Category Archives: Polish Cinema

BIFF 2012 #6: Flying Pigs (Skrzydlate świnie, Poland 2010)

Posted on April 24, 2012 | Leave a comment

Oskar and Basia conduct the ultras of the Flying Pigs team

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 team ‘Czarni’ has just been relegated despite the dedicated support of its ‘ultras’ whose task is to focus on chanting and flag-waving rather than actually watching the game. The ultras are in turn protected from opposing fans by the ‘hools’ – who also attack the opposing fans and attempt to steal their colours. Anyone who prefers to actually watch the game is a ‘picnic’ and sits in the family enclosure.

We are told all of this at the beginning of what is a conventional genre narrative. And it isn’t really a genre about football – or really about sport at all. The relegated team now face the prospect of a local derby against an old enemy, a team that have been bought by a major business – a manufacturer of parts for the international aerospace industry. The company’s logo is a wild boar with wings – hence the film’s title. Our hero Oskar is the leader of the hools of Czarni Grodzisk – but he is also suddenly without an income after he crashes his van. If that isn’t enough he’s now the father of a son born to his girlfriend when he was fighting the police after the last match. He needs money now and the only option is to accept an invitation to work for the Flying Pigs as ‘manager’ of their newly-created ultras. Inevitably, he will face his own brother Piotr and all his ex-mates in the first derby game of the new season. He is also joined by his brother’s girlfriend Basia who loses her job as the (‘live-in’) organist at the local church when the priest tells her that being a hool is not acceptable for someone associated with the church.

The only real surprise is that the film becomes more a mix of family melodrama and dark romantic comedy than a violence-filled narrative about football hools (which the opening section seems to promise). New director Anna Kazejak-Dawid has created a very enjoyable mainstream crowd-pleaser which is handsomely-mounted in ‘Scope and boasts a good soundtrack. The central characters are all attractive young stars and what this demonstrates for me is the relative strength of Polish popular cinema. The festival brochure suggests that the film is like a Polish Green Street (UK/US 2005). I haven’t seen that film, but it sounds unlikely and Keith confirmed that the melodrama element means that the comparison doesn’t really work. I think the tone and the feel of the film is more akin to a widescreen version of a Shane Meadows film like This is England (UK 2006) or even earlier UK social comedies such as the Full Monty (UK 1997). I felt that the film was rooted in its small town sensibility and issues about local ownership and ‘community’ – similar in fact to the themes of Ken Loach’s Looking For Eric (UK 2009).

I don’t think that the film gives any pointers towards fan behaviour at the European Championships in Poland and Ukraine this summer. Except that Polish fans seem to have things in common with Italian ultras. I enjoyed this film and it would seem a good choice for a limited release in the UK if a distributor is so inclined.

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Posted in Comedies, Festivals and Conferences, Films by women, Melodrama, Polish Cinema, Romance

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Polish film triumphs in the UK

Posted on February 3, 2012 | Leave a comment

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 were born overseas). At one point Polish films were on offer (with English subs) at cinemas across the UK and there were even occasions when selected Hollywood titles were subbed or dubbed for Polish workers (Borat, if I remember correctly, was one example).

Anyway, this week’s chart news demonstrates that the Polish community in the UK is still interested in Polish films. Sztos 2 (Polish Roulette, 2012), a mainstream crime/spy comedy set in the Communist period of the early 1980s, last weekend took over $250,000 at 40 locations in the UK for a screen average of $6,225 and No 17 in the chart. That screen average was the fourth best of a week dominated by the massive splash of the Hindi Cinema remake of Agneepath which took over $10,000 per screen. I mention these two films partly because otherwise UK cinemas are awash with English-language awards contenders at this time of year and many of us feel starved of an alternative. Sztos 2 is, as the title suggests, a sequel to a 1997 hit film and for comparison it opened No 1 in Poland a week earlier at 153 locations with a screen average of $4,115 (I assume ticket prices are lower in Poland). It’s still playing at Cineworld in Bradford so I’m going to try to catch it. Here’s the UK trailer:

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Posted in box office, Polish Cinema

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Cambridge Film Festival #4: Rewers (The Reverse Poland 2009)

Posted on September 30, 2010 | Leave a comment

Sabine (Agata Buzek) and Bronislaw (Carson Daly) in Rewers

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), the best experience comes from entering a screening without any real expectation of what you are going to see. In this case, I had read the blurb, but then promptly forgotten it.

Rewers was the Polish entry for the 2010 Foreign Language Oscar. It is another of those Eastern European films exploring the communist period. We first see Sabine, a rather gawky young woman just turned thirty, with glasses in heavy frames and not very attractive clothes, in a cinema watching a newsreel celebrating Poland’s young male athletes who are presented bare-chested in formation displays. Sabine is clearly excited by what she sees. The setting is Warsaw in 1952 when the Polish state is still very much under the thumb (boot?) of Stalin and the secret police are everywhere. Sabine works as a poetry editor in a state publishing house and she lives with her mother and grandmother in a comfortable flat in an old apartment block. Her brother, an artist, has an attic studio in the same block. Sabine’s mother and grandmother come from the petit-bourgeoisie (they ran a chemist’s shop before the war) are therefore suspect according to the prevailing ideology. Sabine’s brother is reckless as an artist. She herself refers not having fought in the Warsaw uprising but confesses that she wishes she had. The various attitudes towards surveillance are effectively summed up when the family find an old gold coin with the inscription ‘Liberté‘. Gold is supposed to be handed in to the authorities, but Sabine insists on hiding it – by daily swallowing the coin!

The two older women work to find Sabine a husband. She is clearly keen for some sexual experience, but not with the unattractive men who her mother invites to the flat. One evening she meets Bronislaw, a dashing young man who saves her from a pair of thugs who accost her. He looks like the real deal – but things don’t turn out as Sabine expects.

The Polish pressbook calls this film a ‘comedy’ and there are certainly comic moments, some of them not dissimilar to the social comedy moments in the Czech films of the 1960s. But it is dark comedy and it is played out in the context of the real social difficulties of living in a Stalinist state. From my point of view, I found the film fascinating and enjoyable because of the central characters and the interplay amongst the family members. I’m still not quite sure what the title refers to. In some ways ‘Obverse’ would be a better title if the intention is to present Sabine as a surprising character who turns out to be not what we expect. My lack of understanding probably explains why I didn’t really appreciate the modern sequences in which we see an 80 year-old Sabine waiting at the airport. These didn’t work for me, partly because the actors attempt to ‘act’ being old. This rarely works. I’m not suggesting that the acting performances are poor, but rather that when we have been watching the actors play close to their actual ages, we can see through the make-up and costumes to a younger person attempting to move slowly etc. On an aesthetic level, I much prefer the 1950s in the film, shot in beautiful black and white CinemaScope – whereas the ‘present’ is shot in murky colours and appears drab. As well as the wonderful cinematography, the music in the film is also important with jazz as the decadent Western music beloved of the intelligentsia and a tango providing one of the highlights of the film.

I’ve watched a few Polish films over the last few years and I’m struck with the frequent appearance of the national stereotype – Poles in movies drink themselves swiftly into oblivion. It happens so often that I feel it must be ‘true’. It occurs again in this movie. Having said that I think that this is the best Polish movie I’ve seen for a while and it deserves to get a UK release – I hope someone has bought it.

A flavour of the film comes through the Polish trailer (no subtitles) but be warned it hints at spoilers for some of the surprises in the film.

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Posted in East European Cinema, Festivals and Conferences, Polish Cinema

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BIFF 9: The Last Action (Ostatnia akcja, Poland 2009)

Posted on March 25, 2010 | Leave a comment

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 the North of England). Because of this, The Last Action is a relatively familiar beast. In fact, it is much more accessible than some of the films I saw then – which seemed fuelled by excessive drinking and difficult gender relations.

The Last Action is much gentler and as a light comedy resembles several other films from around the world, at least in terms of narrative structure. At a stretch, it could be seen as a commentary on masculinity in the new Poland. Zygmunt is a man in his 80s who is in Warsaw to attend a celebration with old friends and colleagues from the Warsaw Uprising in 1945. This was the tragic episode in which Polish partisans rose up against the Germans, expecting the Red Army to support them, but the Russians failed to take the city before the Germans crushed the rising. In Warsaw, Zygmunt despairs of his weak son who now runs a business providing turf for parks, sports stadiums etc. – a man of ‘grass’. But, more urgently, he learns that his grandson has been beaten up by a local gangleader who runs a nightclub. Zygmunt rounds up his old colleagues and determines to take revenge – the ‘last action’. The strategy is to con the gangleader and lead him into a trap. In the process, some local police corruption is exposed and an old wound – the distrust between the ‘Home Army’ veterans and a Communist Party member is healed.

Overall, an enjoyable 95 mins which was clearly appreciated (going by the chuckles) by the Polish-speakers in the audience. Zygmunt is played by the veteran actor Jan Machulski who died soon after the film was completed.

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Posted in Polish Cinema

Katyn (Poland 2007)

Posted on June 24, 2009 | 2 comments
The General attempts to lift the spirits of his Polish officers on Christmas Eve 1939.

The General attempts to lift the spirits of his Polish officers on Christmas Eve 1939.

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 13 when the war began and his father, a cavalry officer, went off never to return. In the 1950s Wajda became one of the leading figures in the humanist art cinema celebrated across the world. For fifty years he has waited for the opportunity to make this film in which inevitably he would have to explore not just what happened in 1940, but also what it meant for the Wajda family and for Polish society.

If the name ‘Katyn’ doesn’t mean much to you, you should know that in 1940 Stalin authorised the murder of 20,000 and more Polish military officers and intelligentsia who were being held by the Red Army. The subsequent massacre in the Katyn forest outside Smolensk in Western Russia was uncovered by the Nazis in 1943 when they invaded Russia and used to make anti-Russian propaganda. It was then claimed as a German atrocity by the Russians in 1945 when they liberated Poland. The British fare badly as well since they refused to confirm the Russian responsibility for the massacre in 1943 for fear of offending Stalin as an essential ally.

What I found surprising (because I didn’t read about the film beforehand) was how Wajda tackled something so close and painful. Like many recent films about the ‘Eastern European War’, the outcome of the events is well-known so the script can’t really aim for surprising twists or narrative suspense. Wajda makes important structural decisions such as focusing primarily on the women at home rather than the men captured in 1939 when the Red Army invaded Poland soon after the Nazi attack. He selects characters who are archetypal Polish officers and their families – the General, the captain, the lieutenant, the engineer/pilot. He moves the story on quickly to show us the methodical actions of the Nazi and Soviet administrations and their attempts to remove all the potential leaders of Polish resistance. He shows us the immediate aftermath of the Russian occupation of all Poland in 1945 and compares the Nazi and Russian attempts to use Polish deaths for propaganda purposes. He hones in on the terrible decision for the survivors – to knuckle down and build the new Poland under Russian hegemony or to remain true to history – and perish nobly. When he does eventually show us the executions, we are aware of the true horror of what these events mean, not just in 1945 when the reality of the deaths is confirmed, but over the next 45 years of a Polish state established on lies.

I got home from the screening and read long screeds of complaints about the film on IMDB from people who found it ‘boring’ or ‘amateurish’. I’m always a little wary of such comments, especially when they come from Poles who recognise soap stars in the cast etc. and of course I can’t comment on the Polish dialogue, only on what the subtitler has offered. (I did recognise one of the players from We Are All Christs and from my perspective the casting was very good.) On the whole though I think these comments come from younger viewers whose sense of film language has been dulled by American action movies and holocaust melodramas. They seem incapable of following the plot and easily lost if the film moves slowly. On the other hand, I have to admit that Wajda himself takes no prisoners. If you don’t know the history it is easy to get lost. Next to me in the cinema were a young couple who talked through the opening credits and I had to bite my lip to stop myself telling them to shut up. Possibly they were young Poles not used to an art cinema ambience? Anyway, they soon quietened and watched the film in silence.

For me though this was a beautifully made film with a strong sense that every image was considered and every moment filled with subtle gestures and symbols – or perhaps they were heavy-handed for some taste? Inevitably there have been comparisons with Wajda’s 1950s trilogy of films about the Warsaw risings and their aftermath. I was prompted to think about these in the sequences in which young resistance fighters return to Kracow and attempt to avoid the soldiers of the new regime in 1945 as they refuse to accept the Russian view. I’m an old romantic, but for me the women were all believable and very beautiful, which made the pain of the narrative even sharper. The young women made me think of the German film about Sophie Scholl and I hope that this will be a film that young people will watch and will be moved by.

For a long time, I thought that Katyn would not be released in the UK. There are strong Polish communities in the UK dating from the arrival of Polish forces who escaped in 1939. They supported the Allied war effort and became part of British as well as Polish history. Wajda points to the difficult relationship between Britain and Poland in the dialogue amongst the Polish prisoners held by the Russians. There is another story to be told about Britain and Poland. I’m pleased that the UK Film Council supported Katyn‘s release. I hope as many people as possible get to see it.

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Posted in Film Reviews, Polish Cinema

The Wedding (Wesele) (Poland 2004)

Posted on February 11, 2008 | Leave a comment


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 Wajda film from 1973 which was itself based on a play from the turn of the century (19th/20th). Certainly this has all the elements of a traditional wedding farce/black comedy, especially one set in a rural village.

The film trundles along at a fair pace with everything fuelled by copious amounts of Slovakian vodka. As the events unfold, they bring ruin to the bride’s father who works on the basis that any problem can be solved by bribery. Perhaps his worst mistake is to be too mean to pay for anything legitimately and so all his cut-price plans backfire. The film is clearly some form of satire with lots of symbolism. The central narrative premise is that the father has bought a new Audi cheaply via an in-law of the local priest as a wedding present for the couple. But the deal requires the grandfather to give up two hectares of land — which he decides not to do. That land should be the crucial element suggests a traditional tale about peasants and access to land (although the real reason that it is so valuable rests on a familiar modern development).

Apart from the endemic corruption and alcohol consumption, the other striking features include the venal priest and the call to all the men to release their macho desires. This isn’t unique to Poland by any means, although the combination of Catholicism, vodka and nationalism is probably unique to the region (i.e. parts of Central Europe). I was at various times reminded of Bunuel (the peasant’s orgy in Viridiana) and Milos Forman’s The Fireman’s Ball – partly because of the array of older and less ‘beautiful’ characters and the occasional, almost documentary inserts of ordinary people having a good time. The final shots of the guests departing, taken from a high angle, also made me think of a Cuban film, The Waiting Room (in which bus travellers are marooned in a provincial bus station). All these three films represent communal celebrations which in some way (certainly not the same way in each film) explore the nation as community.

I’m sure I didn’t get all the jokes but the Poles in the audience certainly laughed. It was a digital print and therefore in the National Media Museum’s largest screen. In the more intimate atmosphere of the smaller cinema it might have been a different experience. Exhibitors Dogwoof are showing their Polish films in one-off shows in small towns across the UK. I wonder what it is like watching this in a rural area in the UK?

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Posted in Polish Cinema