‘Poland’ Archives
The Polish Documentary Movement 1947-60
(This is the text of a presentation I gave at the BFI this afternoon, on the early history of the Polish documentary movement 1947-60 - I've deleted some scene-setting preamble that was only relevant to that particular audience, but otherwise this is pretty much verbatim.)One thing that becomes very clear very quickly when one starts to delve into [...]
Catching up
Apologies for the apparent lack of activity over the past few days: I've spent them preparing the various multimedia elements of my talk Andrzej Wajda: An Introduction, which I'll be presenting at the BFI Southbank tonight at 6.15 - and, as ever, these things take much longer than expected!Polish Radio recently interviewed me about the Wajda [...]
Polish Paths to Freedom
To my shame, I've only just spotted this - but the Imperial War Museum in London is partway through a film season entitled Polish Paths to Freedom, a series of free screenings of films depicting aspects of Polish history from the start of World War II to the present. Here's what's coming up in May: Thursday 1 - Friday 2 May 11.00am: One. [...]
Escape from the ‘Liberty’ Cinema
Ucieczka z kina 'Wolność' Poland, 1990, colour, 87 minsPremiered on 15 October 1990, just over a year after the election of Poland's first non-communist government in over four decades, Wojciech Marczewski's Escape from the 'Liberty' Cinema offers a bizarre but rather engaging combination of anti-communist satire and film-versus-reality [...]
Censorship as a Creative Force: Screentalk
Last night I attended the keenly-awaited Censorship as a Creative Force Screentalk discussion at London's Barbican Arts Centre, in which Jiří Menzel, István Szabó and Agnieszka Holland (an eleventh-hour replacement for Andrzej Wajda) discussed their experience of censorship under the various totalitarian régimes under which they had to spend [...]
People from an Empty Zone
Ludzie z pustego obszaru Poland, 1957, black and white, 15 minsOne of the most immediately striking aspects of Kazimierz Karabasz and Władysław Ślesicki's second collaboration is that they've clearly devoted a lot of thought to the nature and purpose of what they were attempting. Whereas many of the films made in the first year of the 'black [...]
Krystyna Janda in Dublin
A Mind @ Play has an account of a personal appearance by the great Polish actress Krystyna Janda at Dublin's National Gallery last Saturday - and also includes the revelation that she has a blog (albeit, unsurprisingly, in Polish). At some point in the next fortnight my Wajda survey should have reached Man of Marble (Człowiek z marmuru, 1976), [...]
Lublin Old Town
Lubelska starówka Poland, 1956, black and white, 5 minsOne characteristic of the 'black series' that became increasingly apparent in 1956 was the use of sarcasm, though it was rarely deployed quite as overtly as this. In many ways a sequel to-cum-parody of the likes of Return to the Old Town (Powrót na Stare Miasto, 1954), the film begins with [...]
Warsaw ‘56
Warszawa 1956 Poland, 1956, black and white, 10 minsEssentially a cross between Edgar Anstey and Arthur Elton's classic British documentary Housing Problems (1935) and a particularly sadistic child-in-peril suspense thriller, Warsaw '56 is the most sheerly terrifying film in the 'black series' of documentaries that shook up Polish cinema in the [...]
Little Town
Miasteczko Poland, 1956, black and white, 10 minsThe gauntlet is thrown down from the opening title, a quotation from the then recently deceased poet Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński (1905-53) that says "How to speak the truth about Poland..." ("Jak tu prawdę o Polsce powiedzieć...") - the largely correct implication being that Polish [...]