POLISH FILM CLUB 'OKO'

  Film Aperitif:  ' Tango' by Polish animator Zbigniew Rybczynski won the Academy Award for Best Short Animation in 1983. It is a mesmerizing 8 minutes animation set entirely in one room in which a series of events take place, repeat and overlap each other in time to a tango soundtrack.  After being rescheduled and cancelled THREE times Santa Rosa: Odyssey in the Rhythm of Mariachi ( 2013,  by Slawomir Grunberg) will finally make it to OKO on January 20, 2017, 7:30 pm - see you there! Below a copy of the original post and a trailer. Documentary film about over 1400 Polish refugees from the Soviet camps in Siberia who in 1943 arrived in a Mexican ranch of Santa Rosa at the invitation of President Manuel Ávila Camacho. Santa Rosa became their home for a number of years to come. Mexico was the only country outside the British Commonwealth that offered assistance in solving the humanitarian crisis of thousands of Polish WW2 refugees displaced in t...

Well, another change: the film originally scheduled for November is sitting at Scarecrow awesome collection and could be brought in anytime so it can wait, while  OKO member and the film co-producer, Krzysztof Poraj-Kuczewski offered to present on our November session his documentary film about Alex Herbst and invited Alex to our screening! Attention: 11/25 is FOURTH Friday of the month (the day after Thanksgiving) - change from 3rd Friday due to scheduling problems. Spitfire Liberator: The Alex Herbst Story,  directed by Sławomir Ciok. Captain Witold "Alex" Herbst is a WWII fighter pilot who was flying Spitfires with the famous Polish RAF squadrons 303 & 308 in missions over Great Britain and Europe. "[...] Alex Herbst tells his story for a documentary which is about the will of flying that never dies. This is also a sentimental and partly virtual trip to the most important places of Alex Herbst’s life in Poland, Romania, Turkey, and France, UK and the USA i...

Kino OKO will be back in November (see listing at the bottom of this post), as October is Seattle Polish Film Festival (SPFF) time!!!! After its world premiere in Lithuania in October 2015, a new film about Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, "Persona Non Grata," opens SPFF (Seattle Polish Film Festival) next Friday, October 14 at SIFF Cinema Uptown at 6:30 pm. Director Cellin Gluck will be present for the film screening, followed by Q &A. The film tells the story of Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara who was posted in Lithuania during World War II, and who defied orders and issued over 2,000 transit visas to Jewish refugees, famously continuing to sign visas even as his train pulled away from the station. He is estimated to have saved over 6,000 lives from the Nazis, who invaded Lithuania a year later in 1941. Directed by Japanese American Cellin Gluck , "Persona Non Grata" was filmed in Poland and stars Japanese actors Toshiaki Karasawa and Koyuki, and...