Poland

  • Andrzej Wajda – Samson (1961)

    Andrzej Wajda1961-1970DramaPolandWar

    Nominated for the Golden Lion in 1961 at the venice Film festival

    “Samson” is the story of a Jew, Jakub Gold (Serge Merlin), at the polytechnic university in Warsaw imprisoned and sentenced to 10 years for accidentally killing his friend in German- occupied Poland. In prison he makes several contacts that will factor later in the movie. The prisoners are released when Warsaw is bombed. Jakub is sent to the Warsaw ghetto where the Jews are “doomed to death for the crime of existence” and is assigned to picking up corpses from the streets and helping to provide them with a Jewish burial. Along the way he picks up his own mother. After one such burial Jakub and another man escape from the ghetto. After he escapes he desires to go back into the ghetto to share the fate of his kinsmen. Read More »

  • Malgorzata Szumowska & Michal Englert – Sniegu juz nigdy nie bedzie AKA Never Gonna Snow Again (2020)

    Malgorzata Szumowska2011-2020ComedyDramaPoland

    On a gray, foggy morning outside a large Polish city, Zhenia (Alec Utgoff), a masseur from the East, enters the lives of the wealthy residents of a gated community. Using hypnotic, almost magical techniques to get a residence permit, he starts working. The well-to-do residents in their cookie-cutter homes seemingly have it all, but they all suffer from an inner sadness, some unexplained longing. The attractive and mysterious newcomer’s hands heal, and Zhenia’s eyes seem to penetrate their souls. To them, his Russian accent sounds like a song from the past, a memory of their seemingly safer childhoods.Read More »

  • Aleksander Ford – Pierwszy dzien wolnosci AKA The First Day of Freedom (1964)

    Aleksander Ford1961-1970DramaPolandWar

    The First Day of Freedom (Polish: Pierwszy dzień wolności) is a 1964 Polish drama film directed by Aleksander Ford. It was entered into the 1965 Cannes Film Festival.

    Quote:
    Freed Polish soldiers are trapped in a small town in Germany during the last days of World War II. After a doctor’s daughter is raped by a concentration camp worker, the Poles allow her and her father to stay in the house that is their temporary quarters. While waiting to be repatriated, the war-weary group is forced to fight some German soldiers who invade the town. The war brings out conflicting emotions of the Poles who find themselves trapped in the house and once again under fire from the enemy. by Dan Pavlides, RoviRead More »

  • Tomasz Dominik, Piotr Rozbicki – Warszawa 88-89 AKA Warsaw 88-89 (1989)

    1981-1990DocumentaryPiotr RozbickiPolandVideo Art

    Quote:
    In the film Warsaw 88-89 we observe the city on the eve of the coming changes, captured on VHS tape. Tomasz Dominik and Piotr Rozbicki capture interesting, distinctive details – an unusual balcony, inscriptions on the walls, beautiful but dilapidated architectural details – from the gray reality of shabby tenement houses, blocks of flats, squalid courtyards. In the background we can observe the political, economic and cultural context of the period: lifestyle, cars, clothes, texts on walls. In the public space the sphere of the sacred mixes with the profane.Read More »

  • Andrzej Wajda – Pierscionek z orlem w koronie AKA The Crowned-Eagle Ring (1992)

    Andrzej Wajda1991-2000PolandWar

    Quote:
    A young commander of Warsaw Uprising tries to continue his activity under conditions of Soviet occupation. He makes contact with an insurgent from the People’s Army, now the head of the regional committee of the PPR. In the mask of a collaborator he wants to save the rest of his people.

    The screenplay was based on Aleksander Ścibor-Rylski’s novel “Pierścionek z końskiego włosia” / “The Horsehair Ring”, withheld by the censors in 1965 and first published in 1991. Wajda included in the film a scene modeled on the famous scene with spirit lamps from “Ashes and Diamonds” (1958). (1958), in the vicinity of a meeting between Marcin and Wiśka, who are awaiting the outcome of talks between the PPR and AK (Home Army).Read More »

  • Krzysztof Zanussi – Suplement AKA The Supplement (2002)

    Krzysztof Zanussi2001-2010DramaPoland

    Quote:
    Young people, a medical student and a wardrobe maker are trying to be together. The boy hesitates about what his vocation is. He will go through various initiations before deciding whether to become a doctor and husband or a priest. A meeting with an old doctor will turn out to be crucial.

    As the title suggests, “The Supplement” is a complement to the film “Life as a Sexually Transmitted Disease” (2000) by Krzysztof Zanussi. The author develops the plot of the young characters, which runs parallel and intersects with the story of the old doctor’s death. Compositionally, the film is a montage of scenes from the previous film with new scenes and fragments of Zanussi’s youthful “Illumination” (1972) by Zanussi, which Filip watches on television. The film won the FIPRESCI Award at the Moscow International Film Festival (2002).Read More »

  • Tadeusz Makarczynski – Do redakcji nadszedl list AKA A Letter at the Editorial Office (1950)

    Tadeusz Makarczynski1941-1950DocumentaryPolandShort Film

    Quote:
    The documentary shows the work of journalists and the importance of the press in building socialism. It is an exemplary implementation of the socialist-realist convention imposed on Polish cinema in 1949, in which all elements of the film structure were subordinated to the persuasive function.

    In accordance with the convention of a propaganda documentary, the image in “Do redakcja nadszedł list” / “A letter has arrived to the editor” is exclusively an illustration of the propaganda commentary on which the construction of the entire film is based. As in many works of the 1950s, the authors combine in it few observational elements with staging, the documentary element with the fictional one. Read More »

  • Tadeusz Makarczynski – Suita warszawska AKA Warsaw Suite (1946)

    1941-1950DocumentaryPolandShort FilmTadeusz Makarczynski

    Quote:
    A film suite divided into three parts showing successively the defeat of Warsaw, the gradual awakening of the capital and the first post-war Warsaw spring. The film has no commentary, only music, whose mood and rhythm are closely related to the character of the presented images.Read More »

  • Andrzej Kotkowski – Obywatel Piszczyk AKA Citizen Piszczyk (1988)

    1981-1990Andrzej KotkowskiDramaPoland

    Quote:
    Born unlucky, a victim of the errors and distortions of Stalinism, he is released in 1956. He meets a politically feverish woman, her influential parents, and finally becomes the father of her child. But bad luck, or perhaps an unlucky era, will not let him forget.Read More »

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