POLISH FILM CLUB 'OKO'

Icarus. The legend of Mietek Kosz, Polish with English subtitles   Inspired by true events, a story of a blind piano genius who died in tragic circumstances and whose life we see through select episodes depicting the most influential moments in his life and career. As a child, Mietek loses his sight and his mother places him in the care of the nuns in Laski. This is where Mietek discovers that music may be his way of seeing the world again. Mietek goes on to become a brilliant classical and jazz pianist known both in Poland and abroad. The film won 6 awards at Gdynia Film Festival in 2019, for the best feature film (Silver Lions), actor, cinematography, costume design, make-up, and score, and is nominated in several categories in 2020  Polish Film Academy Awards Orły (Eagles).                                ...

Afterimage, Polish with English subtitles Powidoki is the final film by the great Polish director, Andrzej Wajda, and a story about another great Polish artist, an avant-garde painter and art theoretician, Władysław Strzemiński. The film covers the post-war period of Strzeminski’s life who, in the Stalinist era of social realism and art’s servitude to the collective, dares to believe in artist’s autonomy and abstract art. Despite his fame, communist past, and a war hero status, Strzeminski’s refusal to compromise leads to his persecution, dismissal from his professorial position, and erasure from the museums’ walls. De-credentialed as an artist, he is unable to continue his work. The story of Strzeminski becomes the story of Polish artists, their struggle to maintain artistic integrity and their resistance against intellectual tyranny. It is worth noting that Wajda selects for the film the music of another great Polish artist of this era, a modernist composer, Sir Andrzej P...