‘Countries’ Archives
Eye For Film on Jan Švankmajer
I'm hoping to have a post on the dystopian sci-fi films of Polish filmmaker Piotr Szulkin published very soon (I watched four key titles last week, and they're fascinating on all sorts of levels) - but in the meantime another long review of the Švankmajer DVD set has just been published. It's by Anton Bitel, and it's on the Eye For Film site.
DVD Times on Jan Švankmajer
This is the first full-length online review of the BFI's new triple-disc Jan Švankmajer: The Complete Short Films. Actually, that's a bit of an understatement - with 5,000 words spread over four pages, it must be one of the longest reviews ever posted on DVD Times. Believe me, that's not a complaint! It's officially released next Monday, but [...]
Marina Warner on Jan Švankmajer
On Saturday, The Guardian published what is by a very considerable margin the longest and most eloquent piece on Jan Švankmajer's work ever seen in the pages of a British newspaper. In the print version, Marina Warner's article occupied the double-page centre spread of the Review section, illustrated with three large stills, but the full text is [...]
Polish animation DVD update
Further to my post of 8th June about a new two-DVD survey of key Polish animated short films, the Polskie Wydawnictwo Audiowizualne site has just uploaded official details - in Polish only at present, but an English translation will doubtless follow.More good news is that the list of titles I uploaded was incomplete - there are actually 28 films [...]
Polish Posters
Polish poster design is one of the frequently unsung glories of the visual arts over the past century. Many Polish filmmakers, including Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica, started out as poster designers, and many other major Polish artists made memorable contributions to the form. Their influence has been far-reaching - when I interviewed the [...]
Old Khottabych
Старик Хоттабыч Lenfilm, USSR, 1956, colour, 86 mins Director: Gennady Kazansky Writers: Lazar Lagin (based on his novel) Camera: Muzakir Shurukov Design: Isaak Kaplan, Berta Manevich Music: Nadezhda Simonyan Cast: Nikolai Volkov (Hassan Abdurrahman ibn Khottab), Alexei Litvinov (Volka), Gennadi Khudyakov (Zhenya), Lev [...]
Katyń
Andrzej Wajda's new film Katyń has a website - in Polish only, but the trailer is comprehensible enough. Go to 'Kontakt/Dla prasy' and select your preferred format. This is pretty close to my most eagerly awaited film this year. Wadja's in his early eighties now, but since he's managed to muster the biggest budget ever given to a Polish film, [...]
Polish animation on DVD
This (downloadable Word document) hints at some very exciting news. Apparently the Polish government-backed PWA (Polskie Wydawnictwo Audiowizualne, or Polish Audiovisual Publishers), which has already released some highly acclaimed DVD surveys of classic Polish documentaries, is turning its curatorial attentions to Poland's rich animation [...]
Intimate Lighting
Intimní osvětlení Czechoslovakia, 1965, black and white, 72 minsAlthough less famous than the Oscar-winning diptych of The Shop on the High Street (Obchod na korze, 1965) and Closely Observed Trains (Ostře sledované vlaky, 1966) or the early work of Miloš Forman (which Ivan Passer co-scripted and worked on as assistant director), Intimate [...]
Latcho Drom
Technically a French film, but you'd never know, Tony Gatlif's 1993 film Latcho Drom (which translates as 'Safe Journey') is an enthralling Cinemascope panorama tracing the thousand-year passage of the gypsies from India to Western Europe via Egypt, Turkey, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia. There's no dialogue or conventional narrative: everything [...]