For British lovers of Polish culture, spring means only one thing: the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival. Kinoteka has been held annually in London – and selected other UK cities – for 16 years now. The inaugural film festival dates back to before Poland joined the EU, a time when I was a naive schoolboy with no pocket money for the cinema and certainly no knowledge of Polish films. Needless to say, I can’t tell you much about the early days of Kinoteka. I can, however, run you through my top festival picks from the past few years.
1) Polish Animation Classics (15th Kinoteka in 2017)
Kinoteka has a proud of history of collaborating with musicians for its closing night galas and 2017’s finale didn’t disappoint. Prior to Kinoteka 2017, I only really associated British Sea Power with a relatively boring brand of indie rock (which, having now spoken to some fans, I’ve discovered was an entirely mistaken opinion). I was surprised to see the sextet lined-up to do a live original film score for ‘Polish Animation Classics’, but they exceeded all of my expectations. The selected films provided a concise summary of forward-thinking Polish animations, from the dinner table revenge in A Banquet (Zofia Oraczewska, 1976) to the hypnotically busy apartment in the Oscar-winning Tango (Zbigniew Rybczyński, 1980).
My two favourites on the night were the opening and closing numbers. Road (Mirosław Kijowicz, 1971) is a potential existential nightmare of an animation, where a divided individual fails to reconcile himself. In British Sea Power’s interpretation, it became a playful reminder not to take small choices too seriously. The Roll Call (Ryszard Czekela, 1970) is an entirely different kind of film that expertly portrays the animalistic brutality of the Holocaust. The original animation is musicless, yet British Sea Power crafted a haunting score that left me feeling as shocked as the film’s subject matter demands.
2) Agnieszka Holland Retrospective (14th Kinoteka in 2016)
Kinoteka 2016 was notable for its triple retrospectives of Jerzy Skolimowski, Andrzej Żuławski and Agnieszka Holland. As a native English-speaker, Holland holds a particularly special place for me among those three directors. In fact, if you’ve ever seen the brilliant television series The Wire and House of Cards, you might just have an unknown affection for her work too – she directs episodes in both. Holland is a prolific creative, with numerous Polish screenplays, directing credits, and ongoing collaborations with HBO and Netflix’s foreign and English-language productions. Kinoteka 2016 gave the perfect taste of her broad screen palette.
Three screenings stood out for me. First up is the early-90s fantasy film The Secret Garden (1993), simply because I watched this as a child and had no idea that it had anything to do with Poland until it turned up on the Kinoteka programme. Next is Treme, the HBO show about the various communities of a left-behind neighbourhood in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. Again, this series has very little to do with Poland, but Holland is sat in the director’s chair of the debut episode that screened at the festival. For me, Treme shows Holland’s ongoing commitment to picking projects that present human solidarity at its finest. This is also on display in my final highlight, In Darkness (2011). This Polish-language film both revealed to me the existence of Lwów as an interwar Polish city (it’s now part of Ukraine) and the significant efforts of Poles to shelter Jewish people during the Holocaust, in spite of the risk of the Nazi-imposed death penalty.
3) Krzysztof Kieślowski Posters (10th Kinoteka in 2012)
Kinoteka 2012 was a remarkable festival that highlighted the strong influence of Polish culture on many British creatives. Long before Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood was penning Oscar-nominated scores for Paul Thomas Anderson, he was collaborating with avant-garde classicist Krzysztof Penderecki at Kinoteka. The festival also saw two of my favourite independent British directors, Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, pick their favourite Polish films (A Short Film About Killing by Krzysztof Kieślowski and Ashes and Diamonds by Andrzej Wajda).
My highlight has to be the exhibition of film posters from Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog (1989). Dekalog is a pioneering 10-part television series where each episode is inspired by one of the Old Testament Ten Commandments. Fans include Stanley Kubrick and Roger Ebert, and it’s considered an influence on meditative HBO-style dramas, such as The Sopranos and The Wire. Kinoteka’s Dekalog poster exhibition was a reminder of the show’s incisive societal commentary and the ravishing beauty of Polish film posters. My personal favourite was Andrzej Pągowski’s design for A Short Film About Love (Dekalog: Six). It summarises the episode - and the voyeuristic terror of youthful lust – with resplendent flair.
4) Andrzej Wajda Retrospective (15th Kinoteka in 2017)
Kinoteka has never shied from the opportunity to showcase one of Poland’s most prolific directors, Andrzej Wajda. The master of the Polish screen passed away in October 2016 and Kinoteka 2017 paid tribute to his legacy with a wide-ranging retrospective. This was particularly thrilling for me. I’d first watched Wajda – the two anti-authoritarian classics Man of Marble (1976) and Man of Iron (1981) – on a trans-continental flight (one of the perks of flying with LOT Polish Airlines). I was immediately blown away by his ability to stylishly present Polish political struggles in an accessible and entertaining way.
There were Wajda films at every turn during Kinoteka 2017. Two stood out for me. Ashes and Diamonds (1958) tells the story of a pair of Polish Home Army hitmen as they attempt to assassinate a communist commissar just as the Second World War ends. The film has stunning dialogue as its two leads philosophise over murderous duties and newborn morals. Innocent Sorcerers (1960) is an absolutely cracking love story with a strong female lead and intelligent romantic conversation. In stark contrast to Ashes and Diamonds, it showed me a Warsaw that I never knew existed, one where young people played in jazz bands and went for late-night drinking sessions. Wajda is admired by the likes of Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese – if you want to know why, look no further than these two classics.
On The Road...Through Poland with Richard Greenhill
