Posts Tagged ‘Andrzej Wajda’
Wajda interview online
Although most of the current Sight & Sound is locked between the covers of the print version, the interview with Andrzej Wajda by yours truly and Kamila Kuc has just been published online. Coincidentally, I watched Wajda's Pan Tadeusz (1999) earlier today, which I enjoyed for the most part, even though I was acutely conscious that the [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Another Wajda update
I've just heard, courtesy of John Riley's new (and excellent) COUNTERpoint blog, that although Andrzej Wajda is too ill to attend the Censorship as a Creative Force panel discussion at London's Barbican Arts Centre on Friday next week, he'll be recording a ten-minute video address for it.His physical place will be taken by Agnieszka Holland, whose [...]
A Generation
PokoleniePoland, 1955, black and white, 83 minsIt's easy to overrate A Generation. Always one of the most straightforward of Andrzej Wajda's films to get hold of, thanks largely to its regular bundling with the far more accomplished Kanal (Kanał, 1957) and Ashes and Diamonds (Popiól i diament, 1958) as an artificial "war trilogy" (which could [...]
Wajda news
I'm afraid there's some bad news about the British premiere of Andrzej Wajda's Katyń at BFI Southbank on April 22 - the screening's still going ahead, but Wajda himself won't be attending, as he's been prevented from travelling due to ill health. The organisers hope there'll be a replacement in the form of someone connected with the production, [...]
Kinoteka
London's sixth annual Polish Film Festiwal (sic) has just launched its website.Given London's already large and growing Polish population, the festival has grown to match, and now has several distinct sidebars including:New Polish Cinema - several new features and shorts, including Stanislaw Mucha's Hope (Nadzieja), which I recently reviewed for [...]
Censorship as a Creative Force
In late April, the Barbican Arts Centre in London is hosting a week-long season, Censorship as a Creative Force, in collaboration with the Polish Cultural Institute, the Czech Centre and the Hungarian Cultural Centre.I've already booked tickets for the two highlights - a panel discussion on April 25 with the extraordinarily impressive line-up of [...]
Six capsules
Here's a quick round-up of films seen recently that were either reviewed in more depth elsewhere, or which I'm unlikely to get round to writing up in full. Katyń (d. Andrzej Wajda, 2007, Poland) A good film from a director who's made several great ones. The reason for my slight disappointment is twofold. Firstly, no mere film could possibly [...]
Katyń DVD: good news and bad news
I'm delighted to confirm that the ITI Home Video release of Wajda's Katyń has English subtitles - or at least the single-disc edition does; I didn't bother with the double-disc one as there's every likelihood that the extras aren't English-friendly. The bad news, though, is that the image has been cropped to 16:9 from the theatrical 2.35:1 - [...]