Discoveries from Poland World Cinema

Short claymation from Natalia Brożyńska set to Devo's song Blockhead.

Portrait of a young doctor who cares for terminally ill children, patients of the Gajusz Foundation in Łódź.

A short documentary showing people working on railway tracks.

Polish artist Artur Zmijewski asked a group of visually impaired people to paint the world as they see it. Some of the volunteers were congenitally disabled; others became blind in their lifetime. In the film they draw self-portraits and landscapes, occasionally asking the artist for instructions or giving verbal explanation for their decisions. Their paintings are clumsy and abstract. It is however not the resulting works but the process of making them that is at the core of the film.

The hot events of October 1956 were considered so important, as to be edevoted an individual, though very short (3 minutes long), newsreel edition.

Documentary Short by Jerzy Ziarnik

Human skin is a leather cover for the interior. We will leave our covers just like abandoned coats in wardrobe.

Prosaic material - threads and buttons - is used to present the game of positional systems, the motion of matter, the actions of antagonistic forces.

Adventures of a small dachshund.

A little car, brought to school by its parents, decides to play truant.

Musical based on SIKSA's album is a performative dream of making a movie come true, where both the dream and the movie are like chewing gum that has been tasteless for too long. A nostalgic invitation to a dancing story about a girl returning to her childhood, when she dressed up as different women using her mother's wardrobe, and all the roles she played were to please herself. This film is a tool for reconstructing the scenes from the youth, as well as a baroque farewell to all the glitter and unicorns. Stabat Mater Dolorosa is like a bayonet slashing through modern times. She gives us micro-performances with all her body, and at her own risk. SIKSA's music is the scenario rejected, grinded, spat out, negated and intensified by the characters. Piotr Macha's camera is one of the murder weapons that SIKSA would like to use to fuck up the modern reality. It's a language of art that SIKSA has been using almost unnoticed since 2014.

On an empty beach, boy meets girl - who sometimes swears uncontrollably. She is fascinated with the control he has over the kite his flying. He is fascinated with her presence. Turns out, weirdness is not as rare as we all assume.

Intrigues, tricks, brawls (and a social commentary) all of that for a free place on beach…

Chernobyl after 30 years captures imagination people all over the world. It is mysterious place with many myths and legends. After failure in Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986 116 thousand people has been evacuated. But not many knows, that over 300 thousand people were involved in remedying the effects of the disaster. For many years they were preparing for unique event: operation of sliding new shelter, which has forever covered old sarcophagus on fourth reactor. Return to Chernobyl is a story about people fighting with unknown element and one of the most unusual structures in the world.

The poetic work of Ewa Partum consisted in scattering single alphabet letters into a non-artistic space: be it the open air, sea, or an underpass. This gesture led to the deconstruction of a language whereupon grammatical, syntactic and semantic structures were used to determine certain patterns of an artistic statement. Her poems were shaped by coincidence, which made their language more open and process-orientated. The confrontation with the elements associated with femininity (water, wind) made it possible to face the patriarchal patterns rooted in the language.

Rio, a young fisherman, lives in the kingdom of Lailonia. He is in love with Muria, who he considers the most beautiful girl in the world. When he is called up to the army, he does not forget Muria even for a second, despite being exhausted and facing numerous obstacles. Film from the ‘Fourteen Tales from Lailonia Kingdom by Leszek Kołakowski’ series.

A man's frustration is shown as he tries to put on a winter hat.

Polish avant-garde animation with changing colors and shapes that suggest birth followed by heavy distortion and building to a face in the swamp.

Police officers from Wroclaw discover that a shaykh is operating in Poland to smuggle cocaine. Meanwhile, the gangsters give Constable Wysocka an ultimatum.

“Can a fascist say "I love you" in another language?” asks Johannes Gierlinger the director of Remapping the Origins. The polish city of Bialystok is the birthplace of Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof a Polish medical doctor, inventor, and writer mostly known for creating Esperanto in 1873 while still in school, a constructed language that he believed could be a universal tool to help bridge the gap between different languages. But Bialystok is also the birthplace of David Abelevich Kaufman, known worldwide as Dziga Vertov, one of the most important cinema theorist ever, Soviet pioneer, revolutionary filmmaker, documentary, and newsreel director. The city is also the place where anarchistic communes were organized during the Russian Revolution and where the Nazis build a ghetto for Jews.

A closeted Polish-American seeks answers but must face the hard truths hidden beneath the humor. A complex documentary, Polack layers striking images from history and pop culture, with a gay man's search for home. Beyond the punch lines, we sway between outsider and insider, where victim becomes bully.

The meeting of two young people on the streets at night.

The viewers visit a school located high in the Tatra mountains, in the village of Zaczerczyk. There are only few students there. Teachers arrive at the place every day, including the film's protagonist, a young woman.

The Polish entry in the BFI’s Century of Cinema series of documentaries

DVD is a record of the concert of the band "HEY" during Przystanek Woodstock festival in Kostrzyn in 2004. In addition, the record includes an interview with the band, photo gallery and trailers of other DVDs.

Portrait of Tadeusz Jaworski, one of the first graduates of PWSFTviT, and an unjustly forgotten filmmaker who was expelled from Poland in March '68 for his Jewish origins.

A short portrait of a railway junction.

Follows the young mayor of the Stroniec municipality in his interactions with local people.

An unemployed census representative asks questions to others experiencing similar difficulties.

Stanislaw Skalski, the most brilliant ace pilot in Polish history, who took part in the Battle of Britain, shares his wartime memories. He also tells about the horrifying post-war period when he spent seven years in jail.

The director interviews villagers about their lives post-communism.

The story of a farmer who's also a railway worker, and his family.

Rhythmic and indicative documentary that shows how every day 150,000 people hurry to work by public transport from their homes in the suburbs of Warsaw.

Knife in the Wife is an impressionistic documentary showing the life of a provincial circus called 'Arizona', which is grotesque on some occasions and sad on others. The showpiece of this troupe of six people is throwing knives. Their glory days are over now, their programme is not of the highest order, yet the magic of circus is still there and their young audiences watch the show with flushed cheeks.

Gory zombie survival from Poland

From the 1960s, Antoniszczak devoted himself to perfecting the technique of non‑camera animation. This period saw the creation of the first animagraph‑pentagraphs — machines for transferring drawings onto film stock. Sun, an animation less than four minutes long, was the first film produced completely using this method. The black‑and‑white drawings were made in the technique of woodcut impressed directly onto the celluloid. The vibrating, jagged image reflects the flickering character of sunrays, and conveys a tale of the transience of human existence and the permanence of the universe.

Propulsive Polish avant-garde animation following clouds of shapes that resemble nebulae or stellar surfaces.

No-budget homage to 80's slasher movies.

Fragments of memories, dreams and life experiences come together in Impressionist and ethereal images

A man has no form. Given his transient body, he is forced to deal with people, things, and places that constantly shape him.

They set out to reconstruct a lost synagogue. They recovered a lost world.

Harsh but poetic, the film is a treaty about the desire of domination and violence as the driving force of history, shown in the spectrum of grey. After a great battle, the surrounding landscape, devoured by great fire, looks apocalyptic. Meaningless flags flutter in a dead field.

„Kiss“ brings to mind the contemporary GIF graphic format, which nowadays enjoys massive popularity – a moving image suspended halfway between photography and film. It features a single gesture – originally intimate and sensual – that with time and repetition becomes absurd and unreal.

Three brothers - gymnastics champions doing their practice. While one of them is performing, the others two spot him to prevent a fall. A subtlety, vitality, tone and perspective of sound contribute an additional dimension to the film.

Film unfolds in five sequences, each depicting a facet of Barbórka celebrations—from the miners’ orchestra wake-up call and the medal-awarding academy through evening feasting and dancing. Folk traditions mingle with party-state rituals as speeches for the PZPR Congress intercut candlelit toasts. In the opening mining-orchestra segment, dynamic editing syncs shot length to the music’s tempo, while grotesque staging casts engineers as conductors and workers’ movements as instrumental solos.

Adaptation of the Jacob Gordin play.

Directed by Abraham Izaak Kaminski.

Three years ago True Vision began filming one of the biggest child sex abuse cases in the UK, encompassing over 100 victims and 200 suspected perpetrators. This film follows, with unprecedented access, a live police investigation, showing just how difficult it is to secure justice for victims of sexual abuse.