Polish Film Festival in America
The career of Marcel Lozinski, one of Poland’s most respected documentarians, spans more than 25 years. Lozinski tends to focus on ordinary people and places and finds extraordinary meaning and poetry in the mundane. The first documentary on this program, So That It Doesn’t Hurt, is a follow-up to The Visit, which was shot 24 years ago. The subject of both is Urszula, an intellectual who chose to toil on the family farm in self-imposed isolation. Her decision not to marry or to continue writing intrigued the interviewer for The Visit, who asked deeply personal questions. In 1997 Lozinski and the same film crew returned to find Urszula older but serene. A new interviewer, a woman about Urszula’s age, banters with her on issues ranging from literature to metaphysics, still trying to figure her out. The problem with this whole enterprise is that Urszula has the charisma of a bashful nun and is only mildly interesting. How you react to this profile depends on your tolerance for conversations that only slowly strip away an emotional facade. On the same program, The Katyn Forest (1990), about the slaughter of Polish officers by the Soviets in 1940. (TS) (7:00)
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Krzysztof Zanussi directed this drama about the host of a TV talk show and a live broadcast that gets out of hand. To be shown without subtitles. (8:45)
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14
The Family Events
Kingdom of Green Glade: The Return
See listing under Friday, November 13. On the same program, the Polish-American Symphony Orchestra performs the film music of Wojciech Kilar. (4:00)
