Apologies for the lack of updates – things have been insanely busy over the past fortnight, what with the Ken Russell retrospective at BFI Southbank (for which I contributed a 75-minute illustrated talk and met the man himself a few days later) and various other work-related things – including an interview about Jan Švankmajer for MovieMail’s regular podcast series. (I finally bit the bullet and listened to it, and it’s not bad at all – I talk a little too fast, but that was partly because I only had the room in which we recorded it for a strictly limited period and was worried we might not be able to finish on time).
But I also spent the past fortnight working my way through PWA’s Anthology of Polish Animation DVDs, which were everything I could possibly have wished for. I ordered it from Merlin.pl, for what my credit card bill tells me was a whopping £11.34 including postage, and it would have been a bargain at two or three times the price. I’m not sufficiently knowledgeable about the history of Polish animation to comment on the choice of specific titles, but I can certainly confirm that there wasn’t a single title amongst the 28 included that didn’t have something going for it, and there were loads of discoveries – of the animators whose work I’d never seen before, Witold Giersz and Jerzy Kucia’s films made the deepest impression on me.
Even better, presentation standards were top-notch. I suspect a lot of restoration went on behind the scenes, as picture quality was startlingly good across the board, and the transfers were pretty well flawless – the only minor quibble is that the widescreen material wasn’t anamorphically enhanced, but as the vast majority of the films were in 4:3 that wasn’t a particularly big deal. The entire package is 100% English-friendly – although hardly any of the films had any spoken content, subtitles are provided for credits, other onscreen text and even song lyrics, and the menus are also available in English. The booklet contains biographies and filmographies of all the animators, and is fully bilingual in English and Polish. (There are also French menus and subtitles).
On the Eastern European cinema front, I caught a sneak preview of this year’s surprise Palme d’Or winner, Cristian Mungiu’s devastating Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days (4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile), which more than lived up to the hype. I also saw György Pálfi’s gloriously revolting Taxidermia on the big screen for the first time (which confirmed that this film really needs an audience to react to it), and finally watched his debut Hukkle on a decent (Hungarian) DVD – I’d previously reviewed both for Sight & Sound, but had to put up with timecoded DVD and VHS screeners.
Fingers crossed I’ll have time to write in more detail on all the above – I’m stuck at home with the kids while my wife is having a four-day weekend in Prague, so this might well be what keeps me sane.