POLISH FILM CLUB 'OKO'

9/15 • Wed. 7:30 PM STRIKE Dir. Volker Schlöndorff Like “Norma Rae,” “Strike” tells the story of a tough, resilient working woman who refuses to back down from her fight with the bosses. The difference is that in this case the bosses are not greedy capitalists but Communist bureaucrats, committed, in theory, to defending the interests of the workers. There is a delicious poetic justice in the way Mr. Schlöndorff, in telling part of the story of Poland’s Solidarity movement, has used some of the crude, effective techniques of Socialist realism to depict the collapse of socialism. He calls the film “a ballad inspired by true events,” and its occasional bouts of clumsiness and sentimentality are inseparable from its power. More from  New York Times review here. Strike  (click on the title for trailer)  is a Polish language film produced by a mainly German group, released in 2006 and directed by Volker Schlöndorff. The film is broadly a docudrama. It covers the formation ...

NEXT FILM: August 18, 2010 7:30 PM The Peretznics (Perecowiczowie) Dir. Slawomir Grunberg, 2009.   Here is the trailer for the film on YouTube. The events of March '68 are still somewhat obscure in Poland. The political background is known, as are the film archives, and press coverage. However, little is known about how it was to grow up in Poland of the sixties as a Polish Jew, or as a Pole of Jewish origin. How it was to be a kid in the heart of a country still recovering from a horrific war, in a family severed by the Holocaust, and then to come of age and experience first loves at the outbreak of the disturbing March events. The experience of the 'Peretz School' pupils in Lodz in some way reflects the experience of the Jewish minority in Poland in the 50 and 60 of the previous century. It is the experience of adolescents nevertheless, who were much more interested in the Beatles than they were in politics. It was the latter, however, which caused for most of ...

NEXT FILM: July 21, 2010 • Wednesday 7:30 pm 'EVERYTHING FOR SALE' Wszystko na Sprzedaz Elzbieta Czyzewska , a great star of Polish movies and television of the 1960s, died on June 17, 2010 in New York. Film Club OKO presents 1969 film ' Everything for Sale ' as a tribute to her. Here is a video-clip from the movie 'Wszystko na sprzedaz' (this clip is in Polish only, but you can see the actress; Club OKO version has English subtitles). Here is a link to New York Times 6/18/2010 obituary for Elzbieta Czyzewska. Here is a link to Nowy Dziennik 7/15/2010 article 'A Step into one filmmaker's reality'. Here is a link to Gazeta Wyborcza 7/12/2010 article (in Polish) 'Elzbieta Czyzewska'. Inspired by the tragic death of the great Polish actor Zbigniew Cybulski, the film focuses on behind-the-scenes lives of a director and his actors when they are disrupted by the mysterious death of their leading man. Director: Andrzej Wajda Starring: Elzbi...