A survey of Central and Eastern European cinema
Wednesday November 20th 2024

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Kinoteka 2010 highlights Kinoteka 2010 highlights »

London's 8th Kinoteka Polish Film Festiwal (sic), organised by the Polish Cultural Institute, has just [...]


Pawel Łoziński DVD Pawel Łoziński DVD »

The latest entry in NInA (formerly PWA)'s superlative Polish School of the Documentary (Polska Szkoła [...]


Daniel Szczechura DVD Daniel Szczechura DVD »

After releasing four superbly-presented general overviews of Polish animation (Anthology of Polish [...]


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DVD Surveys

Wojciech J. Has on DVD »

Wojciech J. Has on DVD

As the Barbican Centre in London gears up for a long overdue part retrospective of the career of the man I recently described in Sight & Sound as [Read More]


Animation

The Banner of Youth The Banner of Youth »

Sztandar Młodych. Poland, 1957, tinted monochrome, 3 mins.  A three-minute [...]


In the Time of King Krakus In the Time of King »

Za króla Krakusa.  Poland, 1947, black and white, 14 mins.  One of [...]


Daniel Szczechura DVD Daniel Szczechura »

After releasing four superbly-presented general overviews of Polish animation (Anthology [...]


Documentary

Pawel Łoziński DVD »

Pawel Łoziński DVD

The latest entry in NInA (formerly PWA)'s superlative Polish School of the Documentary (Polska Szkoła Dokumentu) has just been announced, and it's a survey of films by Pawel Łoziński, son of Marcel.The press release is currently in Polish only, but Culture.pl has an [Read More]

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Reviews

The Devil’s Trap

The Devil’s Trap

Ďáblova past. Czechoslovakia, 1961, black and white, 87 minsFrantišek Vláčil's second feature was the first of a loose trilogy set in the distant past. All three films (the others being Marketa Lazarová and The Valley of the Bees/Údolí včel, both 1967) take place at a time of fundamental ideological conflict and upheaval - in the case [...]

The Banner of Youth

The Banner of Youth

Sztandar Młodych. Poland, 1957, tinted monochrome, 3 mins.  A three-minute advertisement for the Polish Communist daily youth newspaper Sztandar Młodych ('Banner of Youth'), this is a more or less exact equivalent of the films that Len Lye made for the GPO Film Unit in Britain twenty years earlier. Lye's A Colour Box (1935) was an [...]

In the Time of King Krakus

In the Time of King Krakus

Za króla Krakusa.  Poland, 1947, black and white, 14 mins.  One of the peculiarities of Polish film hisory is the almost perfect separation between the pre-1939 and post-1945 eras, for reasons that the dates themselves spell out all too clearly. Many Polish filmmakers didn't survive World War II, while others chose not to [...]

Sweet Emma, Dear Böbe

Sweet Emma, Dear Böbe

Édes Emma, drága Böbe Hungary, 1992, colour, 81 mins.  István Szabó’s return to his native Hungary after over a decade of international acclaim produced a film that’s a stark contrast not only to the glossy, star-studded production values of Mephisto (1981), Colonel Redl (1985), Hanussen (1988) and Meeting Venus (1991), but [...]

Punitive Expedition

Punitive Expedition

Büntetőexpedició Hungary, 1970, black and white, 34 mins.   Is there another national film culture that has devoted so much screen time to the study of horses? Not merely in the sense of lots of them on screen at any one time (there are plenty of American-made Westerns that offer much in that department), but in the way that many [...]