Jestem / I Am
October 5th@7PM
Director: Dorota Kędzierzawska
100 minutes
Regional Premiere - Director in Attendance
Based on a true story, the film tells of an eleven-year-old (Piotr Jagielski) who escapes
from an orphanage and returns to his hometown where the other kids call him Mongrel and his
young alcoholic mother (Edyta Jungowska) kicks him out again. Undaunted, he sets up quarters
of his own in an abandoned barge. Mongrel's survival stratagems and day-to-day encounters
show he's not only resourceful but a fundamentally good person. He and an unhappy girl his
age (Agnieszka Nagorzycka) from a posh house nearby discover a sense of affection and love
in each other's company. Composer Michael Nyman (who did the scores for The Piano, Gattaca,
and The End of the Affair) provided music that's both sweeping and intimate.
Source: IMDB.com
Mój Nikifor / My Nikifor
October 12th@7PM
Director: Krzysztof Krauze
97 minutes
The setting is the mountain resort of Krynica, Poland. The year is 1960.
Nikifor enters the studio of artist Marian Wlosinski and unpacks his painting tools.
Wlosinski's life, thus far a calm, regulated one planned to the minutest detail,
is suddenly disrupted. Wlosinski tries to rid himself of his intrusive guest.
He decides to find Nikifor's family. It turns out that Nikifor lives entirely on his own.
Various people have given him shelter, he has no birth certificate. From a legal point of view...
he simply does not exist. Marian Wlosinski is hardly a folk art enthusiast, however,
as he comes to know Nikifor he begins to appreciate his art. He notices both Nikifor's
deep faith and his spiritual freedom. He discovers that this translates in Nikifor's paintings
into an independence from all external opinions, while in his life it denotes a lack of attachment
to the temporal and a deep humility. Wlosinski realizes how deeply he himself is a slave of his art
education - how addicted he is to painting tradition, how dependent on the evaluation and judgment of others,
on dreams of success and material security.
Source: culture.pl
Amator / Camera buff
October 19th@7PM
director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
112 minutes
Call Camera Buff a case of art imitating life. Although director Krzysztof Kieslowski admitted that
this film doesn't tell his own story ("I made films because that was my profession, and I was too
lazy or too stupid or both to change..."), it will undoubtedly strike a responsive chord with many
amateur and professional film makers. Yet, while the movie is about the love of a craft, this isn't
a nostalgia-drenched account of that appreciation. Kieslowski developed Camera Buff's deceptively
complex script so that it addressed weightier themes: obsession, censorship, and the battle between
artistic integrity and personal sacrifice.
Before making Camera Buff in 1979, Kieslowski was an unknown outside of his native Poland.
And, although he had been making movies since 1966, the Lodz Film School graduate had only released one previous,
full-length theatrical feature (The Scar). Camera Buff, which exposed Kieslowski to the world,
changed the man's artistic direction. After this, his attention was increasingly focused on fictional
films, as opposed to the documentaries for which he was (at the time) better recognized.
Camera Buff was the movie that set Kieslowski's feet on the path that would eventually lead to
No End (1984), Decalogue (1988), and the three colors of Blue, White, and Red (1993-4)
Source reelviews.net/
Popiól i diament / Ashes and Diamonds
October 26th@7PM
107 minutes
director:Andrzej Wajda
Special APFF Video introduction by director Andrzej Wajda
On the last day of World War II in a small town somewhere in Poland,
Polish exiles of war and the occupying Soviet forces confront the beginning of
a new day and a new Poland. In this incendiary environment we find Home Army soldier
Maciek Chelmicki (Zbigniew Cybulski) who has been ordered to assassinate an incoming commissar.
But a mistake stalls his progress and leads him to Krystyna, (Ewa Krzyzewska) a beautiful barmaid
who gives him a glimpse of what his life could be. Gorgeously photographed and brilliantly performed,
Ashes and Diamonds masterfully interweaves the fate of a nation with that of one man, resulting in one
of the most important Polish films of all time.
Source: Criterion Collection