Forgotten Gems: Less Known Foreign Films by Polish Directors

nastazja_wajda.jpg, default, A frame from Andrzej Wajda's film 'Nastazja', 1994, photo: H.I.T. / Héritage Films/Say-To Workshop

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An erotic comedy by Roman Polański and a documentary essay by Paweł Pawlikowski about the Balkan war. A Japanese adaptation of ‘The Idiot’ directed by Andrzej Wajda with a man playing the part of Nastasya and a horror film about the deadly shout of the indigenous people of Australia, made by Jerzy Skolimowski. The ‘Twilight Zone’ series by Ryszard Bugajski and a moving story about pedophilia realized by Rafał Kapeliński. We invite you to a tour of less known foreign films and series by Polish directors.

‘What?’ (1972) – Polański's erotic comedy

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A frame from the film 'What?', directed by Roman Polanski, 1972, photo: Compagnia Cinematografica

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Although Roman Polański's enormous filmography does not lack strange, bold and controversial films, it is precisely What? that has for years been considered the most bizarre and mysterious one in his oeuvre.

It is no coincidence. The movie tells a story of a young woman (Sydney Rome) who, seeking shelter from rapists, ends up in a mysterious hotel by the sea, where for several days she experiences bizarre sexual adventures. Polański traversed Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and turned the fairy tale about initiation into an unassuming erotic comedy. Casting Marcelo Mastroiani, Hugh Griffith and himself as Mosquito turned out to be a failure for Polański, both artistically and commercially.

For the director of Chinatown, What? was a way to process trauma from the tragedy he experienced. Three years earlier, in August 1969, Charles Manson's gang had murdered his wife and three friends. After those events, Polański abandoned the Day of the Dolphin project he was working on with Jack Nicholson and made Macbeth, an adaptation of Shakespeare, which was a desperate attempt to reflect on his wife's death. A gloomy, dark drama found its reverse in What?. Polański's film is a story of unbridled eroticism, a bit of a self-ironic burlesque, and a bit of an absurd comedy too, which has dated very badly. The movie, which in 1972 was received as a harmless curiosity, today could be a career finisher. Polański not only made rape jokes, but also objectified his female protagonist, whose nudity he exploited shamelessly, while also continuously sexualizing female characters for almost two hours.

'The Shout' (1978) – British horror film by Jerzy Skolimowski

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A frame from the film 'The Shout', directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, 1978, photo: Entertainment Pictures / ForumForum

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While Polański, already celebrated for the successes of Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby, was developing his career on the other side of the Atlantic, his friend and companion in his first film adventures, Jerzy Skolimowski, was looking for his place on the British Isles. After the outstanding Deep End and the less successful King, Queen, Knave with Gina Lollobrigida and David Niven in 1978, the Polish director appeared on the set of The Shout, a horror film based on the novel by David Graves (the author of the novel I, Claudius). The story of a man with the ability to kill with his shout was originally to be directed by a British star-status director, Nicholas Roeg, but he was already working on another film, thanks to which Skolimowski was given a chance to face Graves' literature. And he seized this opportunity brilliantly – his The Shout turned a pulp horror tale turned into a real horror drama with excellent roles by John Hurt and Alan Bates.

When presented at the Cannes festival, it received a technical award for its skilful use of the latest surround sound technologies. And although The Shout still remains in the shadow of Skolimowski’s other works, years later it still constitutes a powerfully disturbing tale about desire, death and destruction.

‘The Twilight Zone’ (1985-1989) and ‘T.and T.’(1989) – cult series by Ryszard Bugajski

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A frame from 'Many, Many Monkeys' from the television series 'Strefa mroku', director: Ryszard Bugajski, photo: Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS)

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Ryszard Bugajski was also among those artists whom political oppression drove to emigrate from Poland. With the making of Interrogation in 1982, a shocking film with the unforgettable role of Krystyna Janda, he was handed a sentence by the communist censors. The film hit the shelf for years, was blacklisted by the authorities, and only secretly distributed on VHS tapes, and it was not officially released until 1989. Bugajski, persecuted by the authorities and cut off from professional opportunities, left for Canada in 1985. And it was there that he took up the production of popular series, which after many years earned cult status.

One of them was The Twilight Zone, a series with significant sci-fi fandom. Bugajski directed five episodes of this popular series, creating stories about a prisoner who breaks out of captivity thanks to teleportation, about a town ridden with an epidemic of blindness and about people who survived their own death. But it was not the only series in Bugajski's oeuvre – the Polish director also appeared on the set of The Hitchhiker, which was popular in Poland in the 90s, two episodes of the famous series Alfred Hitchock Presents, as well as T. and T., a crime series, in which Mr. T., the star of The A-Team, played the role of a private detective working for a young idealistic lawyer. Bugajski's Canadian work came to an end with the 1995 feature-length film Clear Motive, after which Bugajski returned to Poland to continue his career here.

‘Serbian Epics’ (1992) – the documentary gem by Paweł Pawlikowski

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'Serbian Epics', directed by Paweł Pawlikowski, 1992, photo: BBC.

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Although today he is known as the author of Oscar-winning films – Ida and Cold War, Paweł Pawlikowski's film journey began with a British documentary. Being a young artist, an immigrant from behind the Iron Curtain, Pawlikowski’s interests were leaning towards the East from the beginning of his career. In 1990, he made From Moscow to Pietushki: A Journey with Benedict Yerofeyev for the BBC, and he returned to Russia on the occasion of his next film, the phenomenal Dostoevsky's Travels, a documentary comedy about the great writer's great-grandson who, invited by German intellectuals, comes to the FRG to participate in a symposium dedicated to his famous great-grandfather, while Dimitri's real purpose is to purchase the used Mercedes of his dreams.

The success of this film, which received an award from the European Film Academy, paved the way to further bold documentary endeavors. On the wave of that very success he was able to realize Serbian Epics, one of the best films ever made about the Balkan wars. This documentary is a story of the pitfalls of patriotic narratives and of the cruelty to which the belief in national myths can lead. Made in 1992 during the Serbian siege of Sarajevo, Pawlikowski's film was not an account of wartime events, but an intellectual and artistic essay about the sources of violence. Its protagonist was Radovan Karadžić, a Serbian politician, poet and war criminal in one person. In Pawlikowski's works, he became a symbol-figure, a vessel and creator of national myths, dangerous and at the same time grotesquely funny.

'I wanted to depict national mythomania, but not to criticize it completely, but to prove that it affects us all,' said Pawlikowski in an interview with Michał Chaciński from TVP Kultura. This ironic distance and grotesque formula of the Serbian Epics caused Pawlikowski to be accused of relativizing war crimes and softening the image of Karadžić, thus forcing the BBC authorities to introduce the premiere of the film with a debate on the situation in the Balkans and the intentions of the film's author.

Nastasya (1994) – Wajda reads Dostoyevsky in Japanese

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A frame from Andrzej Wajda's film 'Nastazja', 1994, photo: H.I.T. / Héritage Films/Say-To Workshop

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This film adaptation of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot first sprung to Wajda's mind when he visited Kyoto in 1981 and watched The Lady of the Camellias with Bandō Tamasaburō in the title role on the stage of the local theater. Raised in the tradition of kabuki theater, Bandō Tamasaburō was one of the leading Japanese onnagata (male actors specializing in playing female characters), and his output included the roles of Lady Macbeth, Medea and Desdemona. When Wajda saw him on stage, he saw his ideal realization of Nastasya. He decided to make a film version of The Idiot, casting a Japanese actor in a double role – Myshkin and Nastasya. Years later, he recollected working with the Japanese star:

The female characters created by Bandō Tamasaburō are particularly close to me through the idealization of women, which is also present in our Polish tradition. This is how he perceives Nastasya, discovering in her everything that for men (Myshkin and Rogozhin) makes her worthy of love. And more than that, he can arouse admiration even for her flaws. This wonderful artist creates not feminine types as such, but some kind of eternal femininity born out of male delight, and it is not a work of copying, much less an imitation. It is this very creative form that is the most striking feature of Japanese art for us Europeans.

And although Wajda's project may seem impressively bold even today, Nastasya did not turn out to be a success and to this day remains one of the least known films by the Polish master.

Treme (2010) – an overlooked gem by Agnieszka Holland

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A frame from the series 'Treme', photo: HBO

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Agnieszka Holland's presence on this list may seem somewhat misplaced. In her case, it is difficult to talk about less known foreign films or series as she’s an internationally renowned director, associated with large productions made in the Czech Republic, Western Europe and the United States for many years. After all, even the lesser known films by Holland would still be considered super-productions in the context of Polish cinematography as it exists today. Because if the lesser known ones of her American films are Shot in the Heart starring Giovanni Ribisi, Sam Shepard and the debuting Paul Wesley (later the star of The Vampire Diaries), or The Third Miracle with Ed Harris, then we are still talking about films successfully distributed around the world.

The choice of Treme is therefore not a choice of a little-known series, but a of production that is insufficiently appreciated, especially by the Polish audience. And Treme is an excellent series – a story about New Orleans residents trying to rebuild their lives in a city devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Starring David Simon (The Wire) and Eric Ellis Overmyer (The Affair, Boch, Forbidden Empire), the geniuses of modern television, the series received four Emmy nominations and went on for four seasons. Nevertheless, it remains utterly unknown in Poland. Particularly in comparison to other series achievements by Agnieszka Holland, among which we can find both the masterpiece The Wire and the extremely popular The Killing or Cold Case.

‘Butterfly Kisses’ (2017) – Rafał Kapeliński's drama about pedophilia

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A frame from 'Butterfly Kisses', directed by Rafał Kapeliński, 2017, pictured: Theo Stevenson, photo: Nick Cooke/Solopan

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Kadr z filmu "Butterfly Kisses" w reżyserii Rafała Kapelińskiego, 2017. Na zdjęciu: Theo Stevenson, fot. Nick Cooke/Solopan

When Butterfly Kisses was included in the program of 2017 Berlinale, Rafał Kapeliński was a completely unknown figure to many Polish cinema goers. The UK debut of the director and screenwriter, then 46, changed this state of affairs.

The film, awarded in Berlin, was one of the most interesting debuts in the Polish cinema of the last decade. Kapeliński's modest drama, produced on a microscopic budget, delighted the audience with the tenderness and subtlety with which Kapeliński disarmed the taboo of pedophilia. In Butterfly Kisses he combined the formula of a social drama with a story about the loneliness of a man confronted with his own sickness as he came to recognize a dangerous fascination in himself. Kapeliński’s story of a teenager discovering his own pedophilia is told without sensational tones and tabloid simplifications. The director neither accused his character nor tried to absolve him. He merely observed, in order to understand and to sympathize with his despair.

Kapeliński's film, shot in Great Britain, opened him doors for further film projects and for combining film theory (Kapeliński had been a lecturer at the London Film School (LFS) and Central Film School of London for many years) with directing practice. His next work is soon to be released – this time made in Poland.

Flying Blind (2012) – a terrorist melodrama by Katarzyna Klimkiewicz

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A frame from the film 'Flying Blind', pictured: Helen McCrory, photo: Alter Ego Pictures.

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Na zdjęciu: Helen McCrory, fot. Alter Ego Pictures

Kapeliński was not the only one who got a chance to make a feature debut in England. Five years earlier, another Polish artist, Katarzyna Klimkiewicz, had made her first feature in the UK. Her film was financed from a program supporting young film makers sponsored by the city of Bristol. More than 500 teams of young artists applied to the South West Screen competition 'iFeatures', and the Polish director was among the three winners and was given a chance to make a film. Her Flying Blind told the story of a successful 40-year-old woman starting an affair with a student suspected of terrorism.

This modest film, made for 500,000 dollars, impressed the audience with the excellent performance of Hellen McCrory (the star of Peaky Blinders), as well as with the way in which the Polish director combined erotic drama with political thriller. After the film's premiere at the 66th Edinburgh International Film Festival, Stephen Dalton of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that despite the limited budget, the director managed to create a film story in the atmosphere of the Homeland series, and although her picture shows financial shortcomings, Flying Blind has the potential for a Hollywood remake. Unfortunately, the remake did not happen, and in Poland the young director's ambiguous and understated film was underappreciated, so we had to wait nine years for another full-length film by Klimkiewicz (Bo we mnie jest seks [Because there’s sex in me] about Karina Jędrusik).

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