Polish cinema is 100 years old

An exhibition documenting one hundred years of Polish cinema has opened at the Polish Film Institute in Warsaw.

On display are photos from some 130 feature films, press reviews, comments by leading filmmakers and the documentation relating to the festival awards received by Polish directors, scriptwriters and cameramen.

The exhibition will remain on view as a permanent display at the Polish Film Institute, but its replicas are to be on view in the Warsaw city centre next spring, at major film festivals as well as at the Polish Cultural Institutes abroad in twenty cities, including London, Paris, Copenhagen and Budapest. It will be also included on the Polish Film Institute's website http://www.pisf.pl/index.php?kategoria=706.

Source: thenews.pl 10.12.2008 which means Dec, 10, 2008

Latter Day Goebbels

Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels the Nazi propaganda guru once said, "Tell a lie often enough and people will start to believe it." German film director Volker Schloendorff must have graduated from the Goebbels school of cinema.

Heroes of the 1980 strikes which gave birth to Poland's legendary anti-communist Solidarity trade union on Monday slammed a film by the Oscar-winning German director Volker Schloendorff dramatising the rise of the Soviet bloc's only trade union.

Due to premiere Monday in Gdansk, the Baltic Sea port and cradle of the historic Solidarity union, the film - Strike - the Hero from Gdansk (Strajk -Die Heldin von Danzig), was slammed as "offensive" by several of the real-life heroes who founded the trade union. Schloendorff loosely based the script on key Solidarity activist Anna Walentynowicz, a crane operator whose firing in August 1980 sparked the famous strike at the Gdansk shipyard which gave birth to Solidarity.

"This film does not present the true facts of Anna Walentynowicz' s life," Solidarity activist Joanna Gwiazda said Monday in Gdansk, quoted by the Polish PAP news agency. Gwiazda said Schloendorff misrepresented Walentynowicz as being illiterate and skewed facts about her personal life. Joanna's husband and fellow activist Andrzej Gwiazda also accused Schloendorff of misrepresenting Poles and falling victim to national stereotypes. "The film shows poorly-educated and hard-drinking shipyard workers - it fits perfectly with the (false) vision of Poles as drunks and thieves," he said.

A spokesperson for Walentynowicz said the pensioner was threatening a lawsuit should Schloendorff refuse to cut several scenes she finds slanderous. Schloendorff was awarded a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 1980 for The Tin Drum, also made in Gdansk.

Polish Films to See

My favorite Poilish Language Movies available at the Toledo-Lucas County Library are


Bez konca (No End)

The "hero" of NO END is Antek, a young liberal lawyer who dies four days before the film begins. He leaves behind his beautiful young widow Ulla, their son, and the unresolved trial of a Solidarity organizer.

Reluctantly caught up in the trial, Ulla finds herself unable to get Antek out of her mind, literally haunted by his memory. Antek shows up from time to time in ghostly narrated soliloquy.

She pledges to help the wife of the jailed labor organizer searching for the written trial strategy prepared by her late husband and begs Antek's old law school professor and now aged public defender to take the case. The old lawyer kinda reminds me of Abe Vagoda - "Barney Miller" and "Godfather" fame. This is a serious and somewhat dark drama. Not as dark as czarnina, but close.

Denny's Gwiazda rating (1-5) = *** 1/2


Popiol i diament (Ashes and Diamonds)

Portrait of a young Polish nationalist assassin who, when World War II ends, finds himself living uncertainly, moving from echoing bars to seedy hotel rooms, finding comfort in a girl and crazy jokes.




Zbigniew Cybulski -
the Polish James Dean - stars.

Award winning role.





Denny's Gwiazda rating (1-5) = **** 1/4


For a little instant drama check out the video short with Doda Elektroda.



Denny's Gwiazda rating (1-5) = sto jeden


A Completely Different Version - Same theme



Denny's Gwiazda rating (1-5) = not rated