DOCUMENTARY
As part of the festival’s commitment to showcasing the latest groundbreaking new work of Polish documentary cinema, this year’s Documentary stand comprises two very different films that seek to find humanity, both within individual, everyday struggles and in times of extreme hardship. An international festival favourite which premiered at CPH:DOX, Pawnshop (Lombard, dir. Lukasz Kowalski, 2021, UK Premiere) is a bleak but hilarious documentary about an eccentric couple who run Poland’s largest pawnshop, a business which is struggling. Finding the drama in their daily situations, Kowalski’s absorbing film draws us into the precarious world of the couple, their young employees and their vulnerable clientele, and finds humour amid their grapple to keep the shop afloat. Life, theatre and cinema combine in the portrait documentary The Hamlet Syndrome (Syndrom Hamleta, dir. Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosolowski, 2022), which highlights the work of Award-winning theatre director Roza Sarkisianm. Sarkisianm brought together five young Ukrainian actors affected by war in Donbas, to develop a performance based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. With each actor processing trauma and gathering resilience to fight the conservative values they see in society, The Hamlet Syndrome is a moving film that won Best Documentary at Krakow Film Festival and has continued relevance in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
OUTSIDERS AND EXILES: THE FILMS OF JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI
In collaboration with the BFI, Kinoteka will also present Outsiders and Exiles: The Films of Jerzy Skolimowski, a month-long retrospective at BFI Southbank and a rare opportunity to see the work of one of the world’s most remarkable filmmakers. Skolimowski’s latest sensation EO (2022), has garnered critical acclaim across the world since its premiere at Cannes, culminating with the film’s recent Academy Award nomination. As part of the season, Skolmowski will be live in conversation with season curator Michael Brooke, where audiences will discover what drives his creative passion and what lies behind his international success. The season will include early Polish features like Identification Marks: None (1964) and Hands Up! (1967/1981), both of which will also be released on BFI Blu-ray on 24 April, British-made classics such as Deep End (1970) and The Shout (1978), and later career highlights including Essential Killing (2011) and 11 Minutes (2015). A number of the films in the season will also be available to watch online on BFI Player.
SENSUAL FABLES: OLGA TOKARCZUK IN THEATRE AND CINEMA
Sensual Fables: Olga Tokarczuk in Theatre and Cinema is a special presentation taking place at the Barbican and featuring a new theatre work from world-renowned touring company Complicité. Directed by Simon McBurney, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is a bold new presentation of Nobel Prize-winning author Olga Tokarczuk’s fiery and controversial novel of the same name. Set in the depths of winter in a small community on a remote Polish mountainside, the story follows an eccentric environmentalist who fights back against the injustices around her when the men of the local hunting club begin dying in mysterious circumstances and she notices the animals of the area are beginning to act strangely. Paired with this exciting new production is award-winning director Agnieszka Holland’s own take on the novel, Spoor (Pokot, 2017), a feminist ecological thriller and modern fable with a clear message against injustice which highlights the value of friendship and of those seeking to make positive change on the margins. The screening will feature a recorded intro by director Agnieszka Holland discussing her Berlin Festival Silver Bear winning work.
FAMILY SCREENING
The work of Agnieszka Holland is also present at this year’s Family Screening of The Secret Garden (Tajemniczy ogród, 1993), the director’s adaptation of the classic children’s novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. When Mary Lennox is sent from India to live in England with relatives, she discovers an overgrown mysterious garden with her cousin Colin and friend Dickon. Gradually the children begin to uncover the secrets of nature concealed behind the garden walls and the family stories entwined within. Holland’s sumptuous re-telling boasts music by composer Zbigniew Preisner and a memorable performance from Maggie Smith as their severe housekeeper, Mrs Medlock.
CINEMA CLASSICS
As part of its Cinema Classics strand, Kinoteka is proud to screen Polish auteur Andrzej Wajda’s early masterpiece Ashes and Diamonds (Popiół i diament, 1958). On the final day of WWII, a young Polish Resistance fighter is ordered to assassinate a Communist official. With his target being a former comrade-in-arms, this triggers a moral dilemma, calling into question all that was fought for. Defined by an electrifying, iconic performance by Zbigniew Cybulski, this depiction of Poland, poised between the horrors of the recent past and an uncertain future, is arguably Wajda’s greatest achievement, and a landmark of international cinema. Moving to France, Jean Luc-Godard’s Passion (1982) is the second of the festival’s classic cinema screenings. Starring Polish actor Jerzy Radziwiłowicz, who often worked with Andrzej Wajda, Passion tells the story of film director, Jerzy, (played by Radziwiłowicz), who is in France to shoot a project but becomes interested in the unfolding struggle of a young factory worker, Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert). Made during Godard’s return to relatively mainstream filmmaking in the 1980s, Passion is a metatextual and self-reflexive film about the making of an ambitious art film with striking performances from its two leads.
MUSIC IN FILM
Delving further into Poland’s cinematic past, Kinoteka presents a special Music in Film screening of Andrzej Żuławski’s controversial masterpiece The Devil (Diabeł, 1972), which was banned by the Communist government between 1972 and 1988. Set in 1793, during the Prussian army’s invasion of Poland, we follow Jakub, a young Polish nobleman, who is rescued from imprisonment by a stranger. Jakub follows his mysterious saviour across war-torn Poland and, traumatised by what he sees, commits several gruesome murders. This screening will be accompanied by a musical tribute from DJ and producer Andy Votel. Ranging from electronic through orchestral to psych rock and experimental, Votel will explore the music composed by Andrzej Korzyński for Żuławski’s most iconic films as well as other Polish musicians of the 1970s.
XROSSSPACE SHOWCASE ‘ON THE OTHER SIDE’
This year, for the first time, Kinoteka presents a new section of the programme – the XRossspace Showcase ‘On the Other Side’ – dedicated to the most innovative and immersive extended reality (XR) works from Poland. Audiences can explore Polish XR inspired by sci-fi literature, non-binary games, cyber performance and the street art of metaspaces, and are invited to walk on “the other side of the screen” and awaken their imagination in this stunning exhibition of interactive and cinematic narratives. This exhibition will take place at BFI Southbank from 30 March to 2 April, and will include Polish VR works that interact with literature, games and street art and performance art.
POLITICS OF BODY: FILMS OF NATALIA LL
Politics of Body: Films of Natalia LL provides a rare opportunity to see the short films of the avant-garde feminist Polish artist, Natalia LL, who died in August 2022. Renowned for her witty critiques of consumer society, investigations of sexuality and gender, and systematic experimentation with the laws of probability, her work investigates the aesthetic and erotic features of the commodified body. This screening is curated and introduced by art critic Agnieszka Rayzacher, and will be followed by a Q&A.
TIK TOK ANIMATION WORKSHOP
For any budding animators and content creators, this year’s festival will run a TikTok Animation Workshop, where participants will create animated videos by experimenting with an animation technique called pixelation. Each participant, equipped with a phone and the appropriate software, will have the opportunity to create their own story and create magical animations of themselves, which can fly, pass through walls, transform into new life forms and perform impossible tricks. The workshop will be run by Tessa Moult-Milewska, a British-Polish writer and animation director, and graduate of the National Film and Television School.
Kinoteka Polish Film Festival 2023 takes place 9 March – 27 April across venues in London
Venues: BFI Southbank, Barbican Centre, ICA, Prince Charles Cinema, Riverside Studios, Phoenix Cinema, Cine Lumiere, Whitechapel Gallery, Ognisko Polskie – The Polish Hearth Club
