Discoveries from Poland World Cinema

Carmen Suite, The Toreadors (Bizet)

An exquisitely intricate work walking the tightrope between film as a record of reality and an abstracted visualisation of sound.

Commando Filip Brutecki falls in love with a teenage girl and plans a future together with her. One day the man makes a huge mistake, as a result of which his beloved breaks off the engagement. When the spy learns that the girl has been kidnapped, he wants to find her and win back her heart. The abduction forces him to return to the criminal path he once abandoned for his chosen one. Philip begins a frantic search for his fiancée, and nothing can stop him.

The camera pulls us into diaristic and languid images of the area around Rotterdam. We can hear the artist’s hypnotic voice in two languages, which some can understand, while for others it tends to provide no more than an abstract tone, a rhythm. Her sensuous narrative of the imaginary world gradually leads us into Europe’s largest port. The narrator steers us through a sequence of sleepy images. The omnipresent water surrounds us, we experience it with virtually all our senses. Her camera shifts between immersing itself in it and floating on its surface, between close-ups and aerial shots. The story told by Cold Body Shining is first and foremost about light. The sea shimmers with the bioluminescence of dead fish. After they die, herring emit light from the fatty phosphorous substance on their skin’s surface. This light lasts four or five days before they begin to decay.

This is a short film created for the CBC documenting the works and achievements of Tamara Jaworska, Tad Jaworsk’s wife. Tamara is a world renown tapestry artist , an international Golden Medalist with many international awards and accolades who in 1994 received the Order of Canada. In this film she muses about the way in which the Canadian landscape influences her work, what goes in to creating a tapestry and the way she works on her loom in her Toronto Willowdale studio.

An agricultural produce facility and the difficulties faced by producers attempting to sell their stock there.

Frequently exhibited as part of an installation, "Berek" purportedly depicts a group of nude adults playing a game of tag in two locations: one a regular basement, another a gas chamber in a former Nazi prison camp.

In a lonely little house, tucked between an endless forest and a mighty ocean cliff, lives a woodcutter with his little son. Their life goes on as in a fairy tale - after work, the father prepares wooden toys, they walk and play together. The son infinitely loves his father, is fascinated by his strength and care. One day, during a trip to the forest together, the woodcutter cuts down an unusual tree. This event completely changes the father - and turns their world upside down.

Documentary about pensioners struggling with loneliness and old age.

Paweł Łoziński’s documentary is a short, metaphoric story, undertaking a problem of memory, identity, searching for traces of the recent past. Here, on thirty hectares in the city centre, the inventory is being made – it is to lead to reconstruction of a lost city. The camera focuses on details, showing fingers touching an obliterated inscription or a laborious process of decoding letters excavated from the ground, because each of them means something.

An amusing story about the origins of statehood of the Slavic tribes on the Vistula. The Slavs’ calm lives are disturbed by strange and violent monsters, which destroy everything they see. On the ruins and ashes, a white eagle is born, the symbol of a rising nation.

The film is a reflection on the cultural and psychological space attributed to women in the collective consciousness, and above all in contemporary iconosphere. The artist creates characters and situations arranged in a complex in meaning and visual variation on the theme of erotic symbols and incarnations and sexual stereotypes, revealing thus their influence on essentialist vision of women in modern life and visual culture.

Rectangles pulsate to an electronic sound loop.

White circles appear and disappear on a black surface.

Film about two old women working many years in the loading, unloading and transporting of bricks.

The story of a miner who decides to change his life by migrating to the countryside with his wife and children.

The film belongs to the so-called Black Polish documentary series about a group of young people from the Praga district. The authors' intention was to draw attention to the problems inherent in society.

Documentary about the life of a young woman from the countryside who works in a city factory, her hopes and difficulties.

An oddball pair try to find their identity and place in an abstract world.

An apocalyptic vision of a forest fire.

A little guy named Szczepan slowly sinks into the realms of madness because of the tragic love that he feels towards Helena, a cold-blooded temptress who rejects him without batting an eye.

A raw, personal, confessional narration undercuts the abstract images in Polish artist, musician and poet Wojciech Bakowski's interlaced video collage Suchy Pion. Condensing home videos into blocks of abstraction, Bakowski creates a startling account of depression, numbness and paradoxical lucidity.

Gienko is a modest Masurian fisherman, who, however, is more interested in girls and mead than fishing. One day our hero finds a mysterious object in the woods, because of which he gets into serious trouble...

Children's Day, in the area you can hear laughter and singing of children playing, but the protagonist of the film due to illness can not take part in these games. He reaches for his telescope and begins to observe the sky, on which he sees... an incoming space vehicle. The ship stops over his house, and the crew invites the boy inside. His aunt opposes this, but she is also invited on board. This is how the adventure begins, during which children from all over the world will meet to admire the stars and planets.

When the clock strikes the south, goats appear on the tower of the Poznań Town Hall. Today it is one of the most important tourist attractions of Poznań. But not everyone knows where they came from. And this happened a long time ago, when during the ceremony with the participation of the Voivode and her daughter Dorothy, a new clock was presented by Master Tiktakus. Respectable guests were planned to eat the roast from a deer, but this was completely burned by carelessness. To avoid scandal, the city guard snuck into a nearby home and stole two goats from it.

The two Michaels, on their way to the cinema, experience many exciting adventures. On the spot, they learn that the film was about them and their adventures.

Tadek was so thin that he was lifted up into the sky by a balloon bought by his grandfather. He had to put on weight to get back down.

A minibus running between Szczecin and Berlin forms a moving microcosm of people whose lives unfold between two countries. Through the observation of passengers and their journey, the film reflects on belonging, distance, and the reasons that keep people in between.

A report from behind the scenes of Moda Polska.

A story about two characters representing extremely different approaches to work.

Historical reporting based on the authentic archival documents from the World War 2 period. It showcases the tragic life of Jews from the Łódź ghetto, as well as the inner life and atmosphere of the ghetto, where over 160,000 people were squeezed into an area of 4 square kilometres.

Looking at the Nazi horrors through the eyes of an artist who draws portaits of children killed in concentration camps to keep their memory allive.

In the village of Piaski, fishing is the profession that whole families take up. Fascination with the sea, sea life and revelry is passed from father to son. Nevertheless, the time comes when the son wants to be on his own and starts to wonder 'fish'(o)R'us?'

A young man is fulfilling his dreams by playing a few levels of Geometry Dash, easy demon level.