The 15th annual Polish Film Festival in America, produced by the Society for Arts, continues Friday, November 7, through Sunday, November 16. Unless otherwise noted, films are screened from 35-millimeter prints and tickets are $9 at the Copernicus Center, 5216 W. Lawrence, and at the Beverly Arts Center, 2407 W. 111th St. Films are projected from video and tickets are $7 at the Society for Arts, 1112 N. Milwaukee. A $40 pass admits you to any five screenings; for more information call 773-486-9612. The schedule through November 13 follows; a complete schedule through November 16 is available online at www.chicagoreader.com. All films are in Polish with subtitles unless otherwise noted. Films marked with an * are highly recommended.
Skin Trade
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Jerzy Hoffman’s historical epic With Fire and Sword opened the 1999 festival and has been revived in subsequent years (see listing for Wednesday, November 12); his new feature is a splotchy, indifferently made, but perversely entertaining adaptation of Jozef Ignacy Kraszewski’s novel Stara Basn. Set during the ninth century, it involves a delusional prince (Bogdan Stupka) whose nefarious scheming unleashes a peasant rebellion. Michal Zebrowski is the proud warrior aesthete who leads the uprising while covertly pursuing beautiful Marina Aleksandrowa. Hoffman has no shame or subtlety, but he packs the frame with violent action and sensuality (though the relentless misogyny is hard to take). 107 min. (Patrick Z. McGavin) Actor Andrzej Krukowski will attend the screening. (Copernicus Center, 10:00 am)
Body
With Beak and Claw
Adapted from a novel by Witold Gombrowicz, this brilliant, disquieting feature by Jan Jakub Kolski (A Story of the Movies From the Village of Popielawy) is set in the Polish countryside during the Nazi occupation. A theater director and a writer orchestrate a love affair between a handsome partisan and a landowner’s beautiful young daughter. Visually breathtaking, the film reaches past its teasing and erotic moments toward something far more elusive and complex, telling a story of war and compromise, of vanity, cowardice, and shame. The script is by Kolski, Swiss filmmaker Luc Bondy, and screenwriter Gerard Brach, who has worked with Roman Polanski and Michelangelo Antonioni. 117 min. (Patrick Z. McGavin) Actor Krzysztof Majchrzak will attend the screening. (Copernicus Center, 5:30)
Grzegorz Krolikiewicz’s And Then They Call Him Bandit (2002), showing without subtitles, is about Major Jozef Kuras, a member of the Polish underground during World War II. Also showing: Boguslaw Dabrowa-Kostka’s Shadows (2002). 88 min. (Society for Arts, 7:00)
