Thanks for that - but you should probably be warned that if Box 2 is any guide, you'll get gorgeous packaging, deluxe bilingual booklets on thicker-than-usual glossy paper and optional English subtitles...

...on top of terrible VHS-quality transfers.

But I'm not aware of any realistic alternatives, so I'll be buying it anyway.

I've just received my much-anticipated first parcel from Merlin. Nine documentary and animation sets to peruse. Delivered to Australia in only seven days. I'm looking forward to digging into these sets over the weekend.

Thanks to everyone for recommending these wonderful sets, and for relaying your experiences with dealing with Merlin.

Cheers

Well, as I near the end of my fifth week waiting for my PWA shipment from Merlin to arrive, I feel like it's about time I try to contact Merlin to look into a refund. Has anyone ever tried to do this before and have any advice? Alternately, does anyone speak enough Polish to help me draft a complaint? I'd like to think they're innocent in all of this, but my post office doesn't know anything about it and I feel like there is a bigger likelihood that there was some customs issue or a bad address label than anything else. Am I overreacting, or is five weeks enough time to try to cut my loses?

I ordered the PWA experimental animation set a few weeks ago, and have been informed that it will not be available until March 11 - so if this item was part of your order then this could be the problem. Merlin contacted me by email to ask if I wanted to keep the order open. At least I think this is what the email said - I struggled through it with the help of an online Polish-English translation site, so it's possible I got the wrong end of the stick.

The email I have from them said that the package was shipped out on January 12th. That shipment did include the experimental animation set though. Looking at the email though, two versions of my address are listed; one with my city and zip code in reverse order, and one without. If they didn't bother to include my city and zip code, I'll never get it. Anyone else have any trouble like this?

Five weeks sounds like a very long time - around a week is typical for me. (Poland to London).

I'd definitely investigate.

I just emailed them, but I had to do it in English, so I'm not sure if that will help me. I don't want to file a PayPal claim if I don't have to, and I feel like the bigger issue is that I actually want what I ordered and don't know how I'll be able to get it if I can't receive anything from Merlin.

For what it's worth, my last order from Merlin took nearly five weeks to arrive. Not sure why it takes so long, but you might want to give your package just a bit more time.

I just started using The Google Translation tool communicating with Poland and Brazil. Works great as far as I can tell.

After six weeks, this has finally arrived. Wow, was it ever worth the wait. I feel like each of these sets would have cost me what all of them did together if they had been produced and sold in the US.

Now that I know orders from Merlin will get to me eventually, I'm sure if won't be long before I order most of the rest of PWA's output.

I never have much to say around here, but oh man the magnificient things you can read !

I have my Anthology of Polish Animated Film since a few days now, thanks to this thread. I knew some of those for some nights spent on YouTube, and it's a joy to see them on DVD, along with new discoveries. I'm a student in animation, and I hope this may interest my class mates too. Thanks all.
It's neat, at least for me, that the menus and subs are offered in French too.

Just a quick note to confirm that I have the Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz package, and it's absolutely business as usual regarding subtitles (English, French, Russian, German), packaging and hefty bilingual (Polish-English) booklet.

Curiously, the Jacek Blawut set still isn't listed at Merlin, despite its release being announced in December. Even more curiously, other Polish retailers claim to have it - but no-one (not even PWA) mentions English subtitles. I'm sure this must be a whole string of oversights, though!

I also impulse-bought Marcin Gizycki and Boguslaw Zmudzinski's book Polski Film Animowany (also published by PWA), which is a lovely piece of work - hardback, 250 pages, lots of stills, many in colour. The latter are just as well, as the text is entirely in Polish, but I suspected it probably would be, and at 38 zlotys (£7.25/$10.25) is was hardly a bank-breaker. A quick glance through the text suggests that it offers a general overview of Polish animation history from its earliest years (Starewicz looms large) to the recent Oscar-winning UK-Polish Peter and the Wolf, and an appendix offers capsule biographies and filmographies of just about every Polish animator most of us are likely to have heard of.

I think I just ordered six sets of the PWA DVDs (the three animation sets and three of the documentary sets).

I think.

If you have completed the transaction, you will receive an email like this:


The following link is for the Google Polish to English translator:

The Experimental Animation set has been on backorder for about six weeks. It is now showing as a seven day order, so hopefully you won't have to wait as long as I have. I imagine it is being reprinted.

Also, I had a pleasant surprise when I placed a second order while that title was on backorder. When i went to checkout, I was given the option of merging the orders, for one shipment. Surprisingly, I was not charged for postage for the second order. My credit card has been debited, so here's hoping that's the case.

They are worth waiting for.

Edit: The above purchase is through Merlin.

Awesome, thanks. I seem to be in good shape assuming my address is in right, which I'm almost certain it is. Really looking forward to getting this, but waiting isn't really an issue because I have plenty of other stuff to catch up on while I wait.

The address thing was a fear of mine as well, since two different addresses were confirmed to me: one that included my city and zip code, and one that didn't. This fear only grew when five weeks went by without receiving anything, but good lord was it ever worth the wait.

I finally got round to finishing my DVD Times review of the Black Series collection.

I'm insanely busy right now, but hopefully the next PWA review will be along slightly faster than this one!

Some of the shorts on Anthology of Polish Animated Film are a treat for admirers of some of the experiments of Looney Tunes shorts by Chuck Jones and others. An example is The Red and the Black by Witold Giersz. Like Jones's Bully For Bugs, for example, Red and the Black adapts bullfighting to a cartoon setting as the source of its humor and interest. Whereas Bugs conjures an anvil, the matador in the Polish cartoon whips out a three-dimensional glass bottle. But more interesting is the way the film plays with the boundaries of reality and the laws of the cartoon universe, for which Duck Amuck was notable.
Although I think the connection to Jones's work can be made with something like The Red and the Black, most of the shorts in the set of course experiment in totally different ways. For example The Chair from 1963 presents a typically speechless story completely from a bird's-eye-view perspective.
The Chair was a real treat partly for a chance to hear more soundtrack work by the great Krzysztof Komeda, a lovely piece for the film Cages that includes great musical sound effects.
I'm wishing I hadn't let this set sit around for quite so long before watching it (the kevyip is as out-of-control as ever).

I finally got Blawut set today and can confirm that it has English, French, German and Russian subtitles.

This is maybe slightly off topic, but probably still relevant if anyone is looking to purchase films from Poland. Stowarzyszenie Filmowców Polskich recently released a box of three of Tadeusz Konwicki's films (Doline Issy, Jak Daleko Stad, Jak Blisko and Lawa); I received the set last week, and can confirm that all three films have English subtitle options. In addition, a short film by Andrzej Titkow (Przechodzien) is included, which "stars" Konwicki. This extra feature is also subtitled in English.

The price of the set was something like $25, and the quality of the transfers at a quick glance appear to be quite high. If anyone is very interested in these films, I can post some stills.

I've been holding out for the Blawut set to show on Merlin's site, but nothing as yet.

Which store did you purchase it from? I might have to look elsewhere.

Thanks for that - I'd heard that this set had English subtitles, but I've had my fingers burned on that score a couple of times with Polish releases. (Fortunately, one of my best friends is Polish, so she's delighted when these mistakes happen, but I'd rather not have to hand over entire box sets!). In fact, when I'm less busy, I'm tempted to start a list in the Polish DVDs thread where people can confirm from first-hand checking whether discs have English subtitles, as I've yet to see anyone other than me confirm that Skolimowski's Four Nights With Anna is English-friendly.

As for PWA's Blawut box, I ended up ordering from Empik - almost exactly a week ago, so hopefully it should turn up early this week. It was a straightforward ordering process that I actually think was more English-friendly than Merlin, but of course the proof of this particular pudding will be in the packaging.

Michael, the idea of creating an index of English-friendly Polish releases would be an excellent resource.

Some stills from the Konwicki set are now posted in the Screen Captures thread. As is often the case, the image quality looks better in play.

I had a family member who lives in Poland to buy it for me and mail to US, but as MichaelB pointed out it is available thru Empik.

My first Empik order turned up today - and, to be fair, the packaging isn't far off Merlin's, so it's obviously a Polish tradition to wrap everything up in branded tape.

That said, there was only one layer of cardboard as opposed to Merlin's two, and my 50 Years of the Polish Film School box got a bit squished en route, so I'll still be sticking to Merlin for most of my Polish orders.

I'll report back on the Jacek Blawut discs when I've had a chance to watch them - but in the meantime I can unreservedly recommend the Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz package. Until now, the PWA series has largely shunned the upheavals of 1981-89 and after, but many of her films tackle them head-on, sometimes from the perspective of an eccentric outsider (for instance, the title character in Major, head of a political party that campaigns via graffiti featuring gnomes).

She's got a great eye for quirky detail, and seems genuinely fond of her various subjects, regardless of whether they're bailiffs (The Office), twentysomethings caught up in the collapse of Communism (Generation 89), bloggers (Dziennik.pl) or even right-wing anti-immigration political activists (I Love Poland). Her cinematic language is more conventional than, say, her contemporary Maciej Drygas' - I never realised till now how few talking heads there are in the other PWA sets! - but her primary aim seems to be to give people a voice they've been denied until relatively recently.

I'll write up the films in more detail when I get a moment (famous last words...).