Polish Cinema on DVD

Discuss internationally-released DVDs and Blu-rays or other international DVD and Blu-ray-related topics.
Post Reply
Message
Author
twicebilled
Joined: Fri May 17, 2013 6:17 pm

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#526 Post by twicebilled » Fri Mar 28, 2014 8:23 am

Looks like bluedvd is now listing preorder prices for Panny z wilka, Popioły, and Wesele with a "May" release date.

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#527 Post by MichaelB » Fri Mar 28, 2014 8:25 am

Excellent news - I was hoping for all three of those, as I know they've had digital restorations in recent years.

A friend caught the premiere of the Ashes restoration and said that it was unrecognisable when set against the cropped and VHS-quality DVD that was all that he'd been able to see in the past.

User avatar
feihong
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 12:20 pm

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#528 Post by feihong » Fri Mar 28, 2014 9:57 pm

Is "Popioły" the same as "Ashes and Diamonds?" Or is there another film with that name?

twicebilled
Joined: Fri May 17, 2013 6:17 pm

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#529 Post by twicebilled » Fri Mar 28, 2014 10:33 pm

feihong wrote:Is "Popioły" the same as "Ashes and Diamonds?" Or is there another film with that name?
Yes, it's later than Ashes and Diamonds and takes place during the Napoleonic wars.

User avatar
feihong
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 12:20 pm

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#530 Post by feihong » Fri Mar 28, 2014 11:08 pm

Oh. I couldn't find a trailer for this one on the KinoRP Vimeo page. Can anyone find a trailer for this one? I'm looking forward to Wesele, and the other one, Panny z wilka, looks pretty zany.

I really hope Salto and Knights of the Teutonic Order end up on bluray soon. discovering these movies is pretty exciting!

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

Polish Cinema on DVD

#531 Post by MichaelB » Sat Mar 29, 2014 3:50 am

feihong wrote:Is "Popioły" the same as "Ashes and Diamonds?" Or is there another film with that name?
Ashes and Diamonds (Popiół i diament), based on Jerzy Andrzejewski's novel (though the title came from a poem by Cyprien Kamil Norwid) came out in 1958. As one of Wajda's most internationally celebrated films, it's always been just about the easiest to see - there are Criterion and Arrow Academy editions, for instance.

Ashes (Popioły), by contrast, is a lengthy (four-hour), sweeping Napoleonic epic based on the novel by Stefan Żeromski. It occupied Wajda for several years, coming out in 1965, but it's never had anything like the same international profile, and prior to its restoration it was only available on dreadful (cropped, VHS quality) DVDs. My own copy is an American VHS tape that was practically unwatchable, which is why I've only seen the opening scenes.

User avatar
foe
Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2014 6:18 pm
Location: LDN / LDZ
Contact:

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#532 Post by foe » Thu Apr 03, 2014 6:44 am

feihong wrote:
I really hope Salto and Knights of the Teutonic Order end up on bluray soon. discovering these movies is pretty exciting!
I did e-mail KinoRP and inquired about "Salto" on B-R format and it's highly unlikely it will happen according to them. Decided to grab DVD version after the digital reconstruction and it looks simply astonishing. and what a movie we are talking about - mesmerising, piercing, soul-shattering with what could be the best Zbigniew Cybulski's performance ever committed on screen.

User avatar
feihong
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 12:20 pm

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#533 Post by feihong » Thu Apr 03, 2014 3:36 pm

So are they just putting out the historical epics and visual fantasmagorias on blu-ray, and leaving the other stuff to dvd? That's frustrating. The trailer they have for Salto looks completely mesmerizing, and it looks like the film definitely benefits from being seen with a more theatrical-quality depth-of-field.

Ashes sounds like it'll be well worth seeing. I like Wajda, but it seems like they're leaning rather heavily on him for this and the last set of blu-ray releases. I'd really love to discover some of these other filmmakers in 1080p. That film Dolina Issy looks remarkable in the restored trailer, but the dvd I have looks really crummy. That's one I'd like to see in real quality.

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#534 Post by MichaelB » Thu Apr 03, 2014 6:02 pm

feihong wrote:I like Wajda, but it seems like they're leaning rather heavily on him for this and the last set of blu-ray releases.
Without wishing to be unduly morbid, I suspect they're taking full advantage of the fact that Wajda is still around to supervise these restorations! And of course his stuff will sell outside Poland purely through name recognition.

I've been getting the strong impression that the Polish Blu-ray market is pretty minuscule, so I'm really not at all surprised that they're pushing people like Wajda and Has in the first instance.

User avatar
feihong
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 12:20 pm

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#535 Post by feihong » Thu Apr 03, 2014 10:28 pm

Speaking of Has, do they have more of his films than what they've released? I'd really like to see The Doll or The Tribulations of Balthazar Kober. Even the very poor copies I've seen available look visually arresting.

I just received blus of Promised Land, Man of Marble and Man of Iron today. Looking forward to getting into these films--especially Promised Land.

User avatar
Rayon Vert
Green is the Rayest Color
Joined: Wed Jan 08, 2014 10:52 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#536 Post by Rayon Vert » Fri Apr 18, 2014 9:44 pm

I've just popped in the blu rays of Promised Land and Man of Iron, the ones I've purchased, and neither of them work. There's a note on the back of each that says to wait 10 seconds for the menu to appear, but in this case they don't appear after waiting up to 15 minutes. Pressing any remote button to access menus doesn't do anything either. I ordered these from amazon.co.uk

User avatar
TMDaines
Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2009 1:01 pm
Location: Stretford, Manchester

Polish Cinema on DVD

#537 Post by TMDaines » Sat Apr 19, 2014 8:16 am

The chances of getting a dud of two different releases in one order are pretty slim. As they are from the same publisher, compatibility issues with your player are more likely to be a problem. When did you last update your firmware? Check the discs on another player perhaps?

User avatar
Rayon Vert
Green is the Rayest Color
Joined: Wed Jan 08, 2014 10:52 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#538 Post by Rayon Vert » Sat Apr 19, 2014 1:24 pm

TMDaines wrote:The chances of getting a dud of two different releases in one order are pretty slim. As they are from the same publisher, compatibility issues with your player are more likely to be a problem. When did you last update your firmware? Check the discs on another player perhaps?
Thanks for this, TM. I checked and I didn't have the latest firmware update - the version 014 vs. the version 011 update for the Sony BDP 360. I installed it without a hitch.

This gave me hope that was the problem. However, I'm getting the same results - a black screen with nothing in the display panel. :(

I was really looking forward to Promised Land - I have the Vanguard dvd and it's now barely watchable on a big screen TV.

I'll try them on somebody else's Blu Ray tonight and report back.

User avatar
Rayon Vert
Green is the Rayest Color
Joined: Wed Jan 08, 2014 10:52 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#539 Post by Rayon Vert » Sat Apr 19, 2014 4:10 pm

I've now tried the Wajda discs on a Philips and they work there, so the problem is my Sony BDP S360, even though I've never had a problem with other blu rays with it so far.

I've been thinking of finally taking the plunge and getting an all-region player, and decided to go for the Sony BDP S5100, so that should take care of this problem, and open a whole new universe for me... Rohmer, Mouchette, The Trial, Accattone, The Long Goodbye, Passion of Joan of Arc, etc., I'm coming to get you. :)

User avatar
A man stayed-put
Joined: Thu Sep 23, 2010 9:21 am

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#540 Post by A man stayed-put » Sat Apr 26, 2014 9:33 am

Although aware that it's imminent on Blu-ray, I couldn't resist picking up the KinoRP 2 disc DVD of Krzyzacy as it was going cheap(ish) on Amazon UK and I love the film even having only seen the compromised Second Run DVD.

It looks truly fantastic upscaled and in the right ratio. One thing I noticed was that the the runtime seems slightly different, and not in the way round you'd expect (BBFC cuts), the Polish DVD seems to run a bit shorter, for example the 15min mark on the Second Run DVD is the 13min mark on the Polish.

The Second Run claims to be PAL so it shouldn't be a speed up issue, but I can't think of another explanation. I can't notice any cuts so its more out of curiosity than anything.
Anyone got any idea?

User avatar
GaryC
Joined: Fri Mar 28, 2008 3:56 pm
Location: Aldershot, Hampshire, UK

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#541 Post by GaryC » Sun Apr 27, 2014 2:15 pm

A man stayed-put wrote:Although aware that it's imminent on Blu-ray, I couldn't resist picking up the KinoRP 2 disc DVD of Krzyzacy as it was going cheap(ish) on Amazon UK and I love the film even having only seen the compromised Second Run DVD.

It looks truly fantastic upscaled and in the right ratio. One thing I noticed was that the the runtime seems slightly different, and not in the way round you'd expect (BBFC cuts), the Polish DVD seems to run a bit shorter, for example the 15min mark on the Second Run DVD is the 13min mark on the Polish.

The Second Run claims to be PAL so it shouldn't be a speed up issue, but I can't think of another explanation. I can't notice any cuts so its more out of curiosity than anything.
Anyone got any idea?
The longer running time could be explained by a NTSC-to-PAL standards conversion, though I'd be surprised if that's the case with a Second Run DVD.

I've received screeners for some of the films being shown in London at the Kinoteka Polish Festival. Several of the films being shown will be getting UK releases: New Wave have Papusza, Artificial Eye have Ida and Project London have Ticket to the Moon (Bilet na Księżyc), Life Feels Good (Chce się żyć) and Sophie Seeks 7 (Facet (nie)potrzebny od zaraz).

Two of the screeners I've been sent are derived from Polish DVDs, so I can confirm that the following discs are English-friendly: Traffic Department (Drogówka) and Lasting (Nieulotne).

User avatar
Telstar
Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2006 12:35 pm

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#542 Post by Telstar » Wed Apr 30, 2014 10:46 am

It looks like my son may be in Poland at some point in August and I'm curious if there are any stores where he might be able to pick up some Polish titles for me that aren't so easy to get here in the states. In particular, does anyone know of somewhere where he might be able to locate a copy of Night Train or Ashes and Diamonds on blu-ray?

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#543 Post by MichaelB » Wed Apr 30, 2014 10:49 am

Empik is usually your best bet, although you might have difficulty with those two titles as they're nominally out of print.

And in the case of Ashes and Diamonds, you'd be better off with the Arrow edition anyway - it's exactly the same transfer, but more extras and an English-friendly booklet (full disclosure: I edited and partly wrote the latter, but I'm still very proud of it). And it's also region-free.

User avatar
TMDaines
Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2009 1:01 pm
Location: Stretford, Manchester

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#544 Post by TMDaines » Thu May 01, 2014 7:00 am

Saturn is just as good a bet for those particular Blu-rays. The KinoRP ones are exclusive to Empik though I think.

User avatar
foe
Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2014 6:18 pm
Location: LDN / LDZ
Contact:

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#545 Post by foe » Thu May 29, 2014 6:53 am

some new restorations by KINO RP on its way including psychedelic Wajda from the late 60s ("Polowanie na muchy", "Wszystko na sprzedaz")

User avatar
feihong
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 12:20 pm

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#546 Post by feihong » Thu May 29, 2014 6:37 pm

Has anyone seen Hunting Flies? Visually the film looks very arresting, but the reviews I have been reading are very lukewarm towards the film. I'm wondering what people think of the movie.

User avatar
foe
Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2014 6:18 pm
Location: LDN / LDZ
Contact:

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#547 Post by foe » Fri May 30, 2014 4:31 am

feihong wrote:Has anyone seen Hunting Flies? Visually the film looks very arresting, but the reviews I have been reading are very lukewarm towards the film. I'm wondering what people think of the movie.
well even Wajda states it's one of his worst ](*,) if you ask me- he couldn't be any more wrong. It's a comedy, intelligent one, a bit surreal, Swinging (communist)Warsaw(?), a cross between Carlos Saura's "Peppermint Frappé" and "That Obscure Object of Desire" by Bunuel ...a bit...perhaps, probably the least puffy Wajda ever, screenplay/dialogues were written by the great Janusz Glowacki, who later on committed one-of-the-best-comedies-ever-period namely 'The Cruise', totally cranky soundtrack (Marvin Gaye meets Polish "big-bit" ...on mushrooms) by Andrzej Korzynski and most importantly: Malgorzata Braunek - I reckon it's one of the most voluptuous performance in Polish cinema, I mean: she is the sex in that one. Can't wait for the restoration.

User avatar
Telstar
Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2006 12:35 pm

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#548 Post by Telstar » Sat Jun 07, 2014 11:23 am

I've been very impressed with pretty much all of the Telewisji Kino Polska sets I've purchased in the past and am considering getting a few more. Can anyone offer any feedback on any of these sets? -- Wojciech Marczewski, Janusz Morgenstern, Jerzy Stefan Stawinski, Kazimierz Kutz and/or Stanislaw Rozewicz? Thanks in advance.

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#549 Post by MichaelB » Sat Jun 07, 2014 12:04 pm

I can thoroughly recommend the Marczewski, albeit with the proviso that Second Run's transfer of Escape from the Liberty Cinema is night-and-day superior. But Nightmares and especially the truly jaw-dropping Shivers are two of the most important films from one of the most important periods of Polish cinema history, and those alone make the box essential.

My reviews of all three:

Nightmares (Zmory, 1978)

Marczewski’s feature debut opened to a tsunami of critical praise in Poland, and it’s easy to see why: this is one of the most powerful films I’ve yet seen about the psychological traumas of early teenage life. Young Mikołaj’s parents have separated, and when his father dies he ends up in a boarding school that, like its English counterparts, seems deliberately designed to sap the soul. One teacher insists that any infraction of any kind will mean a one-way ticket to Hell (it’s set in the early 20th century, and Catholic guilt underpins everything), another prefixes the names of his charges with “Moron” instead of “Master”, and when a potentially inspiring teacher is taken on, he’s quickly sacked for “individuality” before he can corrupt his pupils’ minds. Similarly, any pretensions towards creativity or emotional sensitivity on Mikołaj’s part are quickly stamped on by both teachers and less sensitive fellow pupils. The film is equally unsparing about his sexual development, hindered by rumour and misinformation and stimulated by sometimes inadvertent glimpses of female flesh - although when opportunities present themselves, his shyness invariably gets the better of him. It’s a deeply uncomfortable film to watch, with already awkward scenes rendered more so by incongruous touches such as the honking of geese that can be heard from inside the headmaster’s study - but there’s no doubting Marczewski’s steely grip on this material.

Shivers (Dreszcze, 1981)

This has nothing to do with David Cronenberg, although an adventurous double-bill programmer might draw some parallels between Canadian parasitic invasion and Polish political indoctrination, since both involve getting inside a vulnerable 'host' and thoroughly corrupting them from within, be it physically or mentally. In the case of Wojciech Marczewski's film, this corruption is meted out to young Tomasz, a teenager whose otherwise normal rough-and-tumble life is occasionally broken up with more sinister occurrences, such as a full-scale search of his family's flat and the disappearance of his father.

He is then sent on a Stalinist summer camp which combines enforced Hi-De-Hi!-style jollity (everyone wears fetching red uniforms) with political indoctrination to varying degrees of subtlety - it's hard to miss the undertones behind an ostensibly innocent "getting to know you" request that the campers tell everyone else how much they really know about their parents. A typical teenager, Tomasz develops an erotic fascination with the woman in charge of his unit, something that she's only too happy to exploit for her own ends - which essentially involve inculcating blind obedience and conformism by any means necessary (even something as banal as home-made jam can be a killer bribe in an environment like this). When a troublemaker throws a rock through a window, he is pursued en masse by an angry mob that could have come straight out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers - and those who didn't join in, like Tomasz, are punished for their lack of zeal.

Unlike a great many explicitly political Polish films, this doesn't require a great deal of background knowledge to appreciate, largely because its anti-totalitarian message is so clearly universal. I wasn't the least bit surprised to discover that it was strongly autobiographical (Marczewski had himself been sent to a similar camp following his own father's arrest), or that Marczewski deliberately abandoned filmmaking for nearly a decade afterwards because he refused to collaborate with the Polish authorities after martial law was declared shortly before the film's premiere. Given the message of his film (which ranks alongside Ryszard Bugajski's slightly later Interrogation in the force of its moral disgust), he presumably felt that anything else would have been a betrayal of his principles.

Escape from the 'Liberty' Cinema (Ucieczka z kina 'Wolność', 1990)

What happens when you cross The Purple Rose of Cairo with the story of a self-loathing provincial censor at the fag-end of the Polish People's Republic? You end up with this clever, often very funny but decidedly pointed satire that marked the return of Wojciech Marczewski to filmmaking after a nine-year creative silence. Rabkiewicz, the censor in question, (the marvellously hangdog Janusz Gajos) has been in the job for fifteen years and consequently is more than familiar with all the various wool-pulling tricks that those pesky artists and journalists resort to to try to slip subversive messages past him.

The logical result of the scrutiny of Rabkiewicz and his colleagues can be seen in the dismal Daybreak, a slushy romantic weepie unspooling at his local cinema whose actors become so disgusted with the drivel that they've been asked to perform that they subvert it, deliberately adding swearier lines (an elderly music professor states that he "couldn't give a fuck" about his protegée's chances in the Chopin competition), much to the delight of a bored school party and the horror of officials who realise what this might mean for their careers - one of Rabkiewicz's colleagues even proposes burning the film, lest it infect others, or worse still, television.

Marczewski has a lot of fun satirising state bureaucracy of a kind that he frequently had to encounter in person, and uses clips from The Purple Rose of Cairo both to compare and contrast late-80s Polish cinema (dull, provincial, unambitious, inert) with its far livelier and more entertaining American counterpart, and to acknowledge what was clearly his primary inspiration (Woody Allen was kind enough to let him use clips and characters free of charge - a reasonably convincing stand-in for Jeff Daniels accidentally ends up mingling with the Daybreak actors at one point). It's a great tribute to Gajos' superlative performance and the subtlety of the script that Rabkiewicz is neither a monster nor a figure of fun - in fact, he's oddly sympathetic, despite being confronted with the evidence of the lasting impact of his cultural crimes during a rooftop inquisition.

User avatar
Telstar
Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2006 12:35 pm

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#550 Post by Telstar » Sat Jul 19, 2014 7:12 pm

Could any of the handful of folks who've seen both the UK DVD of Pociag and the Polish blu-ray possibly provide some feedback on how much of an upgrade in picture quality the blu-ray offers?

Post Reply