CoMo No.1: Poland (May, 2022)

[niminy-piminy]

very long ago i watched a few (about 5) Marcel Lozinski docs (including ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN).
(out of them) most vividly i can recall SO IT DOESN'T HURT.

with Eng. sugbs ↓
https://youtu.be/PQ-oMvqqhnU

[niminy-piminy]

in 2018, i read a book called "The Struggle for Form: Perspectives on Polish Avant-Garde Film, 1916-1989" (Kamila Kuc (ed.), 2014)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/191 ... e-for-form

This is the first comprehensive English-language account of the Polish avant-garde film, from its beginnings in the early decades of the last century to the collapse of communism in 1989. Taking a broad understanding of avant-garde film, this collection includes writings on the pioneering work of the internationally-acclaimed Franciszka and Stefan Themerson; the Polish Futurists' (Jalu Kurek, Anatol Stern) engagement with film; the Thaw and animation (Jan Lenica and Walerian Borowczyk, Andrzej Pawlowski, Zbigniew Rybczynski); documentary (Natalia Brzozowska, Kazimierz Karabasz, Wojciech Wiszniewski), Polish émigré filmmakers (Roman Polanski, Jerzy Skolimowski, Andrzej Zulawski) as well as essays and documentation on the highly influential Film Form Workshop (Jozef Robakowski, Ryszard Wasko, Wojciech Bruszewski). Including a mix of historical writings from early film magazines with commissioned essays, this book constitutes an important source on the rich, complex and diverse history of the Polish film avant-garde, which is presented from the perspective of both British (A. L. Rees, Jonathan Owen, Michael O'Pray) and Polish (Marcin Gizycki, Ryszard Kluszczynski, Kamila Kuc) authorities on the subject. This book is thus an indispensable introduction to the theories and practices of critically important avant-garde artists and filmmakers.

and alongside reading the book i made a list of (nearly) all the films mentioned in the book ↓

https://www.kinometer.com/?list=197&sort=year-earliest
1. Ballet mécanique (Dudley Murphy, Fernand Léger, 1924, 19m)
2. Intermission (René Clair, 1924, 22m)
3. Symphonie diagonale (Viking Eggeling, 1924, 5m)
4. Anémic Cinéma (Marcel Duchamp, 1926, 7m)
5. Nothing But Time (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1926, 45m)
6. Five Minutes of Pure Cinema (Henri Chomette, 1926, 5m)
7. Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (Walter Ruttmann, 1927, 65m)
8. The Starfish (Man Ray, 1928, 21m)
9. The Zone (Georges Lacombe, 1928, 28m)
10. Prétexte: Divertissement visuel (Alfred Sandy, 1928, 5m)
11. Rain (Joris Ivens, Mannus Franken, 1929, 14m)
12. Turksib (Victor A. Turin, 1929, 75m)
13. Changements de rues (Paul Gilson, 1930, 0m)
14. The Blood of a Poet (Jean Cocteau, 1932, 55m)
15. The Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934, 38m)
16. A Colour Box (Len Lye, 1935, 3m)
17. Coal Face (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1935, 11m)
18. Night Mail (Harry Watt, Basil Wright, 1936, 25m)
19. Hell Unlimited (Norman McLaren, Helen Biggar, 1936, 19m)
20. The Adventure of a Good Citizen (Stefan Themerson, Franciszka Themerson, 1937, 8m)
21. The River (Pare Lorentz, 1938, 31m)
22. Calling Mr. Smith (Stefan Themerson, Franciszka Themerson, 1943, 9m)
23. Majdanek - Europe's Cemetary (Aleksander Ford, 1945, 24m)
24. The Eye and the Ear (Franciszka Themerson, Stefan Themerson, 1945, 11m)
25. F-Moll Ballad (Andrzej Panufnik, 1945, 10m)
26. Warsaw Suite (Tadeusz Makarczynski, 1946, 18m)
27. Storm in Poland (Jerzy Bossak, Waclaw Kazmierczak, 1947, 13m)
28. Coal Mine (Natalia Brzozowska, 1947, 10m)
29. Blood of the Beasts (Georges Franju, 1949, 20m)
30. Stanislaw Moniuszko's Symphonic Poem Fairy-Tale: A Concert in the Ursus Tractor Factory Club (Andrzej Munk, 1952, 14m)
31. Look Out, Hooligans! (Jerzy Hoffman, Edward Skórzewski, 1955, 12m)
32. Sunday Morning (Andrzej Munk, 1955, 19m)
33. Children Accuse (Jerzy Hoffman, Edward Skórzewski, 1956, 10m)
34. Where the Devil Says Goodnight (Władysław Ślesicki, Kazimierz Karabasz, 1956, 10m)
35. Warsaw 1956 (Jerzy Bossak, 1956, 7m)
36. Little Town (Jerzy Ziarnik, 1956, 10m)
37. The People From an Empty Zone (Władysław Ślesicki, Kazimierz Karabasz, 1957, 15m)
38. Life is Great (Tadeusz Makarczynski, 1957, 12m)
39. Article Zero (Wlodzimierz Borowik, 1957, 16m)
40. Two Men and a Wardrobe (Roman Polanski, 1958, 15m)
41. A Walk in the Old City of Warsaw (Andrzej Munk, 1958, 18m)
42. Primary (Robert Drew, 1960, 60m)
43. The Musicians (Kazimierz Karabasz, 1960, 9m)
44. Chronicle of a Summer (Jean Rouch, Edgar Morin, 1961, 90m)
45. Before the Foliage Falls (Władysław Ślesicki, 1964, 28m)
46. My Street (Danuta Halladin, 1965, 9m)
47. On the Threshold (Kazimierz Karabasz, 1965, 23m)
48. Cul-de-sac (Roman Polanski, 1966, 113m)
49. Franek W.'s Year (Kazimierz Karabasz, 1968, 59m)
50. Elementary School (Tomasz Zygadło, 1971, 16m)
51. What? (Roman Polanski, 1972, 114m)
52. A Lodz Life (Danuta Halladin, 1984, 18m)
53. Jalu Kurek - RC (Rhythmical Calculations) (Ignacy Szczepański, 1985, 4m) #CoMoPoland (rewatched)
54. Pharmacy (Bruce Checefsky, 2001, 4m) #CoMoPoland (rewatched)
55. Colored Rhythm (Bruce Checefsky, 2005, 3m)
56. Moment Musical (Bruce Checefsky, 2006, 6m) #CoMoPoland (rewatched)

[niminy-piminy]

Bruce Checefsky's recreations...

PHARMACY

Pharmacy is a plotless experimental film made in 1930 by Stefan and Franciszka Themerson, who produced it using a “trick-table” of their own design. Departing from the traditional way of making photograms, they introduced certain modifications: instead of building images by placing objects on photosensitive paper, they put them on translucent paper and photographed from below using positive film. The unique artistic expression of the film was determined by the play of lights (soft, dancing shadows obtained by the movement of lamps over the “trick-table”) and effects resulting from the juxtaposition of the negative and positive film. According to Franciszek Themerson, Pharmacy was the first film to tap into and set in motion the static photogram technique, previously reserved exclusively for photography. Although similar projects had actually been attempted before (e.g. by Man Ray or Hans Richter), the missing Pharmacy made a landmark in the history of the Polish experimental cinema as the first production of the Themersons. Bruce Checefsky invested his efforts to reconstruct the film on the basis of the preserved descriptions.

watch → https://artmuseum.pl/en/filmoteka/praca ... e-pharmacy

MOMENT MUSICAL

Moment Musical, reconstructed by Bruce Checefsky, is a short commercial produced by Stefan and Franciszka Themerson in 1933 for Wanda Golińska’s company trading in accessories. This several-minutes’ long commercial with a soundtrack, screened at cinemas before films, was produced on the “trick-table” devised by Stefan Themerson. Petty objects were placed on illuminated translucent paper, to which the film was exposed. The advertised products were attractively animated by the artists, drawing the viewer’s attention to the dancing shadows and light effects, which produced the illusion of lightness and fluidity of shapes corresponding to the melody by Maurice Ravel that accompanies the film. In their commercial, the Themersons continued the pursuit of a mutual transposition of sound and image, which proved essential in their entire practice. That idea was stated by Stefan Themerson already in 1928 in his essay on the potential of radio.

watch → https://artmuseum.pl/en/filmoteka/praca ... nt-musical

A WOMAN AND CIRCLES (Bruce Checefsky, 2004, 10m)

This abstract film by Bruce Checefsky was based on a script by the avant-garde poet, Jan Brzękowski, published in 1930 in Cracow’s literary magazine “Linia” and the French magazine “Cercle et Carré”. The script was an illustration of Brzękowski’s theory of abstract film. According to the poet, “upon drawing up an abstract film script, there are only two methods to choose from: either be guided by fantasy and accept it as the sole principle of creative practice, or adopt a normative factor that combines images into an artistic structure”. Having rejected the first method, which was dominant in the surrealist film productions at the time, he pursued the possibility of making a film with a robust structure, based on combining fragments without anecdotal content – film forms – following the adopted principle: image identity, similarity or complementarity of forms, contrasts, etc. The choice of the overriding principle was of secondary importance and did not exclude the application of other rules at the same time. It was of key importance, however, to “preserve the logic of abstract structure of the film script”. Checefsky addressed the poet’s never-realised concept with his motion picture made with a 35 mm camera from the 1940s, on a monochrome film hailing from the era when the script was released.

→ https://artmuseum.pl/en/filmoteka/praca ... nd-circles

[niminy-piminy]

Ignacy Szczepański's recreation...

JALU KUREK - RC (RHYTHMICAL CALCULATIONS)

RC, standing for Rhythmical Calculations, is a reconstruction of a lost film by Jalu Kurek, poet allied with the Cracow Avant-garde. The essence of the film is its structure. As the author wrote about RC - “The film is not about the idea or the images. What makes it exceptional is the structure, i.e. the temporal succession, and editing, i.e. calculating, cutting and interweaving the frames”. The film relies on three different means of expression: captions, animated diagrams and “natural” shots. In accordance with the idea of “pure film”, stipulating the renouncement of any “extra-film” elements, such as content or captions, he vested these means of expression with an exceptional character: the captions were not meant to explain anything but operated as a “parallel force”, and the rudimentary plot was fragmented and included within a stream of relatively loosely associated images. Also faces, considered as a “theatrical prop” were excluded – all “natural” shots were taken as worm’s-eye view, at close distance.

watch → https://artmuseum.pl/en/filmoteka/praca ... u-kurek-or

[niminy-piminy]

#CoMoPoland
SIR TWARDOWSKI (Henryk Szaro, 1936)

not in the underground.
to the moon!



an exemplary pro-client attitude!
the core customer care principles being diligently followed by the Hell Company representative.

[niminy-piminy]

Stefan Themerson, OuLiPo, and Semantic Poetry → https://culture.pl/en/article/stefan-th ... tic-poetry
Unposted Letters of the Themersons → https://culture.pl/en/article/unposted- ... themersons

[sally]

thank you for this site! https://artmuseum.pl/en/filmoteka
some lovely things to check out there....

the idea of “pure film”

ha! all those poles and their purity! please see beloved witkacy's lecture below & note the significant year (although i've never read it through, it's too boring, especially next to the chapter 'the 622 downfalls of bungo' featuring the deranged Duke of Nevermore)

[sally]

w cieniu pałacu / in the shadow of the palace - tadeusz pałka (1991) #CoMoPoland

A record of one of the important phenomena of free market economy emerging in Poland. Tadeusz Palka shows the Warsaw Palace of Culture and Science bazaar. Interviews with Russians and Ukrainians regularly arriving at the bazaar are the main part of the film.

spoiler: they are depressed about what the future holds. spoiler: they were correct.


pałac / palace - tomasz wolski (2012) #CoMoPoland

The Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw was a despised gift from Stalin. After the system transformation in Poland some suggested to pull it down. But the palace is still standing and doing fine pulsating with the life of hundreds of offices, hosting a theatre, concert hall, cinema and even a swimming pool and city council room.

pałac / the palace - tadeusz junak (1980) #CoMoPoland

A court sheep shepherd enters the empty palace of the landlord in the last days of World War II. His stimulated imagination shows him scenes with him as his lordship. Peasant consciousness collides with lordlike privileges.

story is basically rich people boo, so no anti-soviet cred, unless it was so disguised i missed it - but the form!! ♥ as delicious and mad as all the other delicious and mad polish films (hourglass sanatorium, dancing hawk etc) altho also weirdly in mind of jos stelling's everyman as well. more people should definitely have seen this...

[rischka]

PoCoMo



i watched the most obvious director i haven't investigated yet w/wajda's war trilogy. i am almost through kanal. it's all pretty harrowing and probably not far removed from what people in ukraine are experiencing. yet pretty standard ww2 stuff (a little romanticized perhaps) wajda was 16 when he joined the resistance. i am sure everyone has seen these but me! i'll rewatch ashes & diamonds too; don't remember a thing about it but it might make an impression now

[rischka]

your films look much prettier!!

[rischka]

also i need to find the dancing hawk - put it off for far too long

[sally]

yay rischka joins the chat!

yes! watch dancing hawk! although we should almost count DP rybczyński as a director in his own right, his work is SO distinctive (see kargl's angst, which for the terms of CoMo i would be fine classing as polish)

altho if you're talking wajda then karl's yer man (where is he?) cuz my fave one of wajda's is zemsta, mainly for polanski singing his little song about a cat (i always fancied polanski, even whilst knowing he was a paedophile rapist, and just oh, my head hurts about that)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrYcfIjyv4c

also i have started wandering around going 'kochanie' at everyone and i'm not usually that nice....

[sally]

did some animations, they're all a bit dystopian and i'm a bit depressed now

jacek kasprzycki - moj dom 1983 #CoMoPoland
wacław wajser - gorycz - 1962 #CoMoPoland
andrzej czeczot - tapestry 1 1977 #CoMoPoland
aleksander oczko - zabawka 1988 #CoMoPoland
zdzisław kudła - szum lasu 1972 #CoMoPoland
alina maliszewska - libido 1967 #CoMoPoland
jan petryszyn - paradis 1975 #CoMoPoland

[niminy-piminy]

EVERYONE KNOWS WHERE THEY STAND (Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz, 1983) #CoMoPoland

initially, i thought i will watch certain films but then accidentally unearthed (the hoarded & forgotten) Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz DVD (1983-2007).
so, i can't avoid starting with that!
everything has been properly lined/queued up (everyone knows where they stand) and everything is going to plan!
(btw. the first DVD's entry is available online (minimal dialogues, without subs) ↓ )

https://vimeo.com/115152472

[niminy-piminy]

I AM A MAN (Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz, 1986) #CoMoPoland

A comic glimpse at the small-town politics where all the functions and privileges are in the hands of one local leader. Despite being a man, he even becomes the chairman of the Women’s League.

[rischka]

https://twitter.com/rbgscfz/status/1522 ... ogxMzoQ4YA

so yeah i think wadja levelled up with this one

[sally]

underpants

jarmark cudów / the miracle fair - jerzy hoffman (1966)


should we # a film if someone else already has? or just mention the unmentioned?

wśród ludzi / among men - władysław ślesicki (1960) #CoMoPoland

tale told through the eyes of a dog and fuck this was bleak to watch right before bed last night.

watch here: https://35mm.online/en/vod/documentary/among-people

[niminy-piminy]

should we # a film if someone else already has? or just mention the unmentioned?

i expect to # all the films i watch (or rewatch) this month (for CoMo).
better to # something twice than fail/forget to # something.

Nikt cię tak nie kocha jak ja (Nobody cares as I do)

better redundancy than omission!

[niminy-piminy]

THE OFFICE (Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz, 1986) #CoMoPoland

A film about a bailiff’s office, where people who are indebted to the State come to pay their dues and are not always capable of paying their debts. In bureaucratic communism, bailiffs become ruthless instruments of power, who sometimes resort to violence and don’t care about human suffering.

one would expect this to be a tale from the post-privatization 1990s.
and not from the soviet-style "welfare" state of the 1980s

But it is the office that suffers.

The interpretation of pt. 7 poses other difficulties when analyzing legal regulations.
How does one define how much food or fuel a debtor needs over a period of one month?
Of course, there are food norms defined in calories, for example, but we are hardly going to burden the collector with the task of precise calculations.
Thus, such calculations cannot be exact and can only be approximated.

For a start: I set one condition: all human feelings should be alien to me then.
Firstly, because otherwise I’m not gonna earn anything.
What? Am I gonna sit and cry together with the bloke?
What good that’s gonna do?
We’re crying while the problem still needs solving.
I’m never sorry for anyone. I leave my heart at home.

[sally]

redundancies..........

rhythmical calculations - ignacy szczepański (1989) #CoMoPoland
moment musical - bruce checefsky (2006) #CoMoPoland
pharmacy - bruce checefsky (2001) #CoMoPoland
nieprawdopodobnie elastyczny czlowiek / the incredibly elastic man - karolina specht (2014) #CoMoPoland

myslenie magiczne / magical thinking - wojciech ziembicki (1990) #CoMoPoland

more depressing stuff - interview with (and opposing images to) a minor clerk from the government censors office immediately after it closed, who got the job there because he was chasing the higher ideal of art looking for a book of banned poetry and the censors office was the only place he could have access to it, and justifies his employment with 'to stop someone worse than him doing it' & 'it was necessary to stop the opposition looking ridiculous' (??????) and 'they weren't that bad really'....horrible

also our friend the palace reappears again



and director ziembicki seems to have made zilch after this.....

[niminy-piminy]

THE MAJOR, OR THE REVOLUTION OF THE GNOMES (Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz, 1989) #CoMoPoland

Waldemar "Major" Fydrych was the founder of the happening movement of the Orange Alternative. From 1980 on, in Wroclaw, and then in other Polish cities, manifestations appeared under absurd slogans, which mocked the official celebrations of the Polish Peoples' Republic: "Military Policeman's Day", "Secret Agent's Day", "The Eve of the October Revolution", "Toilet Paper - The First Handout", "Revolution of The Gnomes". Just as Orange's actions were parodies of official holidays, the film by Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz about the Major is a parody of revolutionary reporting.

Orange Alternative → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Alternative

The Orange Alternative: There is No Freedom without Dwarfs → https://culture.pl/en/article/the-orang ... out-dwarfs

The Manifesto of Socialist Surrealism
→ http://cultural-opposition.eu/registry/ ... ual/n13010
→ http://orangealternativemuseum.pl/#mani ... surrealism

Ridiculing the Regime → https://espionart.com/2017/02/24/ridiculing-the-regime/

the events presented a dilemma to the authorities, as by arresting protesters they risked making the regime itself look ridiculous. As Fydrych noted, “Can you treat a police officer seriously, when he is asking you: ‘Why did you participate in an illegal meeting of dwarfs?'”



https://youtu.be/1DTrc_bYFaE

This perspective certainly distinguishes Zmarz-Koczanowicz's documentaries and seems to derive directly from the fact of her living in the country once referred to as "the most jovial barrack in the Socialist camp," i.e. the Polish People's Republic. It seems simultaneously to issue forth from the city of Wroclaw, where the filmmaker lived for many years. Wroclaw is notable, among other things, for being the birthplace of the Pomarańczowa Alternatywa / Orange Alternative, a group whose actions, as Tadeusz Sobolewski once stated, "consisted of provoking reality, putting a 'mug' on it." Her films manifest a similar degree of flippancy, irony, burlesque and absurdity; they are a departure from "martyrological kitsch" and differ in tone from most contemporaneous films.

[sally]

ruchome piaski / shifting sands - władysław ślesicki (1969) #CoMoPoland

ugh. MALE GAZE





sceny narciarskie z franzem klammerem / skiing scenes with franz klammer - gerald kargl, bogdan dziworski, zbigniew rybczyński (1980) #CoMoPoland

FEMALE GAZE



this 'documentary' (hahahaha) came recommended, and it was right to be. this beats herzog in the skiing* doc stakes.

*not much actual skiing involved.

and who knew rybczyński was so cute! *waves folk embroidered panties like a flag*

[niminy-piminy]

STORM IN POLAND (Jerzy Bossak, Waclaw Kazmierczak, 1947) #CoMoPoland

It is a wordless chronicle of natural disaster, the flooding of the Vistula river in the spring of 1947. The Vistula is the longest and largest river in Poland, and this particular overflowing caused major devastation and displacement of people. Bossak was there, filming the flood as it progressed and then its aftermath.

In 1947, Jerzy Bossak’s The Flood (aka Storm in Poland or The Disaster of Floods) won a Grand Prix at Cannes, the first short film to be given such an honor alone.

https://vimeo.com/115253519

[rischka]

i'm enjoying this thread so much :love: surreal socialism sounds rad

[sally]

aaaaaaaaaaargh i was literally eating a cherry tomato (with my fingers) at the time!!!!!!

right. gonna go finish the film now i'm done shaking my fist at the movie gods

[sally]

powódź / storm in poland - jerzy bossak, wacław kaźmierczak (1947) #CoMoPoland


polski film - marek najbrt (2012) #CoMoPoland



ha! this is exactly what i was expecting, except that apparently i can't tell the difference between spoken polish and czech. (also is there like some famous rivalry between prague & brno? famu and jamu????)

i guess i need to see a petr zelenka movie now

[niminy-piminy]

brno?

whenever something truly weird is taking place in this country, it happens in brno → https://letterboxd.com/film/boredom-in-brno/

[niminy-piminy]

i guess i need to see a petr zelenka movie now

i was considering watching this for CoMo → https://letterboxd.com/film/the-karamazov-brothers/

We witness a group of thesps from Prague on a trip to Krakow in Poland to stage the novel as a play in a derelict steelworks as part of the Closer to Life Festival. The project, however, is born under the bad sign, apparently doomed from the start.

but then thought that "polski film" is deflecting enough (no need for another deflector).

[sally]

all CoMo interpretations are valid! i logged it with pleasure! my only hesitation re the karamazovs is that i've never read the novel and would lose as many in-film nods as i lost in polski film not being a native. so i watchlisted the one about a parrot instead, and that one i will save for czechia month (how many of these silly funny czech movies are there? since i never heard of polski film before i'm imagining there are thousands....)

polish film chronicle 84/49 (1984) #CoMoPoland

yeah i'm watching newsreels now...but only cuz:



♥♥♥ i've been there! that's where i tripped over and left blood and most of my afternoon's consciousness on the pavement! ♥♥♥



newsreel also had some random dance report, of which i entirely approve

[rischka]

i watched another PoCoMo - Dziura w ziemi (1970) d. Andrzej Kondratiuk aka a Hole in the Ground








an ambitious young geologist seems a little too into his latest project. freeform style of many 70s films complimented by interesting use of music, mostly jazz. lots of drinking, singing and a few fun dance scenes. iturns philosophical as our protagonist questions his life's purpose under communism... slightly less grim than the war trilogy: i enjoyed this