A Short History of Polish Cinema - "Night Train"

Światowid Cinema and the Association of Studio Cinemas would like to invite you to another part of the SHORT HISTORY OF POLISH CINEMA series! On 23 March at 18:00, there will be a screening of the film "Night Train" by Jerzy Kawalerowicz. The film will be available with English subtitles.

 

 

In the review Short History of Polish Cinema, we focused on presenting selected titles by the greatest male and female filmmakers of the mainstream. How did the sensitivity of filmmakers change? Did they draw from European and world cinema or did they create new quality? How were they influenced by social and geopolitical changes? Finally: how did Polish cinema resonate beyond the borders of our country? The review is a unique opportunity to recall the most important digitally reconstructed works created on large cinema screens on the Vistula River and, through them, to take a look under the surface of the changes that took place during the following decades of the People's Republic of Poland.

 

The series of 10 films with introductions in the form of a video lecture presents the silhouette of the artist/creator, introduces the subject of the work and brings us closer to the political and social realities of its creation. Each introduction also contains a formal analysis of the work with an emphasis on the script, cinematography, acting, editing, set and costume design. It also indicates the current dimension of the work and suggests possible interpretative tropes. The prologues are realised in an accessible, more popularising than academic manner, setting the individual films in a broad cultural context.

 

 

 

List of titles and screening dates:

 

23.03 at 18:00 Night Train - Jerzy Kawalerowicz 1959

 

20.04 at 18:00 Good Bye, Till Tomorrow - Janusz Morgenstern 1960

 

18.05 at 18:00 No One Cries Out... - Kazimierz Kutz 1960

 

22.06 at 18:00 Bad Luck - Andrzej Munk 1960

 

20.07 at 18:00 The Hourglass Sanatorium - Wojciech Jerzy Has 1973

 

17.08 at 18:00 Camouflage - Krzysztof Zanussi - 1976

 

28.09 at 18:00 Aria for an Athlete - Filip Bajon - 1979

 

26.10 at 18:00 Fever - Agnieszka Holland 1981

 

16.11 at 18:00 Blind Case - Krzysztof Kieślowski 1981

 

 

Night Train - Jerzy Kawalerowicz, 1959

 

An intimate psychological study, a poetic tale of loneliness and, at the same time, a collective portrait of Poles in the late 1950s. Two random travellers meet in a sleeping compartment. The subtle interplay of their emotions - from mutual aversion to prospectless closeness - is played out against the backdrop of the human microcosm crowded on the train.

 

The idea for the film came from life: Jerzy Kawalerowicz once travelled to the seaside in a women's sleeping compartment with a woman in crisis, who told him the story of her life overnight. The director, looking for the best way to make a film version of this story, decided to put almost all the action on the train. It lasts as long as the journey of a night express to Hel, and the protagonists are the passengers crammed into its cramped interiors. The viewer knows only as much about them as can be learned about their accidental travelling companions - a bored spouse seduces whoever she can, a former concentration camp prisoner fights insomnia, old women go on a pilgrimage, and a holiday womanizer hunts for prey. The turning point seems to be when the police show up and inform them that there is a murderer on the train...

 

On the one hand, the film is a play with the conventions of thriller and melodrama, on the other, a kind of poetic sketch full of an understatement. The melancholic mood is created by the music, especially by Wanda Warska's ballad vocalisation as the film's leitmotif. From a contemporary perspective, the night journey is a metaphor for life, and the whole Pociąg is a nostalgic return to the best period in the history of Polish cinema.

 

 

Ticket price: PLN 14/film

 

Review organiser: Association of Studio Cinemas

 

Review curator: Tomasz Kolankiewicz

 

Partners: WFDiF, DI Factory

 

Review co-financed by the Polish Film Institute

 

Tickets can be purchased: 

online

- at the box office of the Centrum Spotkań Europejskich "Światowid". The box office is open Monday through Friday from 2:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. On Saturdays and Sundays from 11:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. 

- At the ticket machine located in the lobby of the CSE "Światowid" (payment by card) from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.

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