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 Polskiej Animacji). The new one is probably going to have more specialist appeal, being a collection of Polish children’s animation, but I can’t fault their generosity – it contains 41 titles spread across three discs, and the RRP appears to be the same as its predecessor (which was a sensational bargain).
And they’re just gearing up to release the latest entry in their Polish School of the Documentary (Polska Szkoła Dokumentu) series. And this one looks particularly interesting, as it covers the so-called “black school” of the late 1950s, in which Polish documentary filmmakers started to break free from the constricting socialist realist model in favour of discussing controversial social issues – and paving the way for the more personal work that PWA has already highlighted. It features lots of key titles, including major early work by Kazimierz Karabasz (I now know why it didn’t appear on his own DVD), and they’ve even thrown in one of Roman Polański’s film-school shorts, Breaking Up The Party (Rozbijemy zabawę, 1957) – which someone’s uploaded to YouTube.