Polish

Jan is a young assistant professor in chemistry and a workaholic, whose entire life is dedicated to study and advancement to full professorship. Anna is an unsuccesful science writer who turns to Jan for advice and human compassion in a critical moment of mental confusion and nervous exhaustion. Jan, absorbed with his career, remains immune to Anna’s clumsy efforts to pierce his defences. Affrayed by her ultimate plea for an embrace, he escapes to his own quarters. In the end Anna makes an unsuccesful suicide attempt and he visits her in the hospital.Read More »

After twenty years, Nina’s marriage to Wojtek is going nowhere, partly because of their failed attempts to have children. When they meet a young woman, Magda, they decide to propose that she become a surrogate mother for their child. But things get more complicated when Nina suddenly feels attracted to Magda.
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From The Lumiere Reader:
THIS frankly marvelous film by Polish/American director Lech Majewski concerns a real-life cult of Polish working-class painters who were given three Fátima-like prophecies upon the death of their spiritual leader in the thirties – upcoming were a great war, a red plague and a death ray from Saturn that would destroy the earth. Their behaviour in response results in all sorts of shenanigans. Angelus hasn’t achieved much international coverage since its release in 2000, but it’s unclear why this hilarious, loving tribute to human folly and ambition was so ignored. A revelation that only a Film Society can dredge up, Angelus reveals Majewski’s painterly visual touch, and his wry sense of humour.Read More »

Two-part documentary about post-communist Poland, looking at the emotional and psychological turmoil caused by Poland’s search for a democratic alternative to communism in the run up to the first presidential election. Witold Starecki explores the legacy of disillusionment and fear created by the collapse of the Communist Party in Poland.Read More »

Lokis is a dark Gothic romance, a faithful (though expanded) adaptation of Prosper Merimee’s famous story, and the creme de la creme of the small horror niche dealing with the Eastern variant of the werewolf – the “werebear”.

Reverend Wittenbach, clergyman and bibliophile, travels into the eastern regions of Polish-Lithuanian forests – the “kresy” – in order to explore the vast library owned by a rich family of noblemen. Hosted in their luxurious mansion, the reverend learns the strange secrets of the surroundings and discovers the dark and disturbing secret of the family – there are whispers that his host, the enigmatic young count Michal Szemiot, may be something other than a man… that he was born of an unholy union of a woman and a bear…Read More »

Quote:
Set in 1936 in Poland. Zygfryd, a handsome, orphaned young circus acrobat with an introspective temperament, is under the protection of circus owner, Waldo, and his wife. A rich intellectual recluse, patron of the arts (and of young artists) stumbles into Zygfryd’s heart- stopping act and offers him his friendship. He also opens up his cultural horizons and teaches him to consciously reflect on life. It all ends in tragedy, when the boy finds that the circus life is no longer enough and falls during his act. Written by Polish Cinema DatabaseRead More »

The main character is the manager of a sport club, nicknamed “Teddy Bear” by his friends and acquaintances. One day he is detained at the border just as his sport team is off to a tournament – somebody has torn out a few pages from his passport. It occurs to him that perhaps his ex-wife has done so to get her hands on their joint account in a London bank.Read More »

Imdb:
Ewa returns to her village after a hospital stay. She works on a plantation that grows wild roses. While Ewa was away her mother has been taking care of her children Marysia and Jas. Ewa’s husband Andrzej also returns home after working for months in Norway. The time apart has created distance between them. During Marysia’s first communion, Ewa starts to feel ill. Her friend Basia drives her home. Basia admits that she leaked the gossip to Andrzej about Ewa’s affair with Marcel, a local high school boy. Ewa meets Marcel on the rose plantation. She says that their relationship is over. After Marcel leaves, Marta realizes that Jas, her 2-year-old son, has disappeared. The search begins. After hours a policeman appears and says that Jas has been found. Marta and Andrzej go to the next village and pick up Jas. Ewa returns to the hospital she left a few days before. We discover that Ewa had given birth to a child and put it up for adoption. Ewa wants her child back.Read More »

Tadeusz (Jan Kreczmar) is a Polish veteran of World War II who fled to London at the end of the war, leaving behind his wife Zofia (Irena Eichlerówna) and son, Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski), who disappeared when he was 12 years old. Tadeusz returns to Kraków to discover that Maciek is alive, his wife may have been a partisan and that his son may have turned in his own mother in to the authorities. During Maciek’s struggle to understand his parents’ history, questions of collaboration with the Gestapo and Home Army retribution arise. Has pictures the mystical lost boy in a dark fairy-tale forest, full of the ghosts of the war and wholesale executions. The hypnotic quality of these excursions foreshadows the mesmerizing passages of Has’s later film, The Hour-Glass Sanatorium.Read More »