Muchotłuk
The fly killer
1966

Marek Piwowski

12 min

Picture a shabby restaurant, characters like from the dark dreams by Tadeusz Kantor. They drink, fight, flirt, tell anecdotes. You can and can’t hear fragments of conversations about matters large and small, about the war, homeland and honour and they daily issues.

About Marek Piwowski is a director, journalist and screenwriter. He studied navigation at the Moscow Marine School, journalism at the University of Wroclaw, and film directing at the Lodz Film School. Marek Piwowski has been a miner, farm laborer, journalist at the "Nowa Kultura" Magazine, and a lecturer at the New York University in New York, NY. He has acted in films made by such directors as Skolimowski, Zanussi, Morgenstern, Zygadlo, and even his own films. He is a member of the American Film Institute.

Bulgot
Gurgle
1983

Marek Piwowski

5 min

A typical Polish parody - funny illustration of a song by Kazimierz Grzeskowiak "Everyday free Saturday". "Every hour, every step of our citizens is carefully controlled by the apparatus of the Public health"-proclaim the banners.

Marek Piwowski famous among the generations of the Polish film lovers as the director of the Kult film “Rejs”, is a director, journalist and screenwriter. He studied navigation at the Moscow Marine School, journalism at the University of Wroclaw, and film directing at the Lodz Film School. Marek Piwowski has been a miner, farm laborer, journalist at the "Nowa Kultura" Magazine, and a lecturer at the New York University in New York, NY. He has acted in films made by such directors as Skolimowski, Zanussi, Morgenstern, Zygadlo, and even his own films. He is a member of the American Film Institute. View and interview with the director here >>

Sukces
Success
1968

Marek Piwowski

13 min

Film portraiture of Czesław Niemen (real name Czesław Juliusz Wydrzycki) ( February 16, 1939 - January 17, 2004) was one of the most important and original Polish rock musicians, singing mainly in the Polish language.
Marek Piwowski famous among the generations of the Polish film lovers as the director of the Kult film “Rejs”,   is a director, journalist and screenwriter. He studied navigation at the Moscow Marine School, journalism at the University of Wroclaw, and film directing at the Lodz Film School. Marek Piwowski has been a miner, farm laborer, journalist at the "Nowa Kultura" Magazine, and a lecturer at the New York University in New York, NY. He has acted in films made by such directors as Skolimowski, Zanussi, Morgenstern, Zygadlo, and even his own films. He is a member of the American Film Institute.

Miejsce Urodzenia
Birthplace
1992

Paweł Łoziński

46min

Birthplace - Writer Henryk Grynberg returns from the U.S. to the village where he and his family were hiding during the occupation and where his father Abram was murdered. In the early 90s the film fit in the vast and endless debate about the responsibility of the holocaust witnesses. As in Grynberg’s writing, Łoziński takes the Jewish tragedy out of the realm of abstraction and turns it into a concrete event. He seeks to answer Grynberg’s question of, “how could people do this to the Jews?” Walking from house to house on a bleak winter day, Grynberg looks people in the eye and asks about the circumstances of his father’s and brother’s death. He seeks to learn the truth, and he does in the presence of the camera. We learn who killed Abram Grynberg, we find his remains and the very milk bottle he had on him. Full article on Łoziński:

Awards: TVP Channel I Award; Don Kichot - Award of the Polish Federation of Film Discussion Clubs; White Cobra - Grand Prix at the Media Festival "Man under Threat" in Lodz, 1992; Golden Gate Award in San Francisco, 1992; Grand Prix - "Vue sur les Docs" in Marseilles, 1993)

About Paweł Łoziński
Film director born in 1965 in Warsaw. He graduated from the Directing Department of the Polish Film School in Łódź. Son of Marcel Łoziński, famous director of documentaries. He cooperated with his father in several renowned films, such as Siedmiu Żydów z mojej klasy / Seven Jews From My Class (1991) and 89 mm od Europy / 89 mm from Europe (1993). Yet, he began to work on his own a long time ago. His own documentaries are shown at international festivals and have been awarded many prizes. He specializes in documenting everyday life. He also made one feature film Kratka / Grate.

Refren
Refrain
1972

Krzysztof Kieślowski

10 min

Refren / Refrain (working title: "Pogrzeb czyli zabawa w chowanego" / "The Funeral, or Hide and Seek") - An exploration of the operations of a funeral home providing a vision of bureaucracy that is hard to escape, even after death.

Życiorys
Curriculum Vitae
1975

Krzysztof Kieślowski

30 min

Życiorys / Curriculum Vitae (45-minute film; abbreviated 28-minute version titled Krótki życiorys / A Brief Curriculum Vitae; screenplay with Janusz Fastyn) - A fictionalized documentary about a meeting of a Communist Party Voivodeship Control Committee reviewing the appeal of a worker excluded from the Communist Party. In spite of the fictional character of the worker and his fictional biography, the meeting transforms into a highly realistic trial of an individual who refuses to submit to authority and actually wishes to accomplish something. This is a vision of how those who rebel in the name of the fundamental principles of honesty and dignity are ultimately destroyed. The film was produced as an educational tool and shown during screenings organized for members of the Polish United Workers Party. (Awards: 1975 - "Syrenka Warszawska" / "Warsaw Mermaid" - Award of the Film Critics Club of the Association of Polish Journalists; 15. OFFK / 15th National Short Film festival, Krakow - "Brązowy Lajkonik" / "Bronze Lajkonik"; International Film Festival, Mannheim - Grand Prix; FPFF / Festival of Polish Feature Films, Gdańsk - Grand Prix for a Television Film.)

Jeden dzień w PRL
One Day in People's Poland
2005

Maciej J. Drygas

58 min

2005 Jeden dzień w PRL / One Day in People's Poland (Silver Dragon at the national competition of the Krakow Film Festival, 2006)
Jeden dzień w PRL (One Day in the People’s Polish Republic) (2005)
A mosaic of agents' reports, pages from a butcher's "complaints book", secret policemen's files, letters to and from jail, atomic alert practice in a country village. Things we have forgotten, though they're unforgettable: everyday life in a communist country.

A documentary shot on September 27, 1962, a day in which nothing of note happened in the Polish People’s Republic. The weather report predicted scattered clouds. More than 1600 new citizens were brought into the world, and around 600 died. A day like any other. The People’s Tribune carried on its front page an interview with the Vice-minister of the Chemical Industry, as well as information about a celebratory concert by musicians from the USSR, which had been attended by representatives of the party and the government. The Iskra publishing house had released a new book on the life of Vladimir Lenin. In Warsaw Life, they wrote that numerous shipments of ersatz coffee were being held due to questions about its quality. From these banal facts, however, a fascinating mosaic forms before our very eyes. Thanks to scrupulous documentation obtained from dozens of archives, Maciej Drygas manages to tell the story of an average day in Poland, hour by hour. Along side this rich narration is a goldmine of knowledge about life in the Polish People’s Republic comprised of police reports, personal letters, keepsakes, official records, radio broadcasts, and newspaper articles. These seemingly modest means allow him to achieve a moving impression of a past that in returning becomes a reality. The most radical de-mythologization of the Polish People’s Republic that one can imagine. Interview with Maciej Drygas:

Maciej Drygas - One of Poland’s most renowned documentary filmmakers. Drygas graduated in film directing at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow (1979). His celebrated debut, Hear My Cry, tells the story of Ryszard Siwiec, who committed suicide by self-immolation in 1968 at a harvest celebration held at the 10th-Anniversary Stadium in Warsaw. Drygas is famous for spending long hours in archives in preparation for his infrequently released films. This strategy has proved effective, as each new Drygas documentary is an important event in the film world.

Elementarz
The Primer
1976

Wojciech Wiszniewski

8 min

Elementarz /The Primer, 1976  - in a very brief manner, using some specific symbolism of the images, Wojciech Wiszniewski presents his vision of social consciousness of Poles of the seventies.

Wojciech Wiszniewski (born 22 February 1946 in Łódź - 21 February 1981 in Warsaw) was a Polish filmmaker who mainly directed faux documentaries. Most of his films were censored by the communist authorities due to its pessimistic look at 1970s Poland. Only after his death were they released. His complete works have been released on DVD by Narodowy Instytut Audiowizualny.

Dziennik. Pl
Diary.pl
2004

Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz

56min

Dziennik. Pl / Diary.pl, 2004
A documentary showing the profiles of six young people living in Poland, all of them in the similar age of mid-twenties. The protagonists of the film are a young farmer, an unemployed graduate of Foreign Trade, a feminist, young politician running for the Green Party election in 2004,  a young socially engaged  and a graphic designer known through her popular blog. The film crew has for several months accompanied these people at work, at their meetings with friends and captured an in-depth picture of the life of the young people born after the political changes in Poland and Europe in the late 80ies.

MARIA ZMARZ-KOCZANOWICZ
Born in 1954 in Cieplice Slaskie. Film director, scriptwriter. One of the most prolific Polish documentary filmmakers; made nearly 50 films. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw (painting, 1978) and the Radio and TV Department of the University of Silesia in Katowice (film directing, 1982). Her feature film debut was The End of the World (Kraj swiata, 1993). Her doc pics include award winning The Office (Urzad, 1986), awarded Golden Lajkonik and Silver Dragon at the Cracow FF '87, Cinema du Reel First Prize '88; Love Without Visa (Milosc bez wizy, 2001); Children of Revolution (Dzieci rewolucji, 2002); Diary.pl (Dziennik.pl, 2004); Krzysztof Kieslowski - Still Alive (2006).