Each edition of the Poland Film Festival offers Japanese viewers a rich programme of full-length Polish films, as well as special shows and accompanying events. This year's programme will feature Polish film classics such as The Structure of Crystal (1969) by Krzysztof Zanussi and Blind Chance (1987) by Krzysztof Kieślowski, as well as the latest works of younger artists: Imagine (2012) by Andrzej Jakimowski and Floating Scyscrapers (2013) by Tomasz Wasilewski.
Thanks to cooperation between Poland Film Festival and Culture.pl, this year's edition will also feature a retrospective of films by Wojciech Jerzy Has. Screenings of his films will be accompanied by a documentary about him and his work, as well as films made by his disciples.
Wojciech Jerzy Has was one of the most distinguished and inspiring Polish film directors. He was born in 1925 in Kraków and died in 2000 in Łódź, a city where he had been the dean of the directing department at the National Film School (PWSFTviT) since 1989. As a director he avoided political subjects and the cinematic mainstream. Instead, he had an artistic approach to the surrounding reality and paid attention to every detail. His distinctive style is apparent in the film The Noose. In this black and white film Has concentrates on the figure of an outsider who strives to communicate with the surrounding world. Similar subjects are raised by Has in his other films: How to be Loved and Farewells, in both of which the story of a tragic, unfulfilled love is the basis for a deeper psychological analysis of the heroes.
One of Has' best-known films is The Saragossa Manuscript, based on the novel by Jan Potocki, a Polish aristocrat, poet, philosopher, soldier and traveller who lived in the eighteenth century. Louis Buñuel, the master of surrealism, thought himself about making a film adaptation of the novel, but after seeing the version by Has he abandoned his plans and since then this work has become one of his favourite films. Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola are also admirers of this film. It's thanks to them that it was released in the USA in 2002 as a DVD. This is how the British online magazine The Quietus describes the film:
An adult "Alice in Wonderland"… an exploration of waking and dreaming, without the relief of an objective eye to distance the trip.
The other Has film, The Hourglass Sanatorium, is also surrealistic in a similar way and resembles a dream. It is based on prose by Bruno Schulz and is a poetic story about life and the inevitability of death.
In the Dictionary of Polish Feature Films Jan Słodowski writes:
One of visually most beautiful and original Polish films, a poetic reflection on the passing of time and irreversibility of death. Has has shown on the screen the universe of a dream encrusted with splinters of childhood memories spanning such elements as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the culture of Jewish towns of the easternmost areas of Poland, and the dreams of a young boy.
Wojciech Jerzy Has' work has inspired many artists. The biographical film Traces by Robert Gliński shows the director's profile through the prism of his colleagues' memories, mentioning not only film, but also his scientific interests. The festival will also show films made by Has' students inspired by his work.
Poland Film Festival was established in 2012 at the initiative of Nobuo Murata – an admirer of Polish cinematography and a distributor of Polish films in Japan. Thanks to him, Man of Iron, Danton, Four Nights with Anna, Essential Killing and Poland's Oscar candidate Ida, among others, have been released on DVD on the Japanese market. The artistic director, just like in the previous editions, is Jerzy Skolimowski. This year's festival programme, apart from the classics of Polish cinema, films by young artists and the Wojciech Jerzy Has retrospective, will present also films selected by the Polish Institute in Tokyo on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the political transformation in Poland.
The festival screenings will take place at the Theatre Image Forum in Tokyo and at Doshisha University in Kyoto between 22nd November and 26th December. All films will be displayed with Japanese subtitles.
The main organizer: Mermaid Films
Organizers: Polish Film Institute (PISF), Polish Filmmakers Association, Culture.pl, Polish Institute in Tokyo, Skopia Film
Cooperation: KADR Film Studio, Zebra Film Studio, TOR Film Studio, Digital Movie Repository, mk2, Image Forum
Partners: Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Tokyo, VALERIA, Copiapoa Film
See also:
Source: press materials, edited by szm