Next Saturday (7th April), Minicine will be holding its largest event thus far. The Polish Parish Club, on Edmund Street in Bradford centre, will be installed with a big screen to show three iconic films from Poland’s history (all films screened in Polish with English subtitles).
The day will be split into two sessions, but for those that like the sound of spending the whole day in the lovely, sociable environment of the Polish club, complete with healthy breaks between films to sit in the sunshine (possibly an optimistic outlook) and take advantage of their generously priced fully licensed bar, or the Polish food that will be on offer throughout the day, then there will certainly be enough going on to entertain you from its start time of 1pm, right through to the end of the main event at 10pm.
The times of the event are convenient for anybody travelling from within West Yorkshire and the Polish Club is a mere five minute walk from the centre of Bradford.
The day time session includes a double bill of youth rebellion, both films with the slickest of jazz scores, in the form of Andrzej Wajda’s Innocent Sorcerers (1960) at 1.00pm and Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s Night Train (1959) at 3.30pm. There’s more info on each film below, but the best way to consider this double bill is that they mimick and rival the coolness of the many Hollywood masters, with the Billy Wilder-esque cat and mouse flirting throughout Innocent Sorcerers, or the Hitchcockian thrills of Night Train. Their homage to these western icons is undoubdtedly part of their rebellious appeal, considering the timing of their release, bound up in the constraints of the ruling communist party. For instance in Innocent Sorcerers , the simple act of the main character switching off a tape player with his toe kept the film away from the theatre for years, and almost had it banned altogether for the contempt shown to his comrades who would have built the device.
Entry to both films in this double bill is a mere £6 (£3 for Minicine members)
The evening session of the day, starting at 6.30pm, features Wojciech Has’ surreal epic The Saragossa Manuscript (1965), favourite of expressive filmmakers such as Luis Bunuel and David Lynch. A young army captain during the Napolionic wars discovers a manuscript, and subsequently undergoes a series of challenging missions to prove himself in this surreal and beautiful take on the historical epic. A few snippets from reviews should give an inclination of the tone: “this rambling, flamboyant and incoherent ‘head movie’ should be approached with caution by anyone who hasn’t got any drugs in their system” (David Jenkins – Time Out London). Intrigued? How about: “A film so cosmically all-encompassing, so utterly confounding, so mystical and mental, that it could induce a trip-like state in even the most sober-minded of cinemagoer” (Anton Bitel – Eye For Film).
The main draw for this evening session though, is the fact that this film will be introduced by Polish film specialist Michael Goddard, the reviews editor and co-founder of the journal Studies in Eastern European Cinema. He will be offering us a fascinating insight into this ‘main event’ of the day.
Entry into this evening session is also only £6 (£3 for Minicine members)
A full day pass costs only £10 (£5 for Minicine members) and is the best way to ensure that you leave the day, not only having seen three amazing, underexposed films, but you will have learned a great deal about the social context under which these films, amongst many others in Polish cinema history, were made.
Adam Ryan, regular Culture Vulture film writer has programmed the films throughout the day and has the following introduction, plus some wonderfully written, insightful passages about two of the films:-
I was initially drawn to the world of Polish cinema through a love of Film Noir; my proposed investigation into ‘The Film Noir Aesthetic in Central European Cinema’ led me straight to Wajda’s Ashes and Diamonds (1959). After a little more delving I realised that what I knew – or what I thought I knew – of Polish cinema was only the tip of the iceberg. I was immediately hooked. My dissertation became focussed entirely on Polish Cinema under communist rule, and initiated a passion that has continued right up to the present day.
The Saragossa Manuscript (Wojciech Has, 1965)
Due to the fact that our guest speaker will be offering an in depth talk on the day, and that the film’s frankly formidable reputation has – in all likelihood – preceded it, I will be brief.
The Saragossa Manuscript is undoubtedly one of Wojciech Has’s finest works. Using Jan Potocki’s novel The Manuscript Found at Saragossa as a palimpsest, it subverts the fantastic source material to create a wholly surrealist piece of cinema; his first exploration of the form that would reach its peak with The Hourglass Sanitorium (1973). It also signalled a move away from his more formal, melodramatic early work, such as Petla (1958), One Room Tenants (1960), and How to be Loved (1963), and a move towards the lavish indulgence of his middle and later period, characterised by films such as The Doll (1968) and The Trials of Balthazar Kober (1988). It is nonetheless a Has film through and through. Incorporating one of his signature motifs of a journey as the driving narrative force, it retains the key strengths of his earlier films in creating a consistently unique world, using close-up shots to endow inanimate objects with a potent – albeit at times ambiguous- relevance, fluid camera movements that add a haunting, poetic quality and a central character out-of-whack with his environment.
Of all the many big names that have expressed a love of this film, for me none are as impressive as Luis Bunuel. In his autobiography My Last Breath (1985) he names only a handful of films, and filmmakers for which he is partial; among these are The Bicycle Thieves, The Battleship Potemkin and, of course, The Saragossa Manuscript, which he goes on to claim he saw “a record breaking three times,” even going so far as to help arrange a distribution deal for the film in Mexico. The Milky Way (1969) is heavily indebted to it – both in narrative structure, tone and visual style – as are a number of his other late-period features.
If all this wasn’t tantalising enough, the copy of the film to be screened is a newly restored version revealed by ‘Kadr’ film studio in Poland earlier this year. The ideal ending to the day; this will enchant, mystify and down right delight you.
Night Train (Jerzy Kawalerowicz, 1959)
Night Train straddles two distinct eras of Polish cinematic heritage: while it still has one foot in its ‘Polish School’ present, there is no doubt that this is a film looking to the future.
Along with Wojciech Has, Kawalerowicz was one of the first graduates of the Young Filmmakers School in Kraków, immediately after which he began to make Socialist Realist movies, in accordance with the enforced cultural policy at the time. Just as some of the finest examples of silent cinema were made in its twilight years, Kawalerowicz’s late Socialist Realist film Under the Phrygian Star (1954) is one of the finest examples of a soon-to-be-dead genre. After one foray into the exploration of the post-war condition so prevalent among the Polish School directors, The Real End to the Great War (1957), there was a marked shift in his directorial style. Perhaps best known for Mother Joan of the Angels (1961) – which took the Silver Palm at Cannes- it was in fact Night Train that really marked a new phase in Kawalerowicz’s artistic sensibility.
Formally innovative, psychologically gripping and controversially cosmopolitan, it can reasonably be considered a pre-runner to Roman Polanski’s debut feature Knife in the Water (1962), as well as the films of the loosely termed ‘Young Culture’ movement that dominated the ‘Third Polish Cinema’ of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Its pessimistic portrayal of human relationships, lucid Andrzej Trzaskowski jazz score and Hitchcockian overtones all contribute to making this a delightfully intriguing piece of cinema.
For all the details on the day, see the Facebook event page.
Tickets
Follow these links to pre-purchase your tickets:
Whole day pass – £10
Daytime session – Innocent Sorcerers + Night Train double bill – £6
Evening session – The Saragossa Manuscript + Intro from Polish film specialist Michael Goddard – £6
The Venue
The Polish Parish Club is situated only five minutes walk from the centre of Bradford. Full address: 19-23 Edmund Street, Bradford BD5 0BH. If you require any further information you can e-mail minicine on minicine@live.co.uk.
This event is supported by Bradford City of Film