Museum of the Moving Image to Present Ways to Freedom: Polish Film and the Rise of Democracy, 11/13-23

Museum of the Moving Image and the Polish Cultural Institute New York will present Ways to Freedom: Polish Film and the Rise of Democracy, a thirteen-film series commemorating the 25th anniversary of the first free parliamentary elections in Poland. The series, running November 13 through 23, 2014, includes seven features and six documentary shorts that date from 1977 through 1990, a tumultuous political period in which the nation experienced the loosening of Stalin-era control, the imposition of martial law, and the birth and growth of the Solidarity movement. Four of the screenings will be introduced by noted film scholars, and the opening night of the series will be followed by a reception.

Ways to Freedom opens Thursday, November 13, at 7:00 p.m. with two films by Krzysztof Kieslowski, Blind Chance (1981) and From the Point of View of the Night Watchman ( 1977), a rarely shown documentary-style short, with an introduction by Annette Insdorf, film scholar (Columbia University) and author of Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski. Tickets for this program are $15 (discounted for Museum members at the Film Lover level and above) and available in advance online at movingimage.us.

Other highlights include Interrogation (1982, dir. Ryszard Bugajski, introduced by Sheila Skaff, NYU scholar, on November 14), a film set in 1950s Poland during the Stalinist era about the imprisonment and torture of a Polish actress who refused to denounce a friend. Famously censored by authorities during the period of martial law, Interrogation only opened theatrically in 1989 and was shown at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival where actress Krystyna Janda won the Best Actress award and the film was nominated for the Palme d'Or. Agnieszka Holland also appears in the film as an actress. Another rarely seen film in the series is The Mother of Kings (1982, dir. Janusz Zaorski, introduced by Michal Oleszczyk, film critic and director of Gdynia Film Festival, on November 16), follows a widow and mother of four from the crisis of the 1930s, World War II, and the Stalinist era. This film, too, was censored at its completion and was only released in Poland in 1987 and debuted internationally at the Berlinale in 1988 where it won the Silver Bear for outstanding single achievement. Another featured film, Escape from the Liberty Cinema (1990, dir. Wojciech Marczewski, introduced by Andrzej Krakowski, filmmaker and CUNY instructor, on November 15), combines fantasy with political satire in a tale about actors who step out of the screen to protest censorship. The series title is a reference to Marczewski's film.

The other films in the series are Andrzej Wajda's Man of Iron (1981), chronicling the rise of a union organizer at the Gdansk shipyard modeled on Lech Walesa; Rat-Catcher (1986, dir. Andrzej Czarnecki), the famous documentary about an exterminator who feeds and befriends his prey before he kills them; Hear My Scream (1991, dir. Maciej Drygas), a documentary short about Ryszard Siwiec, who immolated himself to protest the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops; Smaller Sky (1980, dir. Janusz Morgenstern), a dramatic feature centered on a scientist who drops out of society as an act of rebellion; Shivers (1981, Wojciech Marczewski), a coming-of-age drama set at a boy scout training camp during the Stalinist 1950s; Fan (1987, dir. Wojciech Marczewski), a documentary about the fan club of a Polish pop rock band that serves as a front for political indoctrination; Where To (1990, dir. Pawel Kedzierski), a masterpiece of image and sound editing using newsreels to capture a moment in history; and My Notes from the Underground (2011, dir. Jacek Petrycki), which features heroes of the Solidarity trade union talking about their actions under martial law, interwoven with footage from the 1980s.

David Schwartz, the Museum's Chief Curator, said, "Ways to Freedom is significant both for the quality of the films, which include works by such masters as Krzysztof Kieslowski and Andrzej Wajda as well as such rarely screened great films as Interrogation and The Mother of Kings, but also as a living history of a tumultuous, exciting period of Polish history. It is clear that during the period from the birth of the Solidarity movement in 1980 through the free elections of 1989, Poland played a central role in the fall of the Iron Curtain."

Ways to Freedom: Polish Film and the Rise of Democracy is presented in collaboration with the Kino POLSKA Foundation and the Digital Film Repository in Poland, with support from the Polish Cultural Institute New York (PCINY).