This is an excellent resource. Lots of great films on here. Piotr Szulkin is on here as well, for anyone into sci-fi. I've been looking for some of these films for awhile...
I have watched all of those this week except Golem and they are great despite the low budget production. It's amazing that those were recorded under authoritarianism and are more liberal than our present age movies and supposedly liberal/democratic society.
The society and the media in "The War of the Worlds: Next Century", if you ignore the martians and the blood thing does remind me of Russia and China today.
Since we're talking Polish cinema. I recommend 2 films from Andrzej Żuławski:
* Possession (1981) starring Sam Neil and Isabelle Adjani. It starts out sort of like a relationship-gone-bad film then goes into a full-on crazy mode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah4Z1yIAoFM
It took Adjani years to recover from the emotional toll of that movie. If you’re ever thinking of watching a Gaper Noé film, don’t waste your time on that poser hack. Watch Possession instead. That subway tunnel scene… sheesh.
Oh man, there’s a new 4K restoration. I don’t know if I can handle a second watch.
The Polish film I’d recommend is Kieślowski‘s The Double Life of Veronique.
I recommend "Blind Chance". It follows three storylines about a man trying to catch a train where different events cause his life to unfold differently. It really makes you think about all the small events that have occurred in your life that snowball to make you who you are.
"A Short Film about Killing" is absolutely devastating. It exists in 2 forms: a shortened version that is one part of Kieślowski's 10-part Television series "Dekalog" and a longer standalone version.
I would also add the masterpieces he is most known for: "The Double Life of Veronique" and the trilogy, "Red", "White", and "Blue". Of these "White" is the most accessible, it stars a very young and luminous Julie Deply.
The trilogy is currently in re-release to celebrate a new 4K transfer. If you live in a US city with an arthouse theater you might be able to catch it on the big screen.
> staying neutral is the worst choice
> best choice to avoid jail/torture/execution
See that’s the thing with rhetoric. It’s easy to say from the safety of our modern lives. Or as my mom used to say: “It’s easy to shit when your butt is full”
Growing up in almost eastern europe (slovenia), you’d hear a lot of stories from ye olden days of what was and wasn’t said. What people did and didn’t do. At the end of the day, you can be all the hero you want, but the only thing that matters long-term is whether you got scooped up into the murder pits or not.
Objectively, neither side was that great. In the 60’s and 70’s we built memorials to fallen comrades bravely fighting the fascist oppressor. In the 90’s and 00’s we built memorials to the fallen souls bravely dying in communist murder pits during that same period. shrug
Sometimes when my elders reminisced about the darker parts of that era they mentioned "getting swallowed by the night."
One other fun story from a relative who participated in a work action just after war building a railroad. It was pouring rain, and that day Tito came through to visit/peptalk. According to her, he said "Is it raining comrade?" to which she retorted "It is not raining comrade Tito, it is a sunny day!"
>Especially in communist Poland it was probably best choice to avoid jail/torture/execution and shame of collaboration at the same time.
Till 1956? Yes. After? The regime was bad, but less violent like some of the modern dictatorships, for example current Putin's Russia. Low level activism could result in losing job, but not execution.
It returned in the 80's. Many people were "disappeared".
A few members of my family were interned. One was brutally beaten and tortured and never recovered from it.
Unfortunately, it does not appear to have English subtitles on this site according to the icons (I cannot create an account to check at the moment). It does look like you can rent the film with subtitles quite cheaply from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Chance-English-Subtitled-Bogusl...
According to the About the Project [1] section of the page:
> All film materials presented on the 35mm.online platform meet the requirements of WCAG 2.0 - they have audio descriptions, transcriptions, subtitles in Polish and English, as well as comprehensive descriptions. For foreigners, the entire film library of the Platform is available in English.
So I assume that this one also has English subtitles. The icon below the film is only about the available audio language options.
Edit: Just double checked and yes, the English subtitles are available for this one (and all other films).
>In the years 2018-2021, the Polish Film Institute, the Documentary and Feature Film Studios and Studio Filmow Rysunkowych implemented a Project (number POPC.02.03.02-00-0007 / 17), named:
>‘Digital restoration and digitization of Polish feature films, documentaries and animated films in order to ensure access in all fields of distribution (cinema, television, Internet, mobile devices) and to preserve Polish film heritage for future generations’, under Sub-measure 2.3.2 ‘Digital sharing of resources of culture’ for Measure 2.3 ‘Digital accessibility and usefulness of public sector information’, under the Operational Programme Digital Poland for 2014-2020.
>160 feature films, 71 documentaries, 474 animated films, including 10 full-length animated films have been restored as part of the project.
>The project was co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund. The total value of the project is PLN 107 292 917,71, the value of the European Union funding is PLN 75 121 952,02. The project was also co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage in the amount of PLN 13 516 016,95.
20M to put a bunch of easily available communist movies (to which they already owned copyrights?!) on a website. Why not "preserve heritage" by "restoring" pre-war movies that have been mostly forgotten and actually do need some real restoring? Could probably restore all of them for a few M tops. Sounds like a typical EU grafting scheme. This would never get funded without EU $.
>Young musicians in Łódź play jazz. At first, they do it offstage, then semi-officially, and finally they are trying to find a place for a concert. As it is forbidden in the Stalinist Poland, they lose their jobs, places at universities and their girls. Music is the only thing that cannot be taken away from them.
>Antonina Dziwisz, a cabaret artist, travels around Poland with the cabaret group. Unexpectedly, she is arrested and involved in the Stalinist political trial. The woman does not succumb to violence, despite humiliation, threats and brutal punishments.
They have this nice page* of movies with Ukrainian subtitles. I am teaching English to a family of Ukrainian refugees. Films in English with Ukrainian subtitles would be a fantastic resource. Does anyone know of such a service?
FWIW, I highly, highly recommend showing them (simpler) movies with _english_ subtitles.
This helped tremendously when I was going from “school English” to “native English”, because things I couldn’t pick up by ear yet, I could pick up by reading the subtitles.
If you watch it with Ukrainian subtitles, your brain just falls back on what it already knows, and ignores the soundtrack (mostly).
That is a an excellent point. My wife's English got much better from us watching Friends with subtitles too. I gave them a DVD player and a few movies, thanks.
As far as Polish films, highly recommend 1982’s “Znachor” (1).
Quoting IMDB: “Abandoned by his wife and daughter, a famous surgeon starts drinking, hurts his head and loses his memory. His medical knowledge gradually resurfaces and he becomes a village healer …”
This is incredible! Does anyone know of other sites like this for films from other countries? I've been looking to broaden my cinematic horizons a bit, as well as hunting for material to practice language comprehension.
The only one I know is from here, Argentina, but I cannot remember if I can see from outside the country.
play.cine.ar
Tell me if you can, maybe with a proxy or cheating the account registration. It is a free public platform anyway. We are paying that with taxes so don't worry.
IDK, I run a pro-Ukraine resource page but I could still go watch films like Moscow - Cassiopeia, or Courier, any day
A lot of the creators behind the various films were pretty nuanced people, too...it shows in the way that they speak a clearly ethical filmic language based in universal ideals.
I don't see Zbignew Cybulski's Ashes and Diamonds, but there are a few others selections from the "polish james dean". It's amazing how difficult it is to stream deep cinema online from any of the online services. For example, Criterion Collection will have Milos Forman's Fireman's Ball & Loves of a Blonde, but not Black Peter. One is sort of left scrounging bits of ephemera on YT ;)
Kingsajz [1] is one of my favorite Polish movies of all time. It's about way for people to consume some elixir and become tiny (it's an adult movie, although may not sound like it).
The special effects are absolutely phenomenal - it's mind boggling that it was done in 1987, and with communist budgets!
Unfortunately looks like no English subtitles are available.
We've become so hypnotized and hyped up by spandex-clad super-heroes with bad acting and snappy, pretentious dialogues that we've forgotten what real film and art is like.
While there are a ton of lost movies, we also live in a world in which services like Criterion Channel, Mubi, and Shudder make more film available than ever. The other week, I got curious and watched a movie from Ulrike Ottinger, loved it, and when I get around to it I can watch any of a dozen more of her movies.
Likewise, I just bought a boxed set of folk horror movies from Severin Films. I miss good video rental stores, but even pre-Netflix there weren’t more than a dozen US cities with video stores where you could rent stuff like that.
The top grossing lists are mostly dominated by blockbusters, it’s true, but let’s look at (say) 1978. Grease, Animal House, Close Encounters, Every Which Way But Loose, and Heaven Can Wait (a remake!) are the top five. It’s been a blockbuster-driven market for 40+ years, with the occasional breakthrough art house film and, more frequently, a big non-franchise genre film (The Martian, Us, etc.) None of this has prevented great directors like the Coen Brothers, Soderbergh, or del Toro from making very good movies.
There’s a market for super-hero movies. There’s also a market for “real” film. These two things are sometimes in tension, but I think at the moment they’re both viable.
What we need are more films in the $30m-$70m region; art-house blockbusters. Superhero fatigue is real - what audiences really want is someone like Michael Mann in the 90s.
- Everything Everywhere All at Once
- The Black Phone
- The Northman
- House of Gucci
- Knives Out
- Little Women
- A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
- The Shape of Water
The blockbusters are such a huge part of the cultural landscape so that it’s easy to miss all the other film out there. But there’s really a lot of it!
Maybe overworked and tired population needs spandex instead of Tarkovsky’s movies. After 1,5 hours commuting and 9,5 hours in the office I prefer Netflix’ Red Notice over Stalker. And I guess I am not the only one.
On the other hand as non native Polish speaker I will enjoy some evening with some great movie recommended in this thread.
> After 1,5 hours commuting and 9,5 hours in the office I prefer Netflix’ ...
I can appreciate that point of view. It's really a matter of what you're receptive to at any given moment.
Keep in mind, however, that Tarkovsky and other innovative filmmakers from the Iron Curtain era literally risked their career every time they made a film. They had something to say and took great pains to do it. It just goes to show that there's really no excuse for the film industry to release so much slop when they got unimaginable resources at their disposal.
I agree, but I wonder if viewers who have been brought up on the superhero genre where something is blowing up every minute or two could even watch a Tarkovsky film. Whenever I try to introduce people to Tarkovsky's films I warn them up front that they need to completely change their sense of time - they need to view these films as meditations, they need to slow way down. And even with these suggestions up front, it's still difficult for many modern viewers to make it through.
Not sure about the other filmmakers but Tarkovsky was pretty much the establishment, a token avant garde cinema in a sea of state propaganda movies. Yes "Andrei Rublyov" was shelved, but that's about it, really.
Many others had some of their movies shelved for all kinds of reasons. Risking their lives? Well maybe, if you can consider mental breakdown, heart attack as risk.
But I bet Hollywood directors/actors risked their lives more by being in the same hotel room with Harvey Weinstein and his exposed puny dongle.
Harvey Weinstein, if this is a joke it isn't funny. If we're talking about risking lives you can't beat Werner Herzog who worked with that lunatic Klaus Kinski that would shoot at tents with people in, and that was was probably the least crazy thing that dude were doing on set.
Try some movies by Andrzej Wajda, he's one of the most accessible directors (while still being great), so it might work well in the post-work time slot. For example "Man of Marble" (https://35mm.online/vod/fabula/czlowiek-z-marmuru). It's about creating myths of superhuman workers in the Stalinist times to get people to work more/harder.
Speak for yourself. Sometime one wants their thoughts "provoked," other times one wants to laugh, or relax, or be thrilled by something scary.
I continue to read the somewhat mediocre wheel of time series mostly because it's familiar and thereby comforting, and there's a lot of it. I listened to "parable of the sower" (a more high-brow fiction by Octavia Butler) audiobook recently and while it was more "thought provoking" it was also depressing, and I've got enough stressors in my life right now without spending my leisure time reading about made-up tragedies. So I instead opt for something less mentally challenging when I want to relax.
Most importantly, appreciating "real art" doesn't make you better than someone who likes to binge on MCU movies. It's condescending and superior to call someone "hypnotized" for liking something you don't, and comments like that tell us more about you than the person you're judging.
Golem:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080806/
https://35mm.online/en/vod/feature-films/golem
The War of the Worlds: Next Century:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083335/
https://35mm.online/en/vod/feature-films/the-war-of-the-worl...
O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089714/
https://35mm.online/en/vod/feature-films/o-bi-o-ba-the-end-o...
Ga-ga: Glory to the Heroes:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091096/
https://35mm.online/en/vod/feature-films/ga-ga-glory-to-the-...