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The Wedding (Wesele) (Poland 2004)

February 10, 2008, 3:06 pm
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After a hectic few weeks, the chance to watch a film in peace was too good to miss, even if it was related to our Central European Cinema course. Wesele actually translates as ‘Wedding Reception’ (I read somewhere). Although a new script by the writer/director Wojciech Smarzowski, there appear to be references to an Andrzej [...]
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Katyn (Poland 2007)

June 24, 2009, 3:18 am
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I’ve waited a long time to see this film and I wasn’t disappointed. It may be the best film released in the UK this year – not in terms of technical accomplishment or artistic endeavour (whatever that means), but simply as a personal statement and a representation of enormous emotional feeling. Director Andrzej Wajda was [...]
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BIFF 9: The Last Action (Ostatnia akcja, Poland 2009)

March 25, 2010, 3:32 am
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A few years ago, the UK distributor Dogwoof released a number of popular Polish films in the UK, attracting audiences from the expanded Polish community following Poland’s entry into the EU and the influx of Poles into the UK workforce. Some of these were shown in Bradford (which has always attracted the British-Polish community in [...]
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Cambridge Film Festival #4: Rewers (The Reverse Poland 2009)

September 30, 2010, 2:02 pm
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The last film that I saw at Cambridge deserves its own entry. Although I enjoyed all the films that I saw and found something interesting in each, none of the others particularly surprised me. Rewers was the exception. As the Sight and Sound writer Catherine Wheatley pointed out earlier in the day (see next blogpost), [...]
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Polish film triumphs in the UK

February 3, 2012, 4:50 am
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The impact of Polish migrant workers on the UK economy was a major news story in the British press a few years ago but with the onset of recession and better opportunities elsewhere it seemed like those workers might have gone home or moved elsewhere (Norway for instance now has 15% of its workforce who [...]
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Ashes and Diamonds (Popiól i diament, Poland, 1958)

March 1, 2012, 9:19 am
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 Jonathan Rosenbaum makes the point that while this film is about the forties, it’s set on the day of the Nazi surrender, it’s overlayed by a fifties’ sensibility. This is evident through the James Dean-like Zbigniew Cybulski (though Rosenbaum cites Brando) but also in the European Art cinema style in which its shot. The ‘heavy’ [...]
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BIFF 2012 #6: Flying Pigs (Skrzydlate świnie, Poland 2010)

April 24, 2012, 7:24 am
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In her introduction Anna Draniewicz, the festival’s Polish consultant, told us that the leading man in this film, Pawel Małaszynski, was the Brad Pitt of Polish Cinema. This suggested that the film might be ‘popular’ rather than ‘arthouse’ for me and so it proved. Grodzisk is a small town in Western Poland and its football [...]
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You Are God (Jesteś Bogiem, Poland 2012)

September 25, 2012, 4:17 pm
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I went to this screening by accident and it was only afterwards that I learned that this was the most anticipated Polish release of the year. It opened in Poland and in the UK and Ireland on 21 September and you still have the chance to see it at selected Cineworld multiplexes. The title refers [...]
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In Darkness (W ciemności, Poland-Germany-Canada, 2011)

April 10, 2013, 3:04 am
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A producer may have pitched this as a high concept film where Kanal (Poland, 1953) meets Schindler’s List (US, 1993) without the latter’s saccharine. It’s the true tale of a Polish sewage worker who was paid to look after Jewish refugees from the Warsaw Ghetto. Robert Wieckiewicz plays Leopold Socha whose motivation, at least initially, […]
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BIFF 2013 #4 To Kill a Beaver (Zabić bobra, Poland 2012)

April 13, 2013, 6:03 am
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Given the number of national governments who agreed to join the ‘coalition of the willing’ and to send military personnel to Iraq and Afghanistan, there must be a whole sub-genre of ‘returning vet’ films being produced across many film cultures. To Kill a Beaver is a Polish entry. It’s a thriller with sex and violence […]
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The Woman in the Fifth (La femme du Vème, France/UK/Poland 2011)

June 16, 2013, 8:30 am
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There are many interesting ways into The Woman in the Fifth. It’s another French film in which Kristin Scott Thomas plays a role which requires her character to adopt a background to explain the fact that she speaks English and French and up to five other languages. It is also  an entry into the relatively […]
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Walesa: Man of Hope (Poland 2013)

November 8, 2013, 11:02 am
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We watched this film a fortnight ago and it seems a little strange that I haven’t thought much about it since. I’m hoping that Keith will have some comments to add. I’ve always been a fan of Andrzej Wajda and I looked forward to this biopic of Lech Walesa very much. It’s the final part […]
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New posts on The Global Film Book Blog

March 2, 2014, 2:01 pm
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This is just to remind you that some of our new posts are now appearing on The Global Film Book Blog. Recent posts include Cape No. 7 (Taiwan 2008), Boomerang Family (South Korea 2013) and Jack Strong (Poland 2014).Filed under: Korean Cinema, Polish Cinema, Taiwan Film
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Night Train (Pociag, Poland, 1959)

August 2, 2014, 1:16 am
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Like Knife in the Water Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s (he directed and co-wrote) Night Train emphasises the claustrophobic setting by utilising the space close to the camera through deep focus cinematography and, much in the same way 3D works, having characters appear in the frame, from the side, closer than you’d expect given the scene’s composition. That, and great black and white […]
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Eroica (Poland, 1958)

August 16, 2014, 1:24 am
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Eroica is an example of the Polish School, films made in the 1950s concerning World War II. It’s in two parts, originally meant to be three but the director, Andrzej Munk, was dissatisfied with the final section, and tells two stories of heroism. ‘Eroica’ is Italian for ‘heroic’ and, in the context of the film, refers to […]
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Innocent Sorcerers (Niewinni czarodzieje, Poland, 1960)

August 24, 2014, 12:57 am
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Andrzej Wajda is one of my favourite directors and thanks to Second Run Innocent Sorcerers is available in a typically (from them) great print. Wadja had completed his great ‘war trilogy’ with Ashes and Diamonds two years earlier and, at first, you wonder why he bothered with such relatively ‘slight’ material of two rather ‘cool’ youngsters finding love. Wadja’s four films […]
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Ida (Poland-Denmark 2013)

January 6, 2015, 5:27 am
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This vies with Phoenix as my film of the year (i.e. seen in a UK screening). It’s a perfectly formed art object that is both engaging and moving. It has been celebrated around the world and has recently been in UK cinemas after a winning a prize at the London Film Festival a year ago. We’ve had […]
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¡Viva! 21 #2: Os fenómenos (Aces, Spain 2014)

March 7, 2015, 5:05 pm
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Widely seen as a Galician version of a Ken Loach film, Os fenómenos is engaging and intriguing with its ‘open’ ending. It isn’t the first Galician nod to Ken, that would be Mondays in the Sun (2002) with Javier Bardem as an unemployed shipbuilder, but with its ensemble cast of workers in the construction sector complete […]
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New posts on Global Film

May 12, 2015, 1:52 pm
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Just a reminder for subscribers. Reviews of interesting films, mainly from outside the US/UK and Western Europe, are also to be found on our sister site at globalfilmstudies.com Recent posts include: Jauja (Argentina-Denmark 2014) Stones for the Rampart (Poland 2014) The Salvation (Denmark/UK/South Africa 2014) OK Kanmani (India 2015, Tamil)Filed under: Argentinian Cinema, Danish Cinema, […]
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The Promised Land (Ziemia obiecana, Poland 1975)

July 24, 2015, 2:55 am
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This Andrzej Wajda film is an adaptation of a novel by the Nobel Prize-winning author Władysław Stanisław Reymont (1867 – 1925). The original Polish cinema release was nearly three hours long with a four hour version for television. This was restored in Poland in 2011 and was shown at the Hyde Park Picture House in Leeds as […]
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