Posts Tagged ‘Andrzej Wajda’
Polish poll
Despite being considered a hot favourite in some circles, Andrzej Wajda's Katyń failed to win the Best Foreign Film Oscar, being beaten at the final hurdle by the German film The Counterfeiters (Die Fälscher). However, Polish Radio's English-language news service puts on a positive spin by pointing out that the largely Polish-made stop-motion [...]
Derek Malcolm’s Century of Cinema
While researching something else (as is always the way), I stumbled upon former Guardian critic Derek Malcolm's A Century of Films - a survey of his personal Top 100, with a robust defence of each film's inclusion. And on glancing down the list again for the first time since 2001, I notice that nine of his choices came from central and eastern [...]
Katyń in Berlin
Andrzej Wajda's Katyń has just had its international premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, with Leslie Felperin's Variety review broadly in line with what seems to be the critical consensus: The 1940 massacre by the Soviets of some 15,000 Polish Army officers at Katyn, Russia, reps the hub from which spokes of drama emanate in the WWII epic [...]
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.
East of Berlin
Here's a very promising initiative - a blog set up by Roy Stafford to accompany a series of evening classes on central European cinema that he's teaching at the National Media Museum in Bradford. The first instalment is a short introduction to the films of Andrzej Wajda.
Katyń in English
Hot on the heels of the announcement that Andrzej Wajda's Katyń will have its international premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, the film's official website is now bilingual in Polish and English. It opens in Britain in April - I don't yet know about other English-speaking countries.
Katyń links
I'm getting a lot of visitors in search of reviews of Andrzej Wajda's new film Katyń, so I thought I'd create a separate post offering annotated links - I'll update this over the next few days as more start to appear. First-hand account of the Warsaw premiere by Loxodonta (Defending Defense blog, 18 September 2007); Very brief comments by [...]
Wajda’s Revenge
I'd been meaning to watch The Revenge (Zemsta, 2002) for ages - it's Andrzej Wajda's last completed feature prior to this year's Katyń - and after other plans fell through last night I gave it a go. It's a mixed bag: on the one hand, it's hugely entertaining seeing two great directors clearly letting their hair down and having a ball (Roman [...]
Wajda’s War Trilogy on Film4 this week
I've just discovered that Andrzej Wajda's great war trilogy - A Generation (Pokolenie, 1955), Kanal (Kanał, 1957) and Ashes and Diamonds (Popiół i diament, 1958) - is being shown on Film4 in the small hours of the next few days (there are two complete screenings scheduled on consecutive nights, starting on the mornings of Tuesday 24th and [...]
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, [...]