Polish Film Festival
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Friday, November 20, 7:30 p.m.
Ile Wazy Kon Trojanski? (How Much Does The Trojan Horse Weigh?)
Poland, 2008, 35mm, color, 122 min.
In Polish with English subtitles
Directed by Juliusz Machulski
With Ilona Ostrowska, Maciej Marczewski, Robert Wieckiewicz
If you could re-live a certain portion of your life, what decisions would have made differently knowing what you know now? That is the question posed to Zosia in Juliusz Machulski's How Much Does the Trojan Horse Weigh?, a woman who wakes up on New Year's Day 2000 to find she has been transported back to Communist Poland 1987. In a touching and whimsical film, Machulski pokes fun at the political and technological differences between 1987 and 2000 that point to the tremendous disparity between life under and post Communism.
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Friday, November 20, 9:30 p.m.
Wojna Polsko-Ruska (Snow White and Russian Red)
Poland, 2009, 35mm, color, 108 min.
In Polish with English subtitles
Directed by Xawery Żuławski
With Borys Szyc, Roma Gasiorowska, Maria Strzelecka
A high energy examination of a man coping with relationships and mortality; Snow White and Russian Red follows Yoddo Wormski, a low level criminal who slides through Warsaw's underbelly finding himself in various Kafkaesque situations. Adapted from Dorota Maslowska's post-modern novel, the film voices the problems and confusion of youth experienced in an urban environment.
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Saturday, November 21, 7:30 p.m.
Mala Moskwa (Little Moscow)
Poland, 2008, 35mm, color, 113 min.
In Polish with English subtitles
Directed by Waldemar Krzystek
With Svetlana Khodchenkova, Lesław Żurek, Dimitri Ulyanow
In the late 1960s, the military moves Russian pilot Yuri and his beautiful wife Vera to the town of Legnica, headquarters for the Soviet Army in Poland. While fraternizing between Russian occupiers and local Poles is strictly controlled, Vera's enchanting performance in a singing contest ignites a deep passion in Polish lieutenant Michal and the two must choose between loyalty and love.
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Saturday, November 21, 9:30 p.m.
Rysa (Scratch)
Poland, 2008, 35mm, color, 89 min.
In Polish with English subtitles
Directed by Michal Rosa
With Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieslak, Krzysztof Stroinski, Ewa Telega
In Michal Rosa's tense political and psychological drama, the totalitarian Polish state has finally collapsed, but the old terrors persist. The 40-year marriage of Jan and Joanna (Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieslak and Krzysztof Stroinski), an academic couple in Kraków, is put in jeopardy when they discover among their anniversary gifts a videotape accusing Jan of being a former Polish secret policeman who wooed his wife all those years ago with an ulterior motive – the opportunity to spy on her dissident father. This scratch on the surface of their relationship soon festers. Like recent German Academy Award winner The Lives of Others, Rosa's film examines the grave wounds inflicted by a heartless regime's surveillance apparatus on its people – wounds that can't heal in the midst of ongoing struggle between trust and doubt.
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Sunday, November 22, 4 p.m.
Handlarza Cudow (The Miracle Seller)
Poland, 2009, 35mm, color, 104 min.
In Polish with English subtitles
Directed by Bolesław Pawica & Jarosław Szoda
With Borys Szyc, Sofia Mietielica, Roman Golczuk
Stefan is an alcoholic con-man, who parades as a born again Christian selling personal solace for those willing to pay. Through one of his scam sessions he comes across Hasim and Urika, two homeless Russian children trying to find a way to their father living in Lyon. Offering to pay Stefan to drive them to France, the children and Stefan embark on a trip that challenges their perceptions of each other and of themselves.
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