‘Poland’ Archives
One Sunday Morning
Niedzielny poranek Poland, 1955, colour, 19 minsAndrzej Munk's second film from 1955 is very different from the first, The Men of the Blue Cross (Błękitny krzyż), and marks another decisive break with the tenets of Socialist Realism that had dominated his early work - in particular, the sardonic humour is much more in line with reports of [...]
Men of the Blue Cross
Błękitny krzyż Poland, 1955, black and white, 56 minsEven more than The Stars Must Burn (Gwiazdy muszą płonąć, 1954), The Men of the Blue Cross blurs the distinction between fact and fiction. So much so, in fact, that at 56 minutes this is effectively Andrzej Munk's first solo feature, essentially an adventure story about a real-life [...]
The Stars Must Burn
Gwiazdy muszą płonąć Poland, 1954, black and white, 64 minsMost filmographies claim that Man on the Tracks (Człowiek na torze, 1956) is Andrzej Munk's first feature, yet two earlier entries in his filmography could also qualify, and not just because of their length. The 64-minute The Stars Must Burn, which Munk co-directed with Witold [...]
Are You Among Them?
Czy jesteś wśród nich? Poland, 1954, black and white, 8 minsTo a British viewer of a certain age, Are You Among Them? will look extremely familiar, as it's the exact Polish equivalent of one of those stern finger-wagging lectures masquerading as 'public information films' that the Central Office of Information churned out in vast quantities [...]
The Railwayman’s Word
Kolejarskie słowo Poland, 1953, black and white, 22 minsThe Railwayman's Word is one of those films that needs a certain amount of historical contextualisation, as its innovations are far less apparent today than they would have been back in 1953, the year of Stalin's death, and long before any cultural thaw. For all its mild unorthodoxies in [...]
Borowczyk in Warsaw
Warsaw's Centre for Contemporary Art (CCW) is currently hosting a major survey of work in various media by Walerian Borowczyk, including a near-complete retrospective of his films. There's more information on their website, as well as a brief piece on it in the Warsaw Business Journal. The exhibition moves to Poznań in the summer, where I hope [...]
Interrogating the past
Kevin Wilson's Thirtyframesasecond blog has just published an excellent piece on Ryszard Bugajski's Interrogation (Przesłuchanie, 1982), probably the bluntest and most shocking indictment of the Stalinist era that anyone was able to make in Poland prior to 1989 - or indeed since, as Polish filmmakers have tended to shy away from the subject in [...]
Best Foreign Film Oscar shortlist announced
The Best Foreign Film Oscar shortlist has been whittled down to nine titles, with three of the nominations going to Eastern European films. Predictably, Wajda's Katyń is still on the list, though there's a surprise in that Cristian Mungiu's masterly 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile) has been dropped in favour of Sergei [...]
Days of Industry’s Poland Month
The Days of Industry blog has inaugurated its Poland Month (or, as the site itself admits, Poland Three Weeks) with a detailed look at Andrzej Wajda's debut A Generation (Pokolenie, 1955) - with background information courtesy of the interview on the Criterion DVD release.
More documentaries and animation from PWA
Even though their new DVDs are just as English-friendly as they've been to date, for some reason PWA has restricted its announcements of its latest releases to the Polish-language part of its website. Anyway, just before Christmas they released their second animation DVD, following their unutterably superb Anthology of Polish Animation (Antologia [...]