Still from Andrzej Wajda's "The Promised Land"
With a lineup of fresh films exploring capitalist aberrations in East European societies, new mediums to transport audiences into the world of the blind, a restored Wajda classic, and a live psychedelic film score, the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival in London enters its 11th edition.
The Kinoteka Polish Film Festival’s new edition opens on the 7th of March 2013 with a gala and a screening of Andrzej Wajda’s Oscar-nominated illustration of the uncivilised reality of capitalism at the end of the 19th century. The Promised Land (1974) is set in the booming city of Łódź against the backdrop of the flourishing Polish textile industry. Three ambitious young men with dreams of prosperity - a Pole, a Jew and a German - open a textile factory together. Financial intrigues set the businessmen at odds. "An incisive, and elegantly-realized Dickensian tale of greed, human cruelty, and exploitation," festival programmers write, "that lays bare the unbridled capitalism and human cost that lies underneath the veneer of industrial progress." The Barbican Centre Cinema 1 screens the original, more rarely showcased version of the film.
The festival's New Polish Cinema section features Andrzej Jakimowski’s film about love that comes from common understanding and world views. Imagine is a Polish-French-Portuguese co-production starring Edward Hogg as Ian and Alexandra Maria Lara as Eva. The two blind characters venture through Lisbon's dangerous streets, using a complex network of sound cues to "imagine" the landscape.
Other titles showcased around London - at Riverside Studios, Barbican Centre Cinema 1, 2 and 3, Curzon Soho and ICA - and in Liverpool and Belfast include Wojciech Smarzowski’s Rose, the director's award-winning story about love flourishing out of the inhuman circumstances of the Second World War, and Michał Marczak’s Fuck For Forest, the daring documentary about a nonprofit environmental organisation whose members make pornographic material or have sex in public to raise money for worthy causes. The narrative-driven film revolves loosely around the group's environmental projects, focusing on sexuality, contemporary lifestyles, western morals and cultural variants in human perception.
A special position in the Kinoteka programme is occupied by a retrospective of short films by the pioneering multimedia artist Wojciech Bruszewski (1947-2009). His groundbreaking work spans photography, film, video, installation and computer graphics. Across Realities, the London retrospective, takes place on the 12th of March 2013 at 7 pm at the Tate Modern. "Bruszewski’s investigations into various dimensions of reality and perception left an immense imprint on Polish experimental film in the decades to follow", the festival programmers write. "[...] the Tate’s Across Realities programme aims to bring the artist’s transcendental and all-embracing artistic approach closer to a London audience and bring about much deserved critical and institutional recognition of these important works."
The festival's closing gala takes place on the 17th of March 2013 at the Barbican Centre Cinema 1, with a special screening accompanied by live music by Andy Votel. Kleksploitation is "a nostalgic journey to the magical and psychedelic reality of the 80′s Poland’s children film trilogy Pan Kleks. Votel draws on images, music and sound from the original films, selecting and subverting, to coax their darker side to the surface and create something wholly original, unsettling and — at times — weirdly humorous."
The multi-faceted festival includes film workshops for all ages - including a Bafta masterclass with award-winning cinematographer Paweł Edelman on the 14th of March 2013 at 6:30 pm at the BFI Southbank - and a national film competition for creating short films inspired by Roman Polański's work.
Programme
Liverpool:
Screening of Wojciech Smarzowski's Rose
Belfast:
Screening of Wojciech Smarzowski's Rose
London:
Riverside Studios:
Tomasz Opasiński film poster exhibition
Maria Sadowska – Women’s Day
Andrzej Jakimowski – Imagine
Tomasz Wasilewski – In the Bedroom
Filip Marczewski – Shameless
Jan Jakub Kolski – To Kill a Beaver
Katarzyna Rosłaniec – Baby Blues
Marcin Krzyształowicz – Manhunt
Wojciech Smarzowski - Rose
Maciej Żak – Supermarket
Tate Modern:
Wojciech Bruszewski -Ten Works, 1973–1977, 31 mins
Wojciech Bruszewski - Der Sternmusik, TV-Music, TV-Hen Behaviour Music, 1979–1982, 5 mins
Wojciech Bruszewki - Apnoea, 1972, 10 mins
Barbican Centre Cinema 1:
Andrzej Wajda – The Promised Land
Andy Votel presents: Kleksploitation
Barbican Centre Cinema 2:
Krzysztof Zanussi - Illumination
Barbican Centre Cinema 3:
Wojciech Marczewski – Escape from ‘Liberty’ Cinema
Curzon Soho:
Michał Marczak – Fuck for Forest
ICA:
Anka and Wilhelm Sasnal – It Looks Pretty From a Distance
National Gallery:
The Painterly Animations of Witold Giersz
For more information visit: Kinoteka UK
Sources: Kinoteka, culture.pl
Editor: Marta Jazowska