The 14th annual Polish Film Festival in America, produced by the Society for Arts, runs Saturday, November 2, through Saturday, November 30. Screenings this week are at the Copernicus Center, 5216 W. Lawrence, and unless otherwise noted, tickets are $9. Passes, available for $40 (five screenings) and $80 (twelve screenings), are good for all programs except the 7:30 screening on Saturday, November 2, and the 3:00 screening on Sunday, November 10; for more information call 773-486-9612. Programs marked with an * are highly recommended. The full festival schedule for November 2 through 7 follows; a complete schedule through November 30 is available on-line at www.chicagoreader.com.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 3
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The festival’s tribute to Jan Kiepura, a tenor with the Warsaw State Opera who enjoyed some success in European movie musicals, opens with this 1934 French feature about an opera star (Kiepura) who discovers a beautiful stowaway (Martha Eggerth, who later married Kiepura) in his cabin on the way to Monte Carlo. Directed by Carmine Gallone and Serge Veber; an uncredited Emeric Pressburger contributed to the script of this English-language version. 83 min. (1:00)
- The Supplement
Artist and illustrator Andrzej Czeczot, a native of Krakow who has lived in New York since the early 80s, spent six years working on this animated fantasy about a shepherd who journeys through space and time, encountering everyone from Neptune, Hercules, and Prometheus to Napoleon, Columbus, Isadora Duncan, Charlie Parker, Salvador Dali, and the Beatles. In Polish with subtitles. 85 min. (8:00)
Waldemar Krzystek directed this 2001 feature, showing with Maciej Majewksi’s animated short Beware of Bad Dogs! (2001). Both films in Polish with subtitles. 91 min. (9:00)
Part noir, part family drama, this 2001 feature by Janusz Kijowski takes on more than it can adequately address, but it’s a complex and audacious story. Piotr Machalica is excellent as Leon, a world-weary police inspector in the semi-industrial Mazury region north of Warsaw; driving on a rain-slicked road one foggy night, he accidentally kills a stoned young woman and elects to cover up his crime. Shooting almost exclusively at night or in foggy daylight, cinematographer Zdzislaw Najda creates a grainy, somber milieu for the story. Some of the hero’s conflicts (with a drug-addicted daughter, the dead girl’s mother, and the cops and politicians implicated in a local drug cartel) are never fully resolved, but Kijowski seems to prefer an untidy universe. In Polish with subtitles. 113 min. (Joshua Katzman) (9:00)
