you'd like to. I think I've only really seen short animated films from Poland, from the 20th century.
Have you seen Tomasz Baginski's Oscar nominated short 'The Cathedral' (2002)? I've not seen it but read some interesting trivia on wikipedia : 'In May 2011, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk gave several gifts to American President Barack Obama for his tour in Europe, as is the custom. One of those gifts was an iPad loaded with The Cathedral.'
I rewatched The Cathedral because I could only remember a little of the ending. I've wondered what it means. It is similar to Stairs in the ending but seems to have a different sort of symbolism being a cathedral rather than a world of steps. It seems to have a lot to say about institutional power. Also, there's the fact that the cathedral is above the barren planet. It might be a post-apocalyptic scene or it might be symbolic of institutions that use people to advance their goals, or even an allegory of fate. I enjoyed it more this time than I did in the past. In the past I thought that the visuals were a little wooden and that the story was very basic. Now that CGI has advanced I'm more glad to see works that aren't so perfect in their rendering and models that move a little awkwardly. There's a short from Chronopolis's director Piotr Kamler that is similar to Stairs. Le pas has this series of pieces of paper that fly off from the cube that they're a part of and dance in the air before becoming a part of another cube. I think that that short also has some human allegory, intentional or not.
I've seen a couple live action Polish films as well. I've seen Blue and White from the Three Colors trilogy but the disc malfunctioned when I rented Red. I should try that out and see if I am interested in it anymore.
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Post by petrolino on Mar 15, 2019 23:13:23 GMT
Krzysztof Zanussi (Born: June 17, 1939 in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland)
Writer-director Krzysztof Zanussi's academic film projects reflect his background in science and philosophy, as well as his roots in Catholicism (he's of Italian and Polish ancestry). His films combine poetic discourse, religious consideration and political ideas to formulate symmetrical studies of restless, interactive beings. Corresponding dilemmas probed by characters are bounced back and forth with vigorous intellectualism, often providing no clear resolution. Zanussi reaches cross-sections between philosophy and theology, science and art, industrialisation and technology; busy urban offices strike alarming contrasts with idyllic country retreats, while mountain ranges provide natural escapism. His interest in different cultures illuminates his writing, Indian spirituality emerging early on to become a prominent feature within his filmography.
Krzysztof Zanussi set out in 1969 to create a cinema of the abstract mind, aided by futuristic right-hand man Wojciech Kilar, a composer known for his innate sense of musical adventure. I think he's achieved this goal.
"In the rich and often perilous history of postwar Polish cinema, Krzysztof Kieślowski — late maker of the Three Colours trilogy — has found a unique place in the hearts of western cinephiles. But another Krzysztof has arguably been as influential and certainly as international. And Krzysztof Zanussi is generously represented among the 21 titles coming to the Cinematheque as part of Masterpieces of Polish Cinema, sampling films made from 1957 to the end of Communism in Eastern Europe. Starting Thursday (May 22) and running until late June, the series was put together by Martin Scorsese, with help from several cultural groups and various Polish consulates, including the one in Vancouver. Highlights include Kieślowski’s 'A Short Film About Killing', Wojciech Jerzy Has’s fancifully time-travelling 'The Saragossa Manuscript, and no fewer than five titles from grand master Andrzej Wajda, including the Solidarity-era Man of Iron and opening-night centrepiece 'Ashes and Diamonds'. (That last classic, from 1958, like several of these titles, stars Zbigniew Cybulski, whom you could call the Marcello Mastroianni of Polish cinema.) “I had no say in what was chosen,” admits Zanussi, reached at his home office in Warsaw. “The program represents Scorsese’s personal taste, and I was honoured that he chose three of my movies, so of course I am glad to be involved. I think it helped that I happened to have recently restored several of my prints.” The combination of pride and practicality is typical of Zanussi, who was born just months before Hitler invaded Poland, and who studied physics before turning to cinema during the artistic explosion of the late 1950s. His carefully structured tales usually feature characters — often academics or artists — looking for something out of reach through seemingly practical means. This happens during mathematical research in 'The Constant Factor', a superficially frolicsome linguistics conference in 'Camouflage', and brain studies in 'The Illumination'. These cerebral settings usually can’t obscure brutal power struggles, reflecting inner conflicts as well as Poland’s own compromised state, perennially poised between superpowers. “I think this goes back to my early studies,” he continues, in flawless English. “There was a time when science became a kind of religion, and people thought they could find all the answers there, even when the questions were spiritual, or even metaphysical.” The veteran director, who has also written books and made documentaries about filmmaking, is fluent in Italian, German, and French, as well as English, and this helped give him opportunities to direct and oversee numerous coproductions, even in the darkest days of Communist rule. “It is strange,” he recalls, “but there was a lot of pride—even snobbery—in pulling off these international projects, especially when they won awards and critical attention. So that gave me a certain amount of freedom. But I definitely don’t want to get nostalgic for the bad old days.”
- Ken Eisner, The Georgia Straight
“In the industry of today it is very difficult because in the last few years I have been more connected with the Catholic Church [Zanussi is an adviser with the Pontifical Council for Culture], which is hated in the media and in European countries, although less so in America. It is difficult for me to attend the international film festivals and to find distributors, because the label of Catholic is not well-liked by anyone in our society. The possibilities are very few in this world for a Catholic because any relationship with the Church is seen as very negative. I tell my students to not identify themselves too soon as Catholics, but rather to make movies that show their convictions. Even Catholic movie-goers do not know how to help Catholic filmmakers. They look for directors who have achieved success without the support of the Church. Today we are thrilled at the success of Mel Gibson, but when he tried to find support to produce his film, he didn’t find any. Catholics don’t love the media and the media do not love Catholics. This has led the religious public to expect little from art and this is terrible. The Church contributed greatly to the film industry in the ‘50s in Italy and Spain, with parish theaters and spiritual direction for film makers. But today, when I talk to priests, they say they are tired. As far as young committed Catholics are concerned, they have decided to take more interest in the mass media. All of Europe needs a new vision of the world, because it is in a moment of crisis. Consumerism has lost its fascination. Today’s slogans no longer interest young people. I sense the beginning of a new wave of optimism which will take the place of post-modern cynicism. The new generations are more enthusiastic, more idealistic and they have more faith, not in man, which is always a weak faith, but rather in God. The experience of totalitarianism in the 20th century has confirmed that we are weak and capable of doing terrible things if we do not rely upon God."
- Krzysztof Zanussi, Catholic News Agency
Krzysztof Zanussi
'The Structure Of Crystals' (1969, Struktura krysztalu - Krzysztof Zanussi)
A remote meeting between scientists.
"Struktura krysztalu (The Structure of Crystals) is Krzysztof Zanussi’s debut feature film. From the beginning we quickly notice that this is a film that will explore the values of the sedentary life. The first scenes show two people pacing about in a snow-covered field in the country. They are waiting for someone to arrive. The sky is grey. A horse-drawn sled slowly saunters by. In fact, everything that takes place in the film does so at a very leisurely pace. The man breaks the silence. He asks the woman: “Are you cold?” Two young children appear. He then says to his wife, “They’re growing fast”. This is the first indication of an existential, reflective motif. As a vehicle approaches, the man now says to her, “a private car”. This is an indication of the greater sense of claustrophobia to come in the film. This mundane line of dialogue is also significant because the film takes place in Poland, a repressive communist country where automobile ownership is not common. The year is 1969. Jan (Jan Myslowicz) and his wife, Anna (Barbara Wrzesinska), greet Professor Kawecki (Andrzej Zarnecki), Jan’s old friend and colleague from the university. Kawecki has driven four hours to reach the remote post where the couple runs a State meteorological station. Kawecki will be staying with Jan’s family for six weeks. The first night the three of them eat dinner together. The following morning they go for a walk, and the two friends catch up on old times. Jan tells Kawecki about the good experience that he had when he was a visiting professor at Harvard University. This anecdote is important to the film because the viewer is informed that Jan has not always lived in the isolation that he and his family currently experience. Early on in the film we begin to notice that Jan is seemingly very content in his surroundings. He seems like a man who is happy to enjoy such a sedentary life. He has lived in the country for the last five years. When asked by Kawecki if he’d rather not do research, Jan tells him that he is happy doing routine meteorological work. Jan’s life showcases a form and order that Kawecki does not agree with or understand. Kawecki tells Jan that he is wasting the best years of his life living in the country. “The structure of crystals” is a mineralogical term that gives the film gets its title. This technical term refers to atoms that are arranged in patterns that exhibit order and symmetry, and crystals demonstrate repetitive, close-knit units that make up compound structures. Now, according to ancient Greek and Roman stoic philosophers, order and symmetry are two of the staple ingredients of the stoic life. In many respects, Jan’s existence emulates this molecular structure – if only metaphorically – in the regularity of his sedentary life. As the two friends become reacquainted with each other, they discuss the passage of time and the physics of crystals. Kawecki shows Jan pictures of American cars and magazine advertisements. Jan is very animated by the memories that these pictures evoke. The Structure of Crystals is a film that features a protagonist who has to make difficult life choices. After Jan and his old-time friend Kawecki get comfortable with each other, the film’s key plot points revolve around Jan’s decision and desire to live in the kind of isolation that he and his family share. Of course, because Kawecki is an outsider, his character works best as a vehicle for questioning Jan’s motives – at least for the duration of time that Kawecki will be a guest in Jan’s home."
- Pedro Blas Gonzalez, Senses Of Cinema
Andrzej Żarnecki & Jan Mysłowicz
'Family Life' (1971, Życie rodzinne - Krzysztof Zanussi)
An architectural engineer returns home for a family reunion.
Halina Mikołajska, Maja Komorowska & Jan Kreczmar
'The Illumination' (1972, Iluminacja - Krzysztof Zanussi)
A physicist searches for meaning.
Małgorzata Pritulak
'A Woman's Decision' (1975, Bilans kwartalny - Krzysztof Zanussi)
A modest, middle-aged bookkeeper reaches a crossroads in life.
"If you care about the changing images of women in the movies, you've probably already seen "Julia" (1977) and "The Turning Point," and perhaps you admired them. I did, to varying degrees. But now here's a film that has so much to say about one particular woman, and says it so eloquently, that nobody since Bergman has seen a woman character more clearly. The film is "A Woman's Decision," by Krzysztof Zanussi, who was already Poland's best director and now graduates to grandmaster class. The woman, Marta, is a housewife, the mother of a little boy, and an accountant in a state office. She is also in the habit of poking her nose in where it allegedly doesn't belong. She stands up for underdogs: She's the union representative in the office, and defends a friend who's unfairly accused of having stolen some money. She is also a restless woman, vaguely unsatisfied with her marriage, sort of on the lookout for something different. One day she's given a ride by a good-looking guy who drives a van for the university. And she falls into something. Love, maybe, when the light is right. Descriptions can be frustrating. This is one of the year's best movies, and so far I've made it sound like a socialist soap opera. Zanussi and Maja Komorowska, who plays the lead, take this material and turn it inside out. They take the most ordinary human situations and see them so clearly that the movie even gives meanings to things in our own lives. Notice the way, for example, Zanussi develops Marta's marriage. He doesn't proceed in a straightforward fashion, and he doesn't tell us things -- he lets us figure them out. And he frames the two characters in their apartment so that they often seem kept apart by the glass wall in the kitchen."
- Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times
Maja Komorowska
'Camouflage' (1977, Barwy ochronne - Krzysztof Zanussi)
Students of linguistics grapple with questions of idealism.
"It's fitting that ''Camouflage,'' which opens today at the Cinema Studio, should revolve around linguistics, because Mr. Zanussi's films have a peculiar syntax all their own. The punctuation of his various scenes is so delicate that it frequently becomes elusive. A scene will end on a gesture of no apparent moment, and yet there is a deliberate feeling to the timing."
- Janet Maslin, The New York Times
Christine Paul-Podlasky & Piotr Garlicki
'Spiral' (1978, Spirala - Krzysztof Zanussi)
A stranger at a mountain retreat ventures out in the snow alone.
Jan Nowicki
'The Constant Factor' (1980, Constans - Krzysztof Zanussi)
A construction worker sets his sights on scaling a mountain peak.
Małgorzata Zajączkowska
'A Year Of The Quiet Sun' (1984, Rok spokojnego słońca - Krzysztof Zanussi)
An American soldier falls in love with a Polish refugee at the end of the 2nd World War.
"Krzysztof Zanussi’s films have always been conceived with daunting intelligence, their scenarios reverberating at several carefully considered levels of meaning, and his casts unfailingly bring a fervent commitment to their work. (Upon occasion, such estimable players as Robert Powell, Leslie Caron, and Brigitte Fossey have acted in his films literally for nothing; the present film got onto American screens only because Scott Wilson took it away from its original, essentially dysfunctional distributor and began showing it at film festivals.) But as artful and resonant as the screenplay of A Year of the Quiet Sun is, as brilliant and moving as are the performances of Wilson, Skarzanka, and the incomparable Maja Komorowska (the face of humanity to Zanussi, much as Takashi Shimura once was to Kurosawa), what moves me most here, what sets A Year of the Quiet Sun apart as a breakthrough in the director’s work, is the look of the film. Zanussi’s images have never been so limpidly, relentlessly suggestive, his instinct never so acute for placing the camera at precisely that point from which, it seems, we can watch the world turn on its metaphysical axis. The title teases at the inadequacy of language to measure what is most essential in life: Can the sun be quiet?"
- Richard T. Jameson, The Weekly
Maja Komorowska & Scott Wilson
'Space Lady' - Urszula Dudziak
"Why is Kieslowski such an obvious choice for this ongoing series about filmmakers whose work is grounded on a Catholic understanding of the human condition? The answer is not obvious to many fine critics and scholars who, from the secular and postmodern platform of our age, will not or cannot discern the unmistakably Catholic characteristics of Kieslowski’s cinema. English-language scholarship, in general, falls short of acknowledging the Catholic frame of reference regarding the notions of personhood, communion, and transcendence that nourish the director’s works of maturity, most noticeably since The Decalogue. Annette Insdorf’s moving account of her friendship with the filmmaker prefaces an in-depth analysis of the films. In Double Lives, Second Chances (1999), the Columbia University professor believes, for example, that Zofia, the ethics professor of Decalogue 8, functions as Kieslowski’s mouthpiece, “espousing a skeptical humanism rooted in spiritual belief.” In her final assessment, she notes, “Kieslowski was neither overly nor overtly fond of organized religion, but his later work emanates a belief in the life of the spirit.” She remarks that the director “still seems so present to many of us, maybe it’s because of the transcendence in which he seemed to believe — his ‘impression that there must be more things beyond what we can see; as he put it in I’m So-So.” In The Three Colours Trilogy (1998), British critic Geoff Andrew includes Kieslowski among a small group of directors, like Dreyer, Rossellini, Bresson, Bergman, and Tarkovsky, who have attempted to explore, through an eminently materialistic medium, a metaphysical and transcendental reality. Unlike Bresson and Rossellini, Andrew affirms almost casually, Kieslowski was not a Catholic. These two examples show how the films become a Rorschach test that illuminates the perspectives from which the scholars talk: transcendence and mystery, yes, but the presence of God, no…or an agnostic “maybe.” To fully grasp the Catholicism of Kieslowski’s work, one must acknowledge the historical, philosophical, and religious traditions that connect his cinema, shaped by the totalitarian hecatombs 20th-century Poland endured, with that of other fellow artists and intellectuals. These include Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz, composer Henryk Gorecki, Zanussi, and, of course, Karol Wojtyla, as per George Weigel’s magnificent 1999 biography, Witness to Hope. Interestingly, by offering a cultural and political history of Poland to examine the pope’s context, the biographer supplies the reader with such an understanding. Even so, it should be said, the book offers no particular connections between the Polish cinema of moral and social consciousness that flourished in the 60s and 70s and Bishop Wojtyla’s passionate concern for cultural matters. That such connection existed should be seen, for example, in the fact that Jozef Tischner, the recently deceased philosopher priest and long-time friend of the pope, gave the eulogy at the filmmaker’s funeral. In other words, Kieslowski and his Polish compatriots have a common Catholic understanding of the essence and value of the human person, made to the image and resemblance of God. By virtue of this filiation, we are all, the living and the dead, part of the same body—the communion of saints—held together by the redeeming power of love. Since Kieslowski produced works of fiction, the viewer will not find philosophical and religious treatises. But the eyes and minds of the believer will clearly recognize the Jewish-Christian tradition and spirituality that frame the stories, most notably since The Decalogue."
- Maria Elena De Las Carreras, 'Filming The 10 Commandments : Kieslowski As A Catholic Director'
"I produced that film, in fact. I produced all of Krzysztof Kieslowski's Polish films, since he made them all with the participation of Tor [the national film studio of which Krzysztof Zanussi became artistic director in 1980]. It didn't mean very much to me at the time, because he was my deputy. He produced them as well. You know, 'Camera Buff' was unsellable for many years. Before his other films were recognized, this one was considered totally local and of no interest to Western audiences — which shows you how unstable opinions are. We were very close friends. It's difficult to talk about him, because of his early death and his traumatic — and, to me, erroneous — decision to withdraw [from filmmaking] at his peak. He was so bitter about his career, because he knew he was good but not recognized. He felt humiliated that so many festivals did not want his films, that they repeatedly said he wasn't a good filmmaker. When things changed and he suddenly became very famous, it made him bitter. Fame must come at the right time — not too early and not too late. I kept telling him that it's not our choice [to withdraw from making films]. We have to succumb to the circumstances. If they want us to continue, we have to continue until they boo."
- Krzysztof Zanussi, The Chicago Reader
Krzysztof Zanussi
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Post by petrolino on Mar 16, 2019 23:22:12 GMT
In the 1970s, Polish filmmakers could often be found working in television or making documentaries, in part due to the government's sustained effort to degrade film art. A new generation of directors took this opportunity to fight back against the system, taking teachings of the Polish Film School into dark rural and industrial conflicts to create the philosophical and psychological works of the 'Cinema of Moral Anxiety'.
This considered, socially conscious, cinematic movement frequently combines art with science and has influenced many film movements to emerge since, from 'American Urban' in the USA to 'Dogme 95' in Denmark.
"To have a phone line allocated and installed, one could wait as long as 20 years. The deficit of private phones was not only a result of poor infrastructure, it was also very lowly prioritized by the communist power. Less phones means less conversations to control, less conspiracy and trouble. In the village Sierpowo, from 7.45 AM till 3PM the school phone was used in the office but during afternoons it became a public device (…) numerous visitors who had urgent calls to make would come to use it. People would call ambulances or police or to inform their family about a new child or a death. It was the only phone in a radius of several miles. There was only one shop selling foreign goods, and it did not accept local currency. Pewex is short for Internal Export Company, and that already should give you an idea of how crazy it was, because: The term export means shipping the goods and services out of a country. Pewex was introduced in 1970s to help the country's foreign currency deficit and offered most goods which were unavailable elsewhere (such as toilet paper, jeans, and electronics), but accepted foreign currencies only. The exchange ratio was outrageous and possession of foreign currency in cash was forbidden (it had to be exchanged for bank cheques), but Pewex had no competition and so became one of the most loved shops until the fall of communism."
- Wojciech Oleksiak, Culture Poland
'Polish society in the 1970s was heading from a social movement to an even greater struggle. Polish filmmakers turned their focus to the lives of ordinary people living under an oppressive regime, living between the confines of ideals and reality. This period is commonly known as 'Cinema of Moral Anxiety'.'
- Hong Kong University presents a 2015 Polish film retrospective
"Very early in her career, Ewa Partum developed both a taste for visual poetry and attention to public space. The artist rapidly subverted, for example, the prescriptive discourse governing street signs: in 'Legality of Space' (1971), one of her first works, she “uprooted” street signs from the streets of Łódź and replanted them — as a sort of irony — in Freedom Square. Some of the instructions, modified to create contradictory injunctions such as “_prohibition prohibited_,” translated the absurdity of authoritarian discourse in the People’s Republic of Poland at the time. Similarly, the white letters which she scattered in 'Active Poetry' (1971) used an official propaganda tool of the 1970s: ready-mades available in all school supplies stores, often used to compose communist banners. Partum subverted the machine of political indoctrination and its “ready-to-use” discourse, but also challenged the determinism of a language immobilized by the rules of grammar, syntax, and spelling. By scattering these white letters first around the city, then in the countryside, she opted for a continuous redistribution of meaning. Passers’-by footsteps, rolling waves, or the wind would carry on the dispersal."
- Grodzisk Mazowiecki, 'Active Change. My Problem Is A Problem Of A Woman'
Anna Prucnal : Exile in Mainland Europe
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Marek Piwowski (Born: October 24, 1935 in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland)
Czesław Niemen & Marek Piwowski
'The Cruise' (1970, Rejs - Marek Piwowski)
Passengers aboard a tourist boat cruising the River Vistula endure a power struggle while in search of light entertainment. 'The Cruise' is one of the most popular comedy films in Poland. It's often read as a commentary on the workings of the communist administration of the time.
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Janusz Majewski (Born: August 5, 1931 in Lwów, Lwowskie, Poland [now Lviv, Ukraine])
Janusz Majewski
'Lokis. A Manuscript Of Professor Wittembach' (1970, Lokis. Rękopis profesora Wittembacha - Janusz Majewski)
In the 19th century, a pastor studying folklore is invited to stay at a mansion where a lady was attacked by a bear. The horror mystery 'Lokis. A Manuscript Of Professor Wittembach' is an adaptation of a novel by Prosper Merimee.
Małgorzata Braunek
'Jealousy And Medicine' (1973, Zazdrość i medycyna - Janusz Majewski)
In the 1930s, a doctor enters into an affair with the mysterious wife of a wealthy industrialist. The macabre fantasy 'Jealousy And Medicine' is an adaptation of a novel by Michal Choromanski.
Andrzej Lapicki & Ewa Krzyżewska
'An Epitaph For Barbara Radziwill' (1983, Epitafium dla Barbary Radziwiłłówny - Janusz Majewski)
A historical drama with mystical elements about Barbara Radziwill who served as Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania.
Anna Dymna & Jerzy Zelnik
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Kazimierz Kutz (Born: February 16, 1929 in Szopienice [now part of Katowice], Slaskie, Poland - Died: December 18, 2018 (age 89) in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland)
Kazimierz Kutz
'Pearl In The Crown' (1972, Perła w koronie - Kazimierz Kutz)
A social document of a miners' strike that occurred during the Silesian Uprising of the 1920s and its effects on a small community.
Łucja Kowolik
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Witold Leszczyński (Born: August 16, 1933 in Lódz, Lódzkie, Poland - Died: September 1, 2007 (age 74) in Lódz, Lódzkie, Poland)
Witold Leszczyński
'Personal Search' (1973, Rewizja osobista - Andrzej Kostenko & Witold Leszczyński)
A family of smugglers gets caught up in communist customs control, causing secrets to unravel beneath a suffocating cloak of bureaucracy.
Wieslawa Mazurkiewicz
'Kto Wymyślił Naszą Miłość' - Anna Jantar
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Post by petrolino on Mar 17, 2019 0:30:06 GMT
Andrzej Kondratiuk (Born: July 20, 1936 in Pinsk, Poleskie, Poland [now Pinsk, Belarus] - Died: June 22, 2016 (age 79) in Grójec, Mazowieckie, Poland)
Film and television were closely connected in Poland in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, as was the case in Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. It was convenient for monitoring and enabled both arenas to be utilised by state-controlled media. The vast majority of active Polish film directors seemed to work in film and television during these decades. Some found greater freedoms working in the documentary field as filming operations suffered less from studio interference and enforced restrictions. Some films commissioned for television were screened in theatres and now some are shown on television.
Andrzej Kondratiuk was primarily a comedy director but he also crafted sensitive human dramas. His brother Janusz Kondratiuk worked in film and television too. Their television movies of the 1970s are some of the most popular with Polish audiences and can count a raft of national stars among their casts. Andrzej explored national identity through his work, often highlighting similarities and differences between city dwellers and rural folk with an obvious affection.
"Comedy travels notoriously poorly, which probably explains why the work of the brothers Andrzej and Janusz Kondratiuk is almost entirely unknown in Britain despite an enthusiastic domestic cult following. Andrzej’s second feature Hydro-Riddle (1970) was screened in the Tate Modern’s ‘Polish New Wave’ season in 2009, but before then his most accessible film by far was Roman Polanski’s short Mammals (1962), which he co-wrote. Although much of the Kondratiuks’ output is still off limits to non-Polish speakers, 2011 has already seen a substantial increase in accessibility. In January, Telewizja Kinopolska’s ongoing cycle of auteur-themed DVD box sets compiled five Andrzej Kondratiuk films (three features, two shorts, all English-subtitled). Two of those features, Hydro-Riddle and The Ascended, are playing in a Kinoteka double bill, as are two of Janusz’s films from the same period. This is still a snapshot of the early part of lengthy careers, but there’s enough here to give a good impression – and the films straddle the temporal and cultural divide surprisingly well. Early 1970s Britain and Poland may have had significant political differences, but the sarcastic humour, a pervasive sense of national decline and unwarranted respect for stifling petty regulations are only too familiar."
- Michael Brooke, 'Poles Together : The Brothers Kondratiuk'
Andrzej Kondratiuk & Iga Cembrzyńska
Polish girls wearing traditional dress in Łowicz
Mazowsze performing in 1963
'Hydro-Riddle' (1970, Hydrozagadka - Andrzej Kondratiuk)
Scientists examining a radioactive fish gain unlikely assistance from a morally upstanding superhero who battles vice and corruption, shuns alcohol users and rejects clingy women. 'Hydro-Riddle' features traditional Polish dance and Arabic dance as well as mariachi music, scat jazz and a live folk rock band.
Iga Cembrzyńska & Józef Nowak
'On Cloud Nine' (1973, Wniebowzięci - Andrzej Kondratiuk)
Two pals hit the jackpot but their winnings go to their head. They take a short trip from Warsaw to Rzeszow to meet girls but suspicion greets them at every turn and they can't help acting suspicious.
Zdzisław Maklakiewicz, Jan Himilsbach, Ewa Pielach & Regina Regulska
'How It Is Done' (1974, Jak to sie robi - Andrzej Kondratiuk)
A film director and aspiring screenwriter bed down at a winter lodge on the lookout for actresses. Several songs heard in the film 'How It Is Done' are co-written by Andrzej Kondratiuk (his musical consultant for this project was Krystyna Grabowska).
Jan Himilsbach & Zdzislaw Maklakiewicz
'Full Moon' (1979, Pełnia - Andrzej Kondratiuk)
An architect leaves Warsaw for a country life and finds meaning in a small rural village.
Janusz Gajos & Tomasz Zaliwski
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Post by petrolino on Mar 22, 2019 23:19:05 GMT
Andrzej Żuławski (Born: November 22, 1940 in Lwów, Lwowskie, Poland [now Lviv, Ukraine] - Died: February 17, 2016 (age 75) in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland)
Surrealist Andrzej Zulawski was an artist, novelist and filmmaker who lived in Poland, Ukraine and Czech Republic as a boy, but undertook his film and art studies in France. In Poland, he worked as assistant director to Andrzej Wajda on several productions, before setting out to film a novel written by his father, Polish poet Miroslaw Zulawski. Trouble with the censors led Zulawski to return to France in the mid-1970s, and like his compatriot Walerian Borowczyk, he made Paris his home away from home. Zulawski endured a difficult return to Poland in the mid-1970s when he was officially invited to make a film based upon a story by his great-uncle, science-fiction writer Jerzy Zulawski, only to see his uncompleted project callously sabotaged by the authorities. Zulawski's baroque films often court hysteria, igniting springboard plots propelled by freaky incidents and outlandish occurrences. His passion for contrasting wired performances with inured characters can be disconcerting to some, as can his viscous tableaux which drip with unhealthy symbolism and are ripe in dense atmospherics.
"The experience of watching a Zulawski film is exponentially rewarding when you’ve had the pleasure of seeing more than one. As with all dense cinema — and much of Zulawski’s work is packed with wordy dialogue, quick pacing, and confounding behavior — it’s a pleasant relief to identify recurring themes and details across multiple films. Attending a Zulawski retrospective is undoubtedly akin to going on a wild Easter egg hunt in search of doppelgangers, dandies, nude dancing and bodily convulsions, sweeping tracking shots following briskly walking women, spitting (both erotic and irreverent), nose picking, and food fighting."
- Margaret Barton-Fumo, Film Comment
"I came from the French cinematic school of real thinking; and I believe that, with few exceptions, acting is a female occupation."
- Andrzej Zulawski
Andrzej Żuławski
'Pieśń Nad Pieśniami' - Ewa Demarczyk
'The Third Part Of The Night' (1971, Trzecia część nocy - Andrzej Zulawski)
A sinister doppelganger dream plays out during Germany's occupation of Poland in World War 2. Andrzej Zulawski's debut feature is an adaptation of a novel by his father Miroslaw Zulawski. The factory in the movie is inspired by a real research laboratory, the Institute for Study of Typhus and Virology.
"Doppelgängers and mistaken identities were key parts of Andrzej Żuławski’s dreamlike vocabulary."
- Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, 'The Nightmarish World Of Andrzej Zulawski'
Małgorzata Braunek
'The Devil' (1972, Diabeł - Andrzej Zulawski)
A nightmare unfolds when three strangers embark on a journey during Prussia's invasion of Poland in the 18th century. 'The Devil' was banned by the government in Poland, a decision that was endorsed by the Catholic Church.
Monika Niemczyk
'That Most Important Thing: Love' (1975, L'important c'est d'aimer - Andrzej Zulawski)
A reflexive study of the filmmaking process and its relationship with the theatre. The story's adapted from a book written by Christopher Frank.
Romy Schneider & Andrzej Zulawski
'Possession' (1981, Opętanie - Andrzej Zulawski)
A doppelganger delusion in which divorce leads a husband to wander as his wife explores destiny through her id.
"The common negative view of Andrzej Żuławski’s cinema was that his plots were wilfully baffling, that his camerawork was too florid, that he encouraged his actors to emote and gesticulate as if in some continual state of paroxysm. But this was an entirely superficial impression. Underlying the heightened nature of the films was a deep, questioning soulfulness related to literary antecedents coupled with a vision of cinema open to shifting levels of perception and fantasy. For many years his only film to have had any kind of impact in Britain was 'Possession', shot in English in a divided Berlin in 1980, which even achieved the distinction of being briefly classified as a ‘video nasty’. Described by its director as a “fairy tale for adults”, it was born from two impulses: the director’s return to Poland after a period abroad to find his son alone in a flat and his wife elsewhere; and a viewing of Bergman’s 'Scenes from a Marriage', which Żuławski felt had no fruitful conclusion."
- David Thompson, The British Film Institute
Isabelle Adjani
'Wstawaj, Szkoda Dnia' - 2 Plus 1
'The Public Woman' (1984, La femme publique - Andrzej Zulawski)
An actress is hired to perform in an adaptation of 'Demons' (1871), a book written by Fyodor Dostoevsky that was published around the time of the seizure of power by the Paris Commune. This film is actually an adaptation of a novel by Dominique Garnier. Interestingly, Zulawski's mentor Andrzej Wajda had been trying to fund a project based on 'Demons' for years and would finally realise this ambition with 'The Possessed' (1988), a film also shot in France.
Lambert Wilson & Valerie Kaprisky
'Mad Love' (1985, L'Amour braque - Andrzej Zulawski)
A crime movie about a bank robber's odyssey that's inspired by 'The Idiot' by Fyodor Dostoevsky, a novel published around 1868.
Sophie Marceau
'My Nights Are More Beautiful Than Your Days' (1989, Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours - Andrzej Zulawski)
The tale of a doomed love affair. It's based on a novel by Raphaele Billetdoux.
"A non-conformist visionary of world cinema, his approach to storytelling is idiosyncratic and characterised by explosions of violence, sexuality, and despair. The actors in his movies have played out the most intensely high-pitched emotions in cinema history which inspired the French to coin the term 'Żuławskien', meaning 'over the top'."
- Marta Jazowska, 'Andrzej Zulawski - Artist'
Jacques Dutronc & Sophie Marceau
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Post by petrolino on Mar 23, 2019 18:00:17 GMT
Krzysztof Kieślowski (Born: June 27, 1941 in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland - Died: March 13, 1996 (age 54) in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland)
I think you could make a case for Krzysztof Kieslowski being the most famous, internationally recognised Polish filmmaker of the 20th century. He was a Catholic filmmaker from Warsaw of humble beginnings who entered the documentary field in the 1960s. He made industrial films, short subject films and reluctantly toyed with video technology, but any initial apprehension towards technology proved misleading as Kieslowski quickly showed signs of becoming a gifted technician. He battled censorship throughout his career and in several instances found his work being cited during real-life legal and criminal cases, notable examples coming with the releases of 'I Was A Soldier' (1970), 'From A Night Porter's Point Of View' (1977), 'Station' (1981) and 'A Short Film About Love' (1988 - an expansion of 'Dekalog: Six'). Reluctant to be tagged as a political agitator, having frequently given voice to unheard members of the proletariat, Kieslowski grew increasingly bitter and left to find greater freedom in France, as Andrzej Wajda, Walerian Borowczyk and Andrzej Zulawski had done before him (his friend Krzysztof Zanussi moved to Germany for a time in the 1980s). Kieslowski's French films were different but no less provocative; colourful symphonies celebrating love, life and liberty beneath the cover of darkness.
"Krzysztof Kieslowski's cinematic style stands apart in several important respects: his mastery of abstract imagery, his innovative use of sound and his deliberate circumvention of standard cinematic codes. Unlike many other "art" directors - who often fail to rise above commentary on the medium itself - Kieslowski uses these stylistic liberties to explore his philosophical concerns: fate, God, suffering, and love."
- Joseph Kickasola, 'The Liminal Image'
Krzysztof Kieślowski
'Lullaby For Anne-Sophie' - Witold Lutosławski
'The Scar' (1976, Blizna - Krzysztof Kieslowski)
A loyal party member is put in charge of plans to build a chemical factory that will bring work to the local community. The people of Olechow, however, don't want a chemical plant.
* At the heart of 'The Scar' stands issues concerning local council politics and its uneasy alliance with central government, land development and the role it plays in the industrialisation process, threats posed to workers and communities by industry deregulation and the evisceration of forests. The Visegrad 4 (the V-4) trade co-operative could one day become the V-5 if Croatia is invited to join. It's named from the first Congress of Visegrad, a 1335 summit in Visegrad that led to John I of Bohemia, Charles I of Hungary and Casimir III of Poland striking an alliance. These industrial titans are looking to develop new technologies but are bound by their past. Slovakia has a long history of mining and agriculture, though it was steel production that built up the industrial centre Kosice. Hungary has enabled heavy industry to flourish in cities like Dunaujvaros and Miskolc. Ostrava was known as the Steel Heart of the Czech Republic, while Hodonin is a keynote industrial city using new new technologies to create an industrial innovation centre, similar to Dubuque, Iowa, that'll be combined with an information technology superhighway like the one in Duluth, Minnesota. Representatives of the fast-growing American high technology market being built in Cincinnati, Ohio have observed practises in Czech Republic, while a new regional partnership between South Bend & Elkhart in Indiana is planning for the creation of a major new innovation technology park project that could transform the local area's economic fortunes. Poland is a heavy industry colossus with a bold and adventurous past. From the shipyards of Gdansk to shipbuilding operations in Szczecin, the manufacturing hub Wroclaw to the textiles centre Lodz (once dubbed the "Polish Manchester"), this history weaves the fabric of a modern nation. In the 19th century, industrialisation in Katowice turned local mills and farms into steelworks, mines, foundries and artisan workshops, providing a blueprint for rapid industrialisation. Cut forward to today and you see Bielsko-Bala has the Bielsko Urban Agglomeration and is a key automotive and transport hub. Gliwice is also a pivotal industrial centre, having switched from steelworks and coal mining to focus on automotive and machine industry; the last remaining coal mine was set to close before 2021 but may have been given a stay of execution ... for now.
"Smaller markets (with fewer than 50,000 tech workers) in the Midwest – where there has been a major effort to attract more tech startups in recent years – saw increases in the number of tech talent jobs. These jobs include software developers and programmers; computer support, database and systems jobs; technology and engineering-related jobs; and computer and information system managers. Madison, Wisconsin, added 6,720 tech talent jobs in the last five years, a 39.5 percent increase, to 23,740. Columbus, Ohio, and Pittsburgh both added more than 6,700 tech talent jobs in the last five years. The latter two cities are close to surpassing 50,000 tech workers and becoming major markets for tech."
- Ryan Suppe, USA Today (published July 25, 2018)
"Krzysztof Kieslowski’s father finally succumbed to illness and died at the age of 47. A distant uncle directed the College for Theatre Technicians in Warsaw, so Kieslowski enrolled. He subsequently fell in love with the theatre and decided to become a director, but in order to enter the program, first had to complete studies in another field. He chose film directing because he thought it would be related to the theatre, but failed his entrance exams to Lódz Film School two successive years in a row. During this time, he starved himself and faked psychological instability to avoid military service, which reminded him of the regimented life of the firemen’s college. He supported his family through various jobs, from office positions to theatrical tailoring (where he met many actors who would later work for him), and dabbled in poetry and drawing. After his third annual attempt, Kieslowski was finally admitted to the school. Lódz had been one of the few Polish towns spared from bombardment during the war. The film school was founded in 1948 for Stalinist propaganda, but it had developed a reputation for its liberal curriculum, which included rare screenings of international cinema and courses in film theory, as well as the production of fiction and documentary films. The school launched the careers of such filmmakers as Andrzej Munk, Andrzej Wajda, Roman Polanski, Krzyzstof Zanussi, and Jerzy Skolimowski. The Lódz curriculum was certainly Kieslowski’s first serious exposure to cinema. “A number of films have stayed in my memory simply because they’re beautiful,” he later recalled. “I always said that I never wanted to be anybody’s assistant but that if, for example, Ken Loach were to ask me, then I’d willingly make him coffee. I saw 'Kes' (1969) at film school and I knew then that I’d willingly make coffee for him.” In what was to be one of several key disillusionments which would affect the course of his career (including the firemen’s college, he would also abandon documentary filmmaking and, ultimately, filmmaking altogether before the end of his life), Kieslowski was no longer enthused by the theatre — a golden age beginning in 1956 had, according to him, petered out by 1962. His training at Lódz thus became the foundation for his career. After writing a thesis entitled “Reality and the Documentary Film” which proposed that reality was stranger — and much more dramatic — than fiction, he graduated in 1968, during a time of heated political dissent and resistance. Internal rivalries within the Party prompted an ideological clampdown on cultural events and the resulting student demonstrations, violently repressed, were blamed on Zionist instigators. Many Jews were expelled from Poland, including members of the intelligentsia and even some of the faculty at Lódz Film School. “Twice in my life I tried my hand at politics,” Kieslowski later said, “and twice I came out very badly. The first time was then, in 1968, when I took part in a students’ strike in Lódz. That was not very important; I threw stones and ran away from the militia.” Despite the unrest, Kieslowski married his lifelong wife, Marysia, during his final year in school and his graduate project, 'From the City of Lódz' (1968), was jointly funded by Lódz and the WFD (State Documentary Film Studios) in Warsaw. Just over seventeen minutes long, the film was a black and white portrait of the city of Lódz with its pre-war, aged structures and harsh living conditions. (“Singularly picturesque with its dilapidated buildings, dilapidated staircases, dilapidated people,” Kieslowski recalled.)"
- Doug Cummings, Senses Of Cinema
"Eighty-five per cent of the small farmers in Cuba pay rent and live under constant threat of being evicted from the land they till. More than half of our most productive land is in the hands of foreigners. In Oriente, the largest province, the lands of the United Fruit Company and the West Indian Company link the northern and southern coasts. There are two hundred thousand peasant families who do not have a single acre of land to till to provide food for their starving children. On the other hand, nearly three hundred thousand caballerias of cultivable land owned by powerful interests remain uncultivated. If Cuba is above all an agricultural State, if its population is largely rural, if the city depends on these rural areas, if the people from our countryside won our war of independence, if our nation's greatness and prosperity depend on a healthy and vigorous rural population that loves the land and knows how to work it, if this population depends on a State that protects and guides it, then how can the present state of affairs be allowed to continue?
Except for a few food, lumber and textile industries, Cuba continues to be primarily a producer of raw materials. We export sugar to import candy, we export hides to import shoes, we export iron to import plows ... Everyone agrees with the urgent need to industrialise the nation, that we need steel industries, paper and chemical industries, that we must improve our cattle and grain production, the technology and processing in our food industry in order to defend ourselves against the ruinous competition from Europe in cheese products, condensed milk, liquors and edible oils, and the United States in canned goods; that we need cargo ships; that tourism should be an enormous source of revenue. But the capitalists insist that the workers remain under the yoke."
- Fidel Castro, 'History Will Absolve Me' (historic speech at the Court of Appeals of Santiago de Cuba, October 16, 1953)
"One of the documentaries I wanted to film — and I think if I had done, it would be very useful now — was of various long talks with politicians who have since died; with Communists, that is. I submitted the subject to the State Documentary Film Studios (WFD) proposing between twenty or thirty hours of interviews with Gomutka, Cyrankiewicz, Moczar. And I must say that the Studios even started making moves in that direction and probably managed to get hold of some of these people, but they didn’t get an agreement. That was in the mid 1970s, after 'Workers ’71'. I thought that something really had to be recorded on film about these people. Just talking heads, nothing else. Not to do anything else at all. I even proposed that we make the film and hide it in the archives without showing it to anybody. Simply keep it in the archives as a historical document. I suspect those people might have said something, some truth, if I’d have been clever. There were many documentaries which I didn’t make. I managed to put a few of them into 'Camera Buff'. The film buff makes them as amateur films. A documentary about pavements, or about a dwarf."
- Krzysztof Kieslowski, 'Kieslowski On Kieslowski (published in the 'Directors On Directors' series)'
Franciszek Pieczka
'Concerto for Harpsichord and String Orchestra, Op. 40' - Henryk Górecki
'Camera Buff' (1979, Amator - Krzysztof Kieslowski)
A factory worker obtains a camera which takes control of his life. As a leading voice himself within Poland's burgeoning "Cinema of Moral Anxiety" movement, here, Krzysztof Kieslowski appears to poke fun at himself, aided and abetted by comedian Jerzy Stuhr.
"Although Poland’s first film dates back to 1908, the wholesale destruction of its industry and much of its talent (who either died or emigrated) during the Second World War meant that 1945 was practically Year Zero, and Polish cinema’s postwar resurrection was considerably hindered by an edict that all films made between 1949 and 1956 cleave to the strictures of Stalinist ‘socialist realism’. But following October 1956’s cultural thaw, Polish cinema rapidly emerged as one of the freshest and most exciting forces in Europe, several years before equivalent French, British, Czech and Hungarian ‘new waves’, with filmmakers such as Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Andrzej Munk, Roman Polanski and Andrzej Wajda established as world-class talents. Two decades later, at the turn of the 1980s, it seemed even more relevant, with Wajda and his younger successors Agnieszka Holland, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Wojciech Marczewski and Krzysztof Zanussi offering searching studies of Polish psychology and politics against a backdrop of real-life historical upheavals that accompanied the 1978 election of a Polish pope and the 1980 Solidarity protests that exposed the cracks in the Iron Curtain long before it finally came crashing down."
- Michael Brooke, The British Film Institute
"It is an article of faith that in the world of Krzysztof Kieslowski all actions must be carried out to their logical conclusions. The driver of a hearse must eventually confront death. A man who picks up a camera must eventually become a filmmaker with all the responsibilities and burdens that go along with it. 'Camera Buff' is the film that gave Kieslowski major international attention and marks a major artistic shift in his work. He began as a documentary filmmaker, gradually moving towards socially engaged, realist fiction. His middle period, beginning with this film, still features the penetratingly observant eye of a documentarian, but takes on broader philosophical questions and is characterised by a virtuosic visual style that seamlessly combines theme and form in highly original ways. Fittingly, then, 'Camera Buff' is a self-reflexive work on the role of the filmmaker and the nature and ethics of the medium itself."
- Rahul Hamid, Senses Of Cinema
Małgorzata Ząbkowska & Jerzy Stuhr
'No End' (1985, Bez końca - Krzysztof Kieslowski)
A state of martial law is declared in Poland and the government clampdown sees a crackdown on those suspected of being political dissidents.
"No End" is a film by Krzysztof Kieślowski from 1984. At the time of its premiere, the film was criticized by all sides: the communist authorities of Poland accused the director of antisocialist subversion, the opposition considered the film to be commissioned by the authorities, whilst the Catholic Church criticized the anti-Christian ending. Despite attacks in both the official and the underground press, Kieślowski’s drama was welcomed warmly by audiences. Kieślowski admitted that he had never received so many letters and phone calls from viewers who found in the film a true representation of the psychological condition of Polish citizens shortly after martial law."
- Robert Birkholc, Culture Poland
Grażyna Szapołowska & Krzysztof Krzeminski
'Blind Chance' (1987, Przypadek - Krzysztof Kieslowski)
A man running for a train enters different dimensions.
"In the year before he made 'Blind Chance', Krzysztof Kieslowski directed two short, black and white documentaries. 'Talking Heads' (Gadajace glowy, 1980) asks generations of Poles the questions “Who are you?” and “What do you most wish for?” One student, around the same age as the hero of Blind Chance, states, “I still have time to make a firm decision which will bind me for the rest of my life”. The second is set in a 'Railway Station' (Dworzec, 1980), and describes a lifeless world dominated by surveillance and propaganda. The motifs of life-choices and railway stations equally inform 'Blind Chance', and register the ferment in Polish society at the time, when dissatisfaction with the Communist administration culminated in strikes organised by the Solidarity movement. 'Blind Chance', like many Kieslowski films, executes a narrative loop, beginning with its end, as the hero Witek (Boguslaw Linda) screams at something we only understand in the last frame."
- Darragh O'Donoghue, Senses Of Cinema
Marzena Trybała & Bogusław Linda
'Dekalog : The Ten Commandments' (1989 - 1990, Dekalog - Krzysztof Kieslowski)
A compendium of ten films inspired by the decalogue of the Ten Commandments.
"Ten commandments, 10 films. Krzysztof Kieslowski sat for months in his small, smoke-filled room in Warsaw writing the scripts with a lawyer he’d met in the early 1980s, during the Solidarity trials. Krzysztof Piesiewicz didn’t know how to write, the director remembered, but he could talk. For hours they talked about Poland in turmoil, and together they wrote the screenplay for “No End” (1985), which told three stories of life under martial law. The government found it unsympathetic, the opposition found it compromised, and the Catholic church found it immoral. During the controversy, the collaborators ran into each other in the rain, and Piesiewicz, maybe looking for more trouble, shouted, “Someone should make a film about the Ten Commandments.” They made 10 films, each an hour long, for Polish television. The series ran in the late 1980s, played at Venice and other film festivals, and gathered extraordinary praise. But the form was ungainly for theatrical showing (do you ask audiences to sit for 10 hours, or come for five two-hour sessions?), and “The Decalogue” never had an ordinary U.S. theatrical run, nor was it available here on video. Now, at last, it is being released in North America on tapes and DVD discs. I taught a class on “The Decalogue” a few years ago, using tapes from England, and found that we lost a lot of time trying to match up the films and the commandments. There isn’t a one-to-one correlation; some films touch on more than one commandment, and others involve the whole ethical system suggested by the commandments. These are not simplistic illustrations of the rules, but stories that involve real people in the complexities of real problems. All the stories involve characters who live in the same high-rise Warsaw apartment complex. We grow familiar with the layout, and even glimpse characters from one story in the backgrounds of others--sharing the lift, for example. There is a young man who appears in eight of them, a solemn onlooker who never says anything but sometimes makes sad eye contact. I thought perhaps he represented Christ, but Kieslowski, in an essay about the series, says, “I don’t know who he is; just a guy who comes and watches us, our lives. He’s not very pleased with us.” Directors are notorious for not pinning down the meanings of their images. I like the theory of Annette Insdorf, in her valuable book about Kieslowski, Double Lives, Second Chances; she compares the watcher to the angels in Wim Wenders’ “Wings of Desire,” who are “pure gaze”--able to “record human folly and suffering but unable to alter the course of the lives they witness.” The 10 films are not philosophical abstractions but personal stories that involve us immediately; I hardly stirred during some of them."
- Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times
"I am always reluctant to single out some particular feature of the work of a major filmmaker because it tends inevitably to simplify and reduce the work. But in this book of screenplays by Krzysztof Kieślowski and his co-author, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, it should not be out of place to observe that they have the very rare ability to dramatize their ideas rather than just talking about them. By making their points through the dramatic action of the story they gain the added power of allowing the audience to discover what's really going on rather than being told. They do this with such dazzling skill, you never see the ideas coming and don't realize until much later how profoundly they have reached your heart."
- Stanley Kubrick, foreword to 'Dekalog : The Ten Commandments'
Adrianna Biedrzyńska
'Three Miniatures' - Krzysztof Penderecki
'The Double Life Of Veronique' (1991, La Double vie de Veronique - Krzysztof Kieslowski)
A Polish choir soprano and a French music teacher, who appear to be doubles, share an emotional bond redolent of the psychic and physical relationship between identical twin sisters.
"There’s arguably a before and after period in Kieslowski’s work that is divided by 1985’s “No End.” That film marked the first collaboration with screenwriter Piesiewicz and composer Zbigniew Preisner and both men would work on every subsequent Kieslowski picture. Arguably, Kieslowski’s metaphysical sonnets of intuitive nature from that period forward became masterful symphonies of sound, color, and rich emotional transcendence. Interestingly enough, this new period would center almost exclusively on ravishing female protagonists (though “The Dekalog” was mixed). Frustrated by the medium of cinema and/or his own limitations — a terminally cynical Kieslowski didn’t believe the interior mysteriousness of the human condition could be aptly captured on film, though that hardly ever stopped him — and exhausted by the speed in which he made his final masterwork and triptych Three Colors trilogy (he directed all three in under ten months and at one point he was editing, shooting and writing all three films simultaneously), Kieslowski announced his retirement at the age of 52 during the premiere of “Red” at the Cannes Film Festival. Just under two years later, as word came out that he was considering leaving retirement to form a new trilogy loosely based on the concepts of heaven, hell and purgatory (one of which was later directed by Tom Tykwer), the filmmaker died during open-heart surgery at the all-too early age of 54."
- Rodrigo Perez, IndieWire
Irène Jacob
On Kieslowski : Irène Jacob
'Three Colours: Blue' (1993, Trois couleurs: Bleu - Krzysztof Kieslowski) / 'Three Colours: White' (1994, Trois couleurs: Blanc - Krzysztof Kieslowski) / 'Three Colours: Red' (1994, Trois couleurs: Rouge - Krzysztof Kieslowski)
A trilogy of films themed on the French Revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
"Krzysztof Kieslowski is in top form, full of beans, raring to go. He sits in a pool of cigarette smoke, inhales with relish and scrubs out his past. 'It's enough. It's with pleasure that I'm putting film-making aside. I never enjoyed making films. I didn't like the whole film world, an invented, unreal world whose values are completely different to those I'm used to. Basic values. It's not an honourable profession.' What is an honourable profession? 'Making shoes, that's honourable. Something which is useful.' So he's going back to Poland to make shoes? 'No, unfortunately, I don't know how to. I am trained as a film-maker. There is nothing else I can do.' After 'The Dekalog', 'The Double Life Of Veronique' and the 'Blue', 'White' and 'Red' trilogy, all written with Krzystztof Piesiewicz,' at 52 he is widely regarded as Europe's top film-maker. Has he at least enjoyed the critical acclaim? 'It's not interesting to achieve; the ways of achievement are interesting.' Ah, he's quitting because he has achieved so much that making films is no longer a challenge? 'No, I haven't achieved in films and I never will, and therefore I think you have to find the right moment and back away.' After a few minutes, I begin to feel I'm interviewing Beckett's Vladimir, or a Rubic Cube. He says life is made up of contradictions, and a good film - he cites Fellini's 'La Strada' - manages to describe the world as it is while also creating its own world. By that measure, he has made some truly wonderful films. His greatest, for me, is 'The Dekalog', a series of 10 films loosely and agnostically based on the Ten Commandments. Writhing in pessimism and humanism, they camouflage their big themes - chance and fate, right and wrong, connecting and not connecting, belonging and not belonging - in little, elliptical stories that more than anything convey the unknowability of life. An envelope remains sealed and life turns one way. If it had been opened … The philosopher Walter Benjamin once demonstrated the power of story-telling stripped of psychology. Kieslowski's films - especially up to and including 'The Dekalog' - illustrate this perfectly. Whereas most Hollywood movies make explict the motivation behind every action, he simply allows things to happen."
- Simon Hattenstone, The Guardian
On Kieslowski : Juliette Binoche / Julie Delpy
...
"For me optimism is two lovers walking into the sunset arm in arm. Or maybe into the sunrise - whatever appeals to you."
- Krzysztof Kieslowski
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Post by petrolino on Mar 30, 2019 1:25:53 GMT
Agnieszka Holland (Born: November 28, 1948 in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland)
Filmmaker Agnieszka Holland enrolled at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, Czech Republic where she became directly influenced by the work of Czech and Slovak directors active within the film industry. Upon returning home to Poland, Holland worked as assistant director to Krzysztof Zanussi and was mentored by Andrzej Wajda. Her career has taken her all over the globe, making short subject films, documentary films and theatrical features. She's currently serving as Chairwoman of the European Film Academy (Wim Wenders is the current President having served as Chairman when Ingmar Bergman was President).
"Agnieszka Holland’s filmography is vast and sprawling, both geographically and temporally, including spells in her native Poland, western Europe, the UK, Hollywood and American TV. Although individual films have had as high a profile as anything by her compatriots Andrzej Wajda and Roman Polanski (whose 'Rosemary’s Baby' she recently remade for US television), and three of them were Oscar-nominated, her versatility means that she’s much less associated with a particular style or thematic approach. That said, her most memorable work all tends to explore ordinary people living through extreme circumstances, be they Jews during WWII ('Europa Europa', 'In Darkness'), Poles under communism ('A Woman Alone') or African-Americans in Baltimore ('The Wire')."
- Michael Brooke, The British Film Institute
Agnieszka Holland
'Serwus Panie Chief' - Filipinki
'Screen Tests' (1977, Zdjecia próbne - Jerzy Domaradzki, Agnieszka Holland & Pawel Kedzierski)
Short stories and interludes paint a portrait of young actors and filmmakers looking for opportunities in the film business. I think Agnieszka Holland's establishing a pattern with her work on 'Screen Tests', colouring an allegory of communist detection through observing the minor interactions of a developing theatre company.
Daria Trafankowska
'Provincial Actors' (1979, Aktorzy prowincjonalni - Agnieszka Holland)
A theatre director attempts to stage a play by Stanislaw Wyspianski.
Tadeusz Huk & Adam Ferency
'Europa Europa' (1990 - Agnieszka Holland)
A Jewish boy tries to conceal his faith when joining the Hitler Youth during the 2nd World War.
Julie Delpy & Marco Hofschneider
'The Secret Garden' (1993, Tajemniczy ogród)
An orphan girl sent to England makes friends inside a magical garden in this adaptation of a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
Kate Maberly & Agnieszka Holland
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Jerzy Antczak (Born: December 25, 1929 in Wlodzimierz Wolynski, Wolynskie, Poland [now Volodymyr-Volynskyi, Ukraine])
Jerzy Antczak
'Nights And Days' (1975, Noce i dnie - Jerzy Antczak)
The historical epic 'Nights And Days' exists as both a film and a television miniseries that clocks in at 632 minutes. It's based on a book by novelist Maria Dabrowska and set during the aftermath of the January Uprising of 1863. The story unfolds in Kalisz. This ambitious project was a labour of love for director Jerzy Antczak who produced one of Poland's best-loved entertainments in the process.
"Polish film of the 1970s and ’80s is often called the “cinema of moral discontent.” But as demonstrated by the Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema series that is currently touring the United States, there is nothing monolithic, or easily classifiable, about the period’s production. Alongside iconic works, such as Krzysztof Kieślowski’s 'Blind Chance' (1981) and 'A Short Film About Killing' (1988), or Krzysztof Zanussi’s 'The Illumination' (1972), 'Camouflage' (1977) and 'The Constant Factor' (1980), the program also includes epic works that look to Poland’s rich history, while obliquely commenting on the more immediate past. While filmmakers such as Kieślowski and Zanussi challenged the communist regime directly, expressing a desire to create without the opprobrium of censorship or persecution, the creators of the historical dramas place the Poles’ prolonged, painful road to independence and the internal struggles against conformism in a broader context. Jerzy Antczak’s 'Nights and Days' (1975) immediately captured the Poles’ imagination, ranking as the fifth most popular film of the era and attracting over 20 million viewers. An adaptation of a four-tome eponymous family saga by Maria Dąbrowska, the film took Antczak five years to complete, and is a life-spanning portrait of Barbara (Jadwiga Barańska), the daughter of impoverished landowners. A village of Serbinow was constructed not far from Warsaw to serve as a set. Antczak chose a narrative frame that moves fluidly between past and present: helped by her former Jewish neighbor, Szymszel (Zbigniew Koczanowicz), Barbara escapes the town of Kaliniec on the eve of World War I with scant belongings, hoping to reunite with her children, who live away from home. As she rides the carriage, we learn her story in flashbacks: the young Barbara fancies a dashing man, Józef Toliboski, but when he marries a richer girl, she settles for a hardworking estate manager, Bogumil Niechcic (Jerzy Binczycki), even though he fails to satisfy her aspirations. Yearning for society balls and culture, Barbara finds bitterness and disillusionment in her life on the farm. Devoted to her children and to Bogumil, yet in love with another man, she is a complex character, whose fickleness is offset by her sorrows (including the death of her young child from consumption). When Bogumil realizes that Barbara does not love him, he falls first for a neighbor’s daughter and then for his housemaid. The scene in which Barbara catches Bogumil in an amorous tryst is one of the film’s most heartbreaking, with the two spouses unwilling to admit their mutual collusion in the marriage’s fiasco. 'Nights and Days' is often likened to 'Gone with the Wind' (1939), a comparison that seems apt given the films’ tortured relationships and the lush, shimmering cinematography that renders its protagonists’ lives arduous yet bucolic. But for all the gentility of a bygone era, and the specter of opulence shown in sober decay — Barbara and Bogumil fret incessantly over financial matters and face bankruptcy — Antczak’s cool treatment of Barbara’s infatuations and self-inflicted solitude strikes a tone more akin to Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary."
- Ela Bittencourt, 'A Cinema Of Discontent : Masterpieces Of Polish Cinema'
Olgierd Łukaszewicz & Anna Nehrebecka
'Polonia' by Jan Matejko
'Chopin : Desire For Love' (2002, Chopin. Pragnienie milosci - Jerzy Antczak)
Though he's contributed to an anthology film and directed a handful of television movies, Jerzy Antczak has only directed 4 theatrical features in a career that stretches back to 1962. His final feature to date is a biopic of composer Frederic Chopin that's interesting if you enjoy his music. The story takes off in Warsaw just before the November Uprising of 1830.
Piotr Adamczyk
'Taking Of The Warsaw Arsenal' by Marcin Zalewski
'Ballade No.1 in G Minor, Op.23' - Frédéric Chopin
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Post by petrolino on Mar 30, 2019 21:39:46 GMT
Janusz Kidawa (Born: March 9, 1931 in Strumien, Slaskie, Poland - Died: September 4, 2010 (age 79) in Katowice, Slaskie, Poland)
Writer-director Janusz Kidawa had been working solidly within the documentary field for 15 years when he started making social dramas with strong historical perspectives. Despite working with small budgets, he crafted films that have come to be seen as documents of Polish life. His meticulously researched, community-based pictures bristle with raw authenticity and are characterised by attention to detail.
Janusz Kidawa
'Horizontal Landscape' (1978, Pejzaż horyzontalny - Janusz Kidawa)
Construction workers step up to aid in the creation of a new plant when project management is derailed.
Mieczysław Hryniewicz & Bożena Miller
'The Sinful Life Of Franciszek Bula' (1980, Grzeszny żywot Franciszka Buły - Janusz Kidawa)
A street performer looking for steady work in a coal mining town has the realities of corruption within the industry exposed to him by a political agitator. The social drama 'The Sinful Life Of Franciszek Bula' chronicles the everyday activities of a small Silesian mining community and contrasts this with the antics of a travelling band of performers. This story is an ideal compliment to Kazimerz Kutz's definitive political mining drama 'Pearl In The Crown' (1972).
The Aleja Circus Troupe
'Took The Raft' (1985, Sprawa sie rypla - Janusz Kidawa)
A family gathers for a funeral but things aren't quite as they seem.
Franciszek Pieczka
'Famous Like Sarajevo' (1987, Slawna jak Sarajewo - Janusz Kidawa)
A political plot is hatched in Upper Silesia during the 2nd World War that could change the course of the conflict. This influential war drama is based on a novel by Leon Bielas.
Igor Kujawski
'Weselne Dzieci' - Urszula Sipińska
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Post by petrolino on Apr 5, 2019 22:57:00 GMT
Polish Animation In The Shadows
"There’s a certain irony to Polish animator Piotr Dumala’s innovative style, a stop-motion technique in which he scratches an image into painted plaster, then paints it over again immediately and scratches the next. Called “destructive animation,” Dumala devised the method while studying art conservation at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. Trained as a sculptor as well as an animator, Dumala’s award-winning films present strikingly expressionistic textures emerging from pitch black and receding again. The 1991 film 'Kafka' begins with the reclusive writer shrouded in darkness and isolation. He coughs once, and we are transported to Prague, 1883. Each frame of Kafka resembles a woodcut, and the sound design is as spare as the extremely high-contrast animation."
- Josh Jones, Open Culture
Piotr Dumała (Born: July 9, 1956 in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland)
'The Walls' (1988, Sciany) / 'Crime And Punishment' (2000, Zbrodnia i kara)
'Marie Sklodowska was born in Warsaw on 7 November 1867, the daughter of a teacher. In 1891, she went to Paris to study physics and mathematics at the Sorbonne where she met Pierre Curie, professor of the School of Physics. They were married in 1895. The Curies worked together investigating radioactivity, building on the work of the German physicist Roentgen and the French physicist Becquerel. In July 1898, the Curies announced the discovery of a new chemical element, polonium. At the end of the year, they announced the discovery of another, radium. The Curies, along with Becquerel, were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903. Pierre's life was cut short in 1906 when he was knocked down and killed by a carriage. Marie took over his teaching post, becoming the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne, and devoted herself to continuing the work that they had begun together. She received a second Nobel Prize, for Chemistry, in 1911. The Curie's research was crucial in the development of x-rays in surgery. During World War One Curie helped to equip ambulances with x-ray equipment, which she herself drove to the front lines. The International Red Cross made her head of its radiological service and she held training courses for medical orderlies and doctors in the new techniques. Despite her success, Marie continued to face great opposition from male scientists in France, and she never received significant financial benefits from her work. By the late 1920s her health was beginning to deteriorate. She died on 4 July 1934 from leukaemia, caused by exposure to high-energy radiation from her research. The Curies' eldest daughter Irene was herself a scientist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.'
- The British Broadcasting Corporation
Marie Curie
Charles Berling & Isabelle Huppert portray Pierre Curie & Marie Curie in 'The Palms Of M. Schultz' (1997)
'The History Of Marie Curie'
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Post by petrolino on Apr 6, 2019 20:36:15 GMT
The swift, impactful rise of the Solidarity workers' movement in Poland shook Soviet-controlled authorities to their core. A sustained period of Martial Law was declared from December 13, 1981 to July 22, 1983, in an attempt to silence all opposition and crush radicals. These dark days led to unjust imprisonments without trial, savage beatings and murder, but Polish industrial workers continued to revolt despite the dangers. The General Amnesty of 1986 saw political prisoners finally being released. Poland engaged in the Revolutions of 1989, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in solidarity with Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria and Romania.
"August 1980 was one of the breakthrough moments in the history of Poland’s communist regime and one of the founding myths of the democratic opposition. After protests in Świdnik and Lublin, the Free Trade Unions of the Coast joined the strike. The workers demanded, amongst other things, the reinstatement of the welder Anna Walentynowicz (fired for being a key member of the opposition), a pay rise, and a new monument dedicated to the victims of the 1970 protests in northern Poland. A few days later on 17th August, the Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee announced a total of 21 demands, including the possibility of registering free trade unions, freedom to strike and freedom of speech."
- Michal Dabrowski, 'A Long Way To Freedom : Banned Photos From Poland's 1980s'
"During a week-long working study-tour to Poland last week to explore several aspects of Polish recent history that struck me as pertinent to current developments in the Arab world, I made sure that I had the opportunity to visit the Gdansk shipyards where the Solidarity labor movement was born in 1980. I have long admired that movement’s pivotal role in initiating workers’ strikes and sit-ins, collective bargaining, political negotiations and, ultimately, an agreement in 1989 with the Soviet Union for a liberalization of political governance in Poland. That year, the Soviet Empire collapsed like the hollowed hulk of rusted steel that it had become after decades of deadening Communist dictatorship."
- Rami Khouri, 'On Liberty And Struggle'
“The only way for us to be strong was to organize within large factories which provided us with the big social base we needed to succeed. The police and army found it difficult to enter large plants, especially when strikes and sit-ins occurred simultaneously in many places due to our constant coordination. The Pope’s visits made a big difference. His public masses drew massive crowds that speeded up our growth to the strong social base of ten million members of Solidarity, and faith gave us courage to confront the powerful alien enemy we faced. The 2000th anniversary of Christianity also helped. We took big risks and always faced the possibility of a military crackdown, without having the capabilities to protect ourselves. While the Soviets showed our generals the missiles pointed at major Polish cities, we did not have any protection against such threats other than our courage, our faith, and our ability to organize and be patient. We released the power of the human spirit in response to their threat of missiles. We also made sure that our demands from the government always responded to the practical needs of our popular base, which allowed us to mobilize ten million members and maintain cohesion.”
- Lech Walesa, Harvard Kennedy School
Lech Wałęsa
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Wojciech Marczewski (Born: February 28, 1944 in Lódz, Lódzkie, Poland)
Wojciech Marczewski with students at the Wajda School in Warsaw
'Shivers' (1981, Dreszcze - Wojciech Marczewski)
Teachers working in a small provincial town in the 1950s feed propaganda to their pupils, while helping to power the engine driving steely Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's personality cult. 'Shivers' is my favourite film from writer-director Wojciech Marczewski, an original work that I prefer to his more acclaimed picture 'Escape From The 'Liberty' Cinema' (1990) which I could never warm up to. Actress Gosia Dobrowolska emigrated to Australia where she's enjoyed a fine career working in film, television and theatre.
Teresa Marczewska
'Prześliczna Wiolonczelistka' - Skaldowie
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Ryszard Bugajski (Born: April 27, 1943 in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland - Died: June 7, 2019 (age 76) in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland)
Ryszard Bugajski
'Interrogation' (1982, Przesłuchanie - Ryszard Bugajski)
A Polish citizen is abused and tortured in prison in order to secure a confession. 'Interrogation' was instantly banned by the authorities but emerged seven years on from its creation.
Adam Ferency & Krystyna Janda
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Janusz Zaorski ( Born: September 19, 1947 in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland)
Janusz Zaorski
'The Mother Of Kings' (1982, Matka Królów - Janusz Zaorski)
An intensive study of the family cycle realised during a nationwide crackdown on those deemed to be political extremists. 'The Mother Of Kings' was forcibly shelved by the authorities but gained a release five years after it was made.
Magda Teresa Wójcik
'Soccer Poker' (1989, Piłkarski poker - Janusz Zaorski)
An expose of the bribery, match-fixing and corruption weighing down Poland's football league apparatus under Sovietisation.
Adrianna Biedrzyńska & Mariusz Benoit
'Hej, Dzień Się Budzi' - Alibabki
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Marek Piestrak (Born: March 31, 1938 in Kraków, Malopolskie, Poland)
Marek Piestrak
'The Wolf' (1983, Wilczyca - Marek Piestrak)
Polish nobility are plagued by symptoms associated with lycanthropy. I really like this gothic horror which makes a perfect companion piece to Walerian Borowczyk's 'The Beast' (1975). I'd like to see Marek Piestrak's next movie, the science-fiction horror fantasy 'Curse Of Snakes Valley' (1988).
Iwona Bielska
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Mieczysław Waśkowski (Born: August 13, 1929 in Kiedrzyn, Mazowieckie, Poland - Died: November 14, 2001 (age 72) in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland)
Mieczysław Waśkowski
'Maturing Time' (1984, Czas dojrzewania - Mieczyslaw Waskowski)
A shipyard worker searches high and low for a girl caught up in the drug dens. 'Maturing Time' is partially shot in the shipyards of Gdansk which were a hotbed of political activity in the early 1980s.
Maria Probosz
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Marek Nowicki (Born: April 9, 1935 in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland)
Marek Nowicki
'The Phantom' (1984, Widziadło - Marek Nowicki)
A nobleman is haunted by the spectre of his deceased wife. This unsettling gothic horror is based on a story by Karol Irzykowski.
Roman Wilhelmi & Dorota Kwiatkowska
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Ryszard Rydzewski (Born: October 1, 1928 in Wolkowysk, Bialostockie, Poland [now Vawkavysk, Belarus] - Died: February 28, 2014 (age 85) in Poland)
Ryszard Rydzewski
'Alabama' (1985 - Ryszard Rydzewski)
Two medical students struggle to come to terms with life's problems. The depressing melodrama 'Alabama' is said to be one of Quentin Tarantino's favourite European films.
Maria Probosz
'Three Steps From Love' (1988, Trzy kroki od miłości - Ryszard Rydzewski)
A young doctor struggles to come to terms with life when his wife suffers a life-changing accident. Ryszard Rydzewski returns to medical themes he explored with 'Alabama' for this popular Polish weepie, referencing the groundbreaking work of Polish neuroscientist Liliana Lubinska.
Marzena Manteska
'Szukaj Mnie' - Karin Stanek
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Jacek Koprowicz (Born: November 3, 1947 in Lódz, Lódzkie, Poland)
Jacek Koprowicz
'Medium' (1985, - Jacek Koprowicz)
In 1933, a small group of people are called upon to participate in the reenactment of a murder. The gothic chiller 'Medium' serves up an elaborate murder mystery with a supernatural slant. It's partially filmed in neighbouring northern cities Gdansk and Sopot which attracted politicised film crews in solidarity.
Grażyna Szapołowska
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Barbara Sass (Born: October 14, 1936 in Lódz, Lódzkie, Poland - Died: April 2, 2015 (age 78) in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland)
Barbara Sass
'Caged' (1988, W klatce - Barbara Sass)
A hazardous occurrence leads a lonely bank cashier to pursue a fiery temptress. Barbara Sass' erotic melodrama is often referred to as one of Poland's steamiest motion pictures.
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Waldemar Szarek (Born: May 14, 1953 in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland)
Waldemar Szarek
'Oh My, Nothing Happened' (1987, O rany, nic sie nie stalo – Waldemar Szarek)
A freewheeling satire of working-class life. Waldemar Szarek's low budget gem 'Oh My, Nothing Happened' is preceded by his documentary 'I Feel Great' (1984), a working portrait of Polish rock band Maanam.
'Blue Eyes' (1994, Oczy niebieskie - Waldemar Szarek)
A violinist becomes embroiled in a bizarre short-order conspiracy concerning his missing girlfriend. This eerie crime thriller stars Magdalena Wojcik of rock group Goya.
Grzegorz Damięcki & Magdalena Wójcik
'Miłość Sprzed Lat' - Katarzyna Sobczyk
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Post by petrolino on Apr 6, 2019 23:36:28 GMT
Juliusz Machulski (Born: March 10, 1955 in Olsztyn, Warminsko-Mazurskie, Poland)
Juliusz Machulski is the son of popular Polish theatre actor Jan Machulski who appeared in dozens of films. When he graduated from the National Film School in Lodz, great things were expected of Machulski. His breakthrough film is one I've not seen, the heist movie 'Vabank' (1981) which spawned a sequel and is often talked about alongside another heist movie Machulski directed, 'Vinci' (2004), which I have seen. Truth be told, I enjoy his fantasy films a lot more than I enjoy his crime films, they're the ones that strike a chord with me. He's a talented and versatile film director; an intelligent, old-fashioned, cineliterate genre filmmaker with plenty of zip.
"Urania Propitia is a remarkable volume for many reasons. Published in 1650, this work of astronomy demonstrates a command of high-level mathematics and astronomical calculation. It also reveals a deep understanding of Keplerian astronomy; its author both simplified and corrected Kepler's math for locating planetary positions. Finally, the book was written in German as well as Latin, which helped to both establish German as a language of science and make the tables accessible outside of the university. But Urania Propitia lays claim to yet another impressive quality: It was written by a woman. This fact took me by surprise in 2012, when I was touring the History of Science Collections upon arriving at the University of Oklahoma for my graduate studies in the History of Science. In a long line of books written by famous men, I was taken aback to see one penned by an obscure woman: an astronomer named Maria Cunitz. I remember thinking: “A woman did that.” My surprise stemmed not from my disbelief that women were and are capable of such work, but during the time that Cunitz was working on Urania Propitia, few women were welcomed into the upper echelons of natural philosophy, medicine, astronomy and mathematics. “The general cultural atmosphere certainly wasn’t conducive to educated women,” says historian of science Marilyn Ogilvie, co-author and editor of The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century. Ogilvie points to influential French philosopher Michel de Montaigne as one example of the pervasive beliefs about women’s role during this time period. In his essay collection Of the Education of Children, Ogilvie says that “[h]e never mentions girls...but when he speaks of women he speaks of [them] as ‘pretty animals.’ They should be kept so by being taught ‘those games and bodily exercises which are best calculated to set off their beauty.’” These types of beliefs kept women out of higher education and perpetuated myths about women’s capabilities. “Certainly the culture did not encourage ‘scientific women’ with attitudes like this,” says Ogilvie. This fact makes Cunitz’s work all the more significant. In his article “Urania Propitia, the Adaption of the Rudolphine Tables by Maria Cunitz,” historian of science N. M. Swerdlow claims Urania Propitia to be the “earliest surviving scientific work by a woman on the highest technical level of its age, for it purpose was to provide solutions to difficulties in the most advanced science of the age…” During my tour, the Collections’ curator, Kerry Magruder, described her as one of the most accomplished astronomers of her century. Maria Cunitz was born between 1600 and 1610 (the exact date remains unknown) in Silesia. She had the good fortune of being the child of two educated parents who were interested in her upbringing: Maria Schultz and physician Henrich Cunitz. As a woman, Cunitz was denied a formal education, so she received much of her education from her father. “f a woman was to be a scientist (or natural philosopher) of any type, it was helpful to have a male relative ... take interest in her education,” Olgivie says. “I wouldn’t say that Cunitz’s relationship with her father was unusual, but it certainly was not common.” With her father’s guidance — and later her husband’s — Cunitz mastered the supposedly masculine fields of mathematics and astronomy as well as the traditional feminine skills of music, art and literature. She was fluent in seven languages — German, Latin, Polish, Italian, French, Hebrew and Greek — which would prove key to her achievements in astronomy."
- Leila McNeill, The 17th-Century Lady Astronomer Who Took Measure Of The Stars
Juliusz Machulski
'Sexmission' (1984, Seksmisja - Juliusz Machulski)
A pair of scientists volunteer for a hibernation experiment and awaken in the year 2044.
Bożena Stryjkówna
The Copernicus Science Centre in Warsaw
'Kingsize' (1987, Kingsajz - Juliusz Machulski)
A subterranean race of little people keep their distance from giants overground.
Jerzy Stuhr
'Deja Vu' (1990 - Juliusz Machulski)
In 1925, an American gangster goes into hiding in Odessa, Ukraine.
Jerzy Stuhr
'Lullaby' (2010, Kołysanka - Juliusz Machulski)
A family of vampires spook out their neighbours.
Małgorzata Buczkowska
'1984' - Maanam
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Post by petrolino on Apr 7, 2019 0:48:16 GMT
Radosław Piwowarski (Born: February 20, 1948 in Olszówka Dolna, Bielsko-Biala, Slaskie, Poland)
Filmmaker Radoslaw Piwowarski became a recognisable figure after directing the immensely popular musical feature 'Yesterday' (1985), a spirited drama charting the popularity of British pop group The Beatles behind the Iron Curtain (some people still credit the Beatles and the rapid rise of "humanising" rock 'n' roll as having been a major catalyst for invoking change and bringing down the Berlin Wall). I must admit, it's a one-watch movie for me, though it remains a harbinger of future conquests. Piwowarski is one of life's great eccentrics and a self-proclaimed eroticist.
Radosław Piwowarski
'My Mother's Lovers' (1986, Kochankowie mojej mamy - Radoslaw Piwowarski)
A mother struggles with chemical dependency while desperately trying to be there for her son.
Rafal Wegrzyniak & Krystyna Janda
'Train For Hollywood' (1987, Pociąg do Hollywood - Radoslaw Piwowarski)
An aspiring actress who idolises Marilyn Monroe dreams of being cast in Billy Wilder's next project.
Katarzyna Figura
'March Caresses' (1990, Marcowe migdały - Radoslaw Piwowarski)
Young Poles come to terms with the mass persecution of undesirables over religious beliefs, sexual identity and political individualism.
Robert Kowalski & Małgorzata Piorun
'Self-Portrait With A Lover' (1996, Autoportret z kochanką - Radoslaw Piwowarski)
A wild woman sets out to satisfy her insatiable sexual appetite.
Katarzyna Figura
'Polonaise in F Minor' - Maria Syzmanowska
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Post by petrolino on Apr 12, 2019 20:45:44 GMT
Poland, as a country, entered a new day in the 1990s. These transitional years proved to be culturally awkward for emerging artists, some of whom flourished in the following decade, while others fell by the wayside. There was a cultural chasm created by Poland's decision to make a pronounced lean towards the West (with a distinct accent upon the embrace of American influences) but this shift ensured colourful clothing lines, bold branding labels and gaudy fashion accessories came to dominate industrial and agricultural plains. I'd argue it was left to a few old stagers within the film industry to illuminate the national cinema, which fortunately they did, as I believe these were lean years in terms of creativity.
"The sun is slowly setting as I approach the panorama of my hometown covered in the light of dusk. The air is a crisp and frigid -20C. The Polish winter at its best is welcoming me back. A horizontal line of concrete tower blocks, identically grey and brutal when I lived here are now pastel-coloured, with pale turquoises and powder pinks sharply contrasting with the snow of surrounding fields. The Polnoc II (North II) housing estate, once proud evidence of the town’s expansion and development, is now striving to camouflage its fading fortunes with this blast of colour. This is what the socialist dream looks like a few decades on, I’m thinking, as I enter Suwalki, the place where I grew up and which shaped me like no other. As the biggest town in north-east Poland, Suwalki lies a long bike rides distance from the border with Lithuania and Kaliningrad. When I was younger, we would drive to Mariampol or Alytus to do our grocery shopping. Now, with the arrival of the Euro zone in Lithuania, Suwalki has became a consumer haven for our neighbours. With its severe climate, Suwalki is said to be the coldest town in Poland. And with its remote location and limited transport links it also feels like one of the most isolated. At barely 70,000 inhabitants it oscillates between a tight, closed community and a place that provides just enough anonymity. The architecture is utilitarian and simple, the majority of buildings are concrete socialist-era towers. I grew up in one of them, a grey suburban block with a view of the forest way off in the distance. Perhaps we did not have many resources but we never lacked for imagination. In early childhood we would run around the area playing war games or shops, bartering with leaves and stones. In the winter, with snow drifts taller than me, we enjoyed riding on sledges tied to the back of a car pulling us through the countryside roads.
Everyone in the blocks knew each other. Even the youngest kids were able to use the playground alone. The spatial structure of our estates facilitated integration. Everyone in the blocks knew each other. Even the youngest kids could use the playground alone because there would always be an older child around to look after them.
I remember collective New Year’s parties when everyone would open up their flats and pull their tables out. One neighbour brought food, another alcohol; a DJ living opposite us took care of the music. We, awfully excited about the sudden permission to be loud and to go peeking into each other’s flats, were allowed to play with sparklers, and to sing and dance through the night."
- Natalia Donagala, The Calvert Journal
"Some toys known abroad, such as pogs or koosh balls, were successfully imported to Poland but on top of that there were many toys specific to countries of the former Eastern Bloc. Marbles, for example. They were… glass balls… with a coloured twisted thingy inside. And that’s it. There was no game that you could play with them, but still, around 95% of girls collected and swapped them for no obvious reason. At least they did no harm to anybody, unlike Riki Tiki (known elsewhere as clackers), which must have been the invention of some sadist from beyond the Iron Curtain. These were two quite heavy balls attached to a ring. You’d put the ring on one of your fingers and try to make the balls swing and rattle, banging into each other below and above your hand, by making an up-and-down motion. Any time you made a false move, one of the balls would hit you super hard on the wrist or finger. The fact that Riki Tiki were banned from the US market in the 1970s after causing numerous injuries speaks for itself. Nothing, however, compares to the satisfaction you felt when you finally mastered playing with this ‘toy’."
- Wojciech Oleksiak, 'Wearing Adibas & Fuma : Memories From Growing Up In 1990s Poland'
'Mister Of America' - Małgorzata Ostrowska & Lombard
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Maciej Dutkiewicz (Born: October 2, 1958 in Krynica-Zdrój, Malopolskie, Poland)
Maciej Dutkiewicz
'Fluke' (1999, Fuks - Maciej Dutkiewicz)
An 18-year old loafer gets played by an experienced hustler who engages him in a scheme to rustle power from her mystery contacts.
Agnieszka Krukówna
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Post by petrolino on Apr 20, 2019 1:33:23 GMT
ANCESTRY
Performers of Polish Ancestry
Paul Newman
Peter Falk
Carroll Baker
Harvey Keitel
Kim Greist
'It's Gonna Take A Miracle' - Laura Nyro
Rosanna Arquette & Patricia Arquette
David Duchovny
Meg Ryan
Daphne Zuniga
Lysette Anthony
Nicolas Cage
Tea Leoni
'You Bring Out The Lover In Me' - Pia Zadora
Maria Bello
Casey Siemaszko & Nina Siemaszko
Jennifer Connelly
Chloe Sevigny
Alicia Witt
'Love Is A Battlefield' - Pat Benatar
Kristen Bell
Natalie Portman
Matt Lanter Leelee Sobieski
Alexis Dziena
Scarlett Johansson
Jesse Eisenberg & Shia LeBeouf
'Date With The Night' - Yeah Yeah Yeahs (with Karen O)
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Post by petrolino on Apr 21, 2019 23:09:22 GMT
Jacek Bromski (Born: December 19, 1946 in Wroclaw, Dolnoslaskie, Poland)
Jacek Bromski
'Career Of Nikos Dyzma' (2002, Kariera Nikosia Dyzmy - Jacek Bromski)
The political satire 'Career Of Nikos Dyzma' is based on a novel by Tadeusz Dolega-Mostowicz that inspired a 1956 film directed by Jan Rybkowski and a popular Polish television miniseries screened in 1980. I've not seen either of these versions but Jacek Bromski's film is a fun contemporary take on the story.
Anna Przybylska
Cezary Pazura & Anna Przybylska
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Post by petrolino on Apr 22, 2019 0:42:14 GMT
Filip Bajon (Born: August 25, 1947 in Poznan, Wielkopolskie, Poland)
Filip Bajon
'Maiden Vows' (2010, Śluby panieńskie)
The romantic comedy 'Maiden Vows' is a period piece based on a play by Aleksander Fredro. It's a gentle farce about two sisters who decide not to marry, a decision that prompts local bachelors to zone in on them. Despite the presence of witless comic Borys Szyc, this movie's enjoyable.
Anna Cieślak & Marta Żmuda Trzebiatowska
'Mamo Ja Nie Chcę Za Mąż' - Brathanki
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Post by petrolino on Apr 22, 2019 1:10:55 GMT
Jan Kidawa-Błoński (Born: February 12, 1953 in Chorzów, Slaskie, Poland)
Jan Kidawa-Błoński
'Little Rose' (2010, Różyczka - Jan Kidawa-Blonski)
The spy thriller 'Little Rose' deals with the efforts of communist operatives to infiltrate the private affairs of a professor suspected of being a "camouflaged Zionist". It's inspired by the life of writer and historian Pawel Jasienica.
Magdalena Boczarska
Robert Więckiewicz & Magdalena Boczarska
Magdalena Boczarska & Andrzej Seweryn
Alizma
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