A tale of medieval quest for a golden harp called “The Knight”.
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THE KNIGHT (RYCERZ), 1980. Poland.
With Piotr Skarga, Daniel Olbrychski. A haunting, austere ballad about a knight’s quest for a gold-stringed harp whose sound is said to bring peace and harmony. The film’s imagery is inspired by medieval icons. 81 min.Read More »
A happily-married woman wishes she had met her second husband earlier, so that she could avoid many mistakes of the past. When suddenly moved back in time to 1980s she realizes she has one goal: find her future love.Read More »
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Adam is a Catholic priest who discovered his calling as a servant of God at the relatively late age of 21. He now lives in a village in rural Poland where he works with teenagers with behavioural problems who fight and yell abuse. He declines the advances of a young blonde named Ewa, saying he is already spoken for. However, celibacy is not the only reason for his rejection. Adam knows that he desires men and that his embrace of the priesthood has been a flight from his own sexuality. When he meets Łukasz, the strange and taciturn son of a simple rural family, Adam’s self-imposed abstinence becomes a heavy burden.Read More »
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Made after THE DAMNED, but before 1900, this operatic-style melodrama, about the industrial revolution in Lodz ca. 1895, is far better than either. Like the other two films, it takes an extreme situation in history and makes it more extreme, piling on the excess. Two examples here: a garden party that’s like a Roman orgy, with naked women, tigers in cages, etc., and a scene where a worker grapples with his boss and they fall into a giant machine which instantly spews out their bodies as huge chunks of raw meat. But whereas Visconti, and, particularly, Bertolucci, ultimately drown under their excesses, Wajda maintains total control over his narrative. Read More »
A small town hospital worker who witnessed a brutal rape becomes obsessed with the victim after she lands a job as a nurse at the same hospital where he works, but how far will he go before he finally loses control? Leon Okrasa was there when a young woman named Anna was viciously violated. He works at a hospital in Poland, and when Anna is hired in as a nurse Leon soon finds his fixation taking over every aspect of his life. One night, after climbing into Anna’s apartment though an open window, Leon sits on the edge of her bed, watching silently as she sleeps. What happens next only Leon can say.Read More »
Based on reportage of the 1976 strike in Radom, which ended with the regional Party Committee headquarters set aflame, Kieslowski’s made-for-TV hybrid film merges archival materials with a dramatization of organized opposition during a single day of conflict. Shot during the Solidarity period and finished just before the imposition of martial law in 1981, A Short Working Day was not broadcast until 1996, three months after Kieslowski’s death from complications of heart surgery.Read More »
Jacek climbs into the taxi driven by Waldemar, tells him to drive to a remote location, then brutally strangles him, seemingly without motive.Read More »
“Klucznik / The Housemaster” – screenplay by Marczewski based on a stage drama by Wieslaw Myśliwski. A small village during the period of agricultural reforms in 1945. The two protagonists, a terminally ill count and his housemaster, engage in a private game that consists of artificially maintaining the social hierarchy which reigned here for centuries. (Awards: 1980 – Grand Prix for directing and “Panoramy Polnocy” / “Northern Panorama” Award, Festiwal Polskiej Twórczosci Telewizyjnej / Festival of Polish Television Creativity, Olsztyn).Read More »
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“Valley of the Gods,” which stars Josh Hartnett, John Malkovich, Keir Dullea, Bérénice Marlohe and John Rhys-Davies, presents the clash between the ancient civilization of the Navajo and the ultra-modern, high-tech world of multi-billionaires.
The Navajo “live in really very harsh conditions and their territory is surrounded by this super civilization, the Roman Empire of today, with this epitome of technical innovation,” Majewski told Variety. “I don’t know whether there is another place in the world that has this kind of absolute opposite sides.”Read More »