Discoveries from Poland World Cinema

At Żmijewski and Paweł Althamer’s invitation a group of artists fills a few rooms at the Warsaw art school. All the works take the human body, that indispensable theme for any art education, as their point of departure. Past and future meet when Żmijewski's former professor joins the group. A homage to art school.

A bleak portrait of the average patient who spends the night sobering up.

A portrait of a Poland where two forces collide, representing completely different world views: the leftist perspective versus a homogenized Poland built by the extreme right. Between these ideologies stand people who fight in the name of their values and principles and a great divergence: Nationalism.

Join us for a 9-minute walk through the city and its main park, Planty, caught by the eye of Mysłowicz, founder of the Lumen Film Institute. Unlike most major Polish cities, Kraków wasn’t destroyed during the Second World War, which means Planty krakowskie gives you a splendid opportunity to almost feel like you’re there today.

It is 1969. Wiesiek has long hair, pants with patches, colored shirt and necklace beads. It is important for him to demonstrate rebellion. 10 years later. Wiesiek lives in the Bieszczady Mountains and gathers around them people who, like him, are looking for their place on earth. They work together, eat together and build a house together. Creating a community with others has now become the most important for life in Wieśka. Now it is his way.

Propaganda film about Polish diaspora and their settlement in Paraná, Brazil.

Pawel is a lonely polish man whose life is interrupted by an illegal imigrant Mohammad. Pawel decides to help him.

In 1978, Robakowski moved into a new flat in a newly-built high rise in the center of Łódź. That’s when he began filming the people and events he could see from his kitchen window. The film was made on the basis of a dozen or more hours of footage shot during 1978–1999. The artist filmed the front yard of his block of flats in a part of Łódź called “Manhattan”—a cluster of tall, cement housing buildings vaguely resembling New York’s skyscrapers. The images are accompanied by the artist’s commentary, which brings the viewer closer to his neighbors and family, including his then-wife, Małgorzata Potocka. The film comments on the gradual yet profound political and social transformations that took place in Poland over these two decades.

How to paint your life and choose colors to match your mood? What to make a palette and what brushes to use? How to deal with problems thanks to art therapy? When to reach for solvent? All this will show you Polish Bob Ross in his program.

ince the 1970s, Robakowski has been experimenting with the category of the author, transferring the authorship of his works onto the film camera. Implementing the strategy of biological-mechanical records, Robakowski continues his experiments, carried out since the 1970s, consisting in the transfer of the authorship of the film onto the film camera, as well as initiates relations between the mechanical medium and the human organism. On the one hand, it embraces collaboration, on the other, human struggle with the machine, extending from the “integration” of its logic and the attempts at its “anthropomorphisation”.

A team of engineers is conducting final tests on a machine, which will decide the fate of a war. Meanwhile, a series of murders takes place in the city.

A film dedicated to miners, showing the hardship and risk of working in a mine. Devoid of verbal commentary, it draws its impact from the form: suggestive cinematography close to the pre-war avant-garde, dynamic editing closely linked to music. Brzozowska was accused of formalism at the 1949 Congress of Filmmakers in Wisła, where socialist realism was proclaimed.

After an alcohol-induced night out, Emilia, 20, wakes up in an unknown apartment next to another woman, Matylda, 32, who claims they slept with each other last night.

Ania and Edie are a lesbian couple who share their mutual passion for drag kings. They dress up as men and perform on stage. The film follows their everyday life and show preparations as they try to employ the very stereotypical, macho-like, aggressive masculinity for the drag. They fight to be together and fulfill their artistic dreams in such a conservative country as Poland.

Rozalia is an actress. A professional opportunity makes it essential for her and her seven-year-old son, Kazik, to move from Warsaw to the small city of Wałbrzych in south-east Poland. The new city means a long-term contract of employment for her in the local theatre and a new school for Kazik. As they settle in, Rozalia begins to strike up a friendship with Kazik's new teacher, Darek. However, problems start cropping up at the school. Unexpected events in Rozalia's life become intertwined with her onstage role.

Student film by Skolimowski abot a street ironically called Beautiful.

A father and a son on a trip. They meet to spend some time together after the period when they broke off contacts. But it is not a carefree weekend at a hut in the Bieszczady mountains. The drunk father asks a rhetorical question: “And what, did you think it would be easy?”

A young man lives constantly in a fantasy world, until he starts working for a railroad company.

In the town of Trajdarajda, lives Krawiec Niteczka. One day he finds out from a Gypsy woman that he will become the king. He sets off to meet his fate. Along the way, he meets Scarecrow and now they are wandering together. In the end, they come to the city, which is still raining. Princess promises her hand and kingdom to those who manage to remedy misfortune. Tailor Niteczka sees that it is because of the high castle tower, which spire torn and holds a huge cloud over the city is still raining. He orders to bring all the ladders, takes the needle and thread, climbs up to the sky and sutures the hole in the cloud. From here the sun shines over the city again, and as a reward, Krawiec Niteczka marries the princess and becomes king.

Children's animation short by Ryszard Antoniszczak.

Rare look into the lives of gays and lesbians in contemporary Poland. It explores the issue of gay and lesbian rights in a conservative society, which is undergoing a very dynamic transformation, allowing for successful liberal changes.

Metalmania Concert Filmed And Recorded At "Spodek, Katowice", March 24th, 2007

Bogdan and Roza are a dead marriage. They have been living together in one room, but they don’t speak to each other.

A miniature from a series of animated films illustrated with classical music.

Documentary about a project to find proper shelter and care for abandoned old folk in Polish villages.

Two old sisters, living in the same Warsaw apartment, sit on a bench and talk. The 87-year-old elder one seems to care for the other reluctantly and treat her badly. The younger, who is said to be clumsier, has walking problems.

Documentary about a rural physician in the town of the title.

The film is a double portrait with children in the background. The grandmother and the mother differ in their moral assessment of in vitro fertilisation, which is important inasmuch as two grandsons were born thanks to this method. The convictions of one of them cannot be reconciled with the decisions of the other. The toughening of the older woman’s position, in particular, locks them both in an ideological clinch. But the difficult conversation about the possibilities of reuniting love, faith and ideology is still going on.

A group of kids from a poor area of Warsaw tell about their lives.The originality of the author's position lies in providing the camera to the juvenile characters themselves.

The director interviews inmates at a girls' reformatory while they prepare a performance of Cinderella.

Don Blachu and his men must stop the evil Don Bear from destroying Christmas.

The title does not refer to the American state, but to a cheap wine brand that flows liberally in this documentary. Socially, things look bad for the inhabitants of the Polish village Zagórki since the state farm they worked on went bankrupt a few years ago. It happened in 1990; since then, the 750,000-acre estate looks deserted and the former farm workers and cattle drivers are sitting at home, musing on the old days and complaining about the grievous wrongs suffered by them. From a flourishing, thriving community, the village is now reduced to a sad lot of embittered people, whose sole income is a small allowance and whose sole distraction is the muddled intoxication of the cheap Arizona wine. The camera mercilessly registers the dismal condition of the houses and streets, and the numerous candid interviews supply a poignant image of the blind-alley situation in this remote village.

A document about Variété- polish cold wave band from the 90s.

Unbeknownst to anyone, a man arrives at the television building and starts singing in front of a microphone with a deep bass. The building collapses...

A Polish documentary that explores the early history of Pride marches in Poznań and the struggle for LGBTQ+ equality in Poland. It focuses on the contrast between the city’s 2020s identity as a so-called “Rainbow Capital of Poland” and its much harsher past when marches were rare and fraught with conflict. The film reflects on a first Pride march marked by a small group of around 200 people attempting to advance under heavy police presence, unable to walk more than 100 meters and facing aggressive suppression.

A French aristocrat hires the best matchmaker in Poland to find him his dream wife.

A boy looks into a pastry shop's window, runs inside to buy a cupcake, then runs like the wind to school. We hear the clang of a cash register being closed half a century ago. This sweet beginning does not foreshadow an adventure more bitter: the adventure of the boy, or perhaps someone else? Was it really a cupcake? Who in the end shall be the one getting his hands dirty?

A story about a boy who makes a living by extorting compensation from traffic collisions.

The stories of boys imprisoned for theft, robbery, and murder are intertwined with excerpts from religion classes, during which a priest discusses the Ten Commandments. Against the backdrop of a conversation about duties and universal norms derived from the Decalogue, a picture of the lives of these teenage criminals in freedom emerges. Theft, robbery, alcohol, and drugs are their everyday reality. They attack elderly people and men in their prime, usually working in groups to increase their chances of success.

When the Cranes appear on the shore and introduce the Man to the world of beauty and dance, he needs to decide what priorities in his life are. The further the Man distances himself from the family, the more the Woman decides to fight through her trauma in order to attempt one last try at their relationship while the Child is lost in his nightmares and abandonment, while the Cranes keep on dancing.

The film uses photographic materials from the collections of the Historical Museum of Architecture of the Ossoliński National Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Provincial Office for Spatial Planning in Wrocław, and the Museum of the History of Photography in Krakow.

A boy is walking through an idyllic landscape and suddenly he finds a little black square on his way. He buries it. After a while the mysterious square reappears. This time it is quite aggressive, it starts chasing the boy, destroying everything that stands in its way, it is difficult to get away from it... This meeting will irreversibly change the boy’s life... The film made under the artistic supervision of Professor Jerzy Kucia.

This documentary observes the daily rhythms of a Vietnamese village, from morning routines to the close of day. Filmed before its destruction, the village is presented as a continuous way of life that had endured for generations before being consumed by the Vietnam War.

The history of Poland told through fragments of movies produced by Wytwórnia Filmów Fabularnych.

The life of Józef Klemens Piłsudski.

A probation officer is looking for foster families for their underage charges.

Made just before the protagonist's death, Maria Kwiatkowska's film is a documentary portrait of one of the most outstanding Polish fashion and portrait photographers, Benedykt Jerzy Dorys. The co-founder of the Union of Polish Art Photographers talks about his artistic path and his personal life.

Gogus tries to get money for his mother's treatment. Unknowingly, he falls into the drug business.

Animation with coloured salt by Aleksandra Korejwo. Music by Johann Strauss performed by the Strauss Festival Orchestra.