Alina Janowska

  • 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 »

  • Piotr Szulkin – Femina (1991)

    Arthouse1991-2000Piotr SzulkinPoland

    Quote:
    After a five-year hiatus from filmmaking, Piotr Szulkin returned in 1990 with “Femina”, based on a novel by Krystyna Kofta and inspired by Luis Bunuel.
    The main character is Bogna, a thirty year old woman lost in her surrounding reality and unhappy in her private life. After her husband departs for a foreign scholarship, Bogna learns that her mother died. The trip to her hometown for the funeral becomes a voyage in time, during which she relives the memories of her idyllic childhood.
    As beautifully mounted as any of Szulkin’s films, it’s full of delirious wide-angle imagery (at times recalling the films of Terry Gilliam and Wojciech Has). Unavailable on DVD even in Poland, this is a most unfairly neglected work by Szulkin.Read More »

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