Polish Cinema on DVD

[MichaelB]

...and I've just realised that because this will significantly exceed the usual import threshold from Poland, the final bill for the likes of me will most likely be a fair bit higher than quoted above. Which wasn't an issue when I imported the Wajda box.

Cheers, Brexit.

[TMDaines]

Are the FINA Blu-rays of Bestia, Halka, Szaleńcy, and Polonia Restituta 1918–1920 / Sztandar wolności all unavailable already? There's no listings for them on their website.

[mas114]

Is there a link to an online store to purchase the Has Blu- Ray Anthology set? I’ve been looking around but can’t find one. Thanks for any info.

[MichaelB]

Apparently you need to email DI Factory direct - has@di-factory.com

I haven't received a reply yet, but to be fair I wasn't expecting one immediately post-Christmas.

[MichaelB]

This is slightly tangential, but probably more relevant here than elsewhere.

As you doubtless know, Poland has been under new management since the right-wing Law and Justice Party was recently defeated last autumn by a centre-left coalition led by former PM Donald Tusk, and one of the first things the new Tusk administration did was institute a top-to-bottom review of just how much the previous government had sought to exert inappropriate influence on various notionally independent institutions such as the judiciary and the media.

And one of the revelations coming out of this review is that the main Polish broadcaster TVP had a list of banned films that had been imposed on them by the government, which includes some pretty seminal titles. And by "banned", I mean that TVP has the Polish broadcasting rights but wasn't allowed to exercise them, so the films were effectively prevented from being broadcast legally within Poland.

The linked article may be paywalled, and in any case is in Polish, but the films are:

Mr Jones/Obywatel Jones (Agnieszka Holland, 2018)
- this seems to be purely because of its director, a major thorn in the previous government's side, as its anti-Soviet and pro-Ukraine stance is otherwise squarely in line with theirs.

Man of Marble/Człowiek z marmuru (Andrzej Wajda, 1977)
My Mother's Lovers/Kochankowie mojej mamy (Radosław Piwowarski, 1985)
Pestka (Krystyna Janda, 1995)
- Krystyna Janda is also a prominent Law and Justice Party critic, so this is clearly a personal blacklist.

Man of Iron/Człowiek z żelaza (Andrzej Wajda, 1981)
- this not only features Janda but is also explicitly pro-Lech Wałęsa (and features him in a cameo), and he's also not keen on the Law and Justice Party.

80 Million/80 milionów (Waldemar Krzystek, 2011)
- banned because this is in part a celebration of the activities of Solidarity activist Józef Pinior, who is also strongly opposed to the Law and Justice Party.

Fuks (Maciej Dutkiewicz, 1999)
The Big Animal/Duże zwierzę (Jerzy Stuhr, 2000)
Aftermath/Pokłosie (Władysław Pasikowski, 2011)
The Citizen/Obywatel (Jerzy Stuhr, 2014).
- four films featuring father-and-son local megastars Jerzy and/or Maciej Stuhr. The last two are particularly interesting here, Aftermath because it features Maciej Stuhr playing a man investigating post-WWII Polish-perpetrated anti-Semitism (a major taboo subject under the previous government, to the point of them even threatening to criminalise reputable historians), and The Citizen because it starred both Stuhrs playing the same character, a satirical caricature of right-wing Polish politicians whose target wasn't exactly subtle. And I suspect the message of the Krzysztof Kieślowski-scripted The Big Animal, which is all to do with tolerance of "the other" (in this case a refugee camel) also fell foul of Law and Justice's attitude towards people not like them.

Truth Makes Free/Zieja (Robert Gliński, 2020)
-banned because it stars Andrzej Seweryn, also not a Law and Justice Party fan.

Good Morning, I Love You/Dzień dobry, kocham cię (Ryszard Zatorski, 2014)
-banned because it stars Barbara Kurdej-Szatan, who has strongly defended people mistreated by Polish soldiers on the border with Belarus.

Playing Hard/Zabawa zabawa (Kinga Dębska, 2018)
-banned because it referred disparagingly to Law and Justice MP Elżbieta Kruk, and because it discussed abortion.

Roads (Sebastian Schipper, 2014)
-not a Polish film, but banned because of its sympathetic attitude towards refugees in general and immigrants of colour in particular.

Radioactive (Marjane Satrapi, 2019)
-also not a Polish film, but banned because of its warts-and-all portrait of Marie Curie, one of Poland's all-time national heroes.

Goodbye Happiness (Ken Scott, 2020)
-also not Polish, no reason given.

Just Friendship/Po prostu przyjaźń (Filip Zylber, 2016)
-no reason given.

Unsurprisingly, under TVP's new management, the films are now unbanned and will be publicly screened in the near future. Equally unsurprisingly, the filmmakers and actors quoted in the article regarded the banning of their work by a government they despised as a considerable badge of honour. In fact, Man of Iron (whose position as one of Polish cinema's canonical masterpieces has been rock-solid for decades) has pulled off that feat twice, as it was also banned by the Jaruzelski government in the early 1980s.

[AidanKing]

Interesting that 'Interrogation' wasn't on the list. Perhaps the issue of Stalin-era prisons trumped Krystyna Janda's involvement?

[MichaelB]

Interesting that 'Interrogation' wasn't on the list. Perhaps the issue of Stalin-era prisons trumped Krystyna Janda's involvement?

Or, more prosaically, that TVP didn’t have the broadcasting rights?

[AidanKing]

Of course, that makes much more sense. Thanks!

I think I might have wrongly thought that the films made under the Communist regime would have been funded and owned by the state but probably a lot of rights would have been sold on following the political changes after 1989.

I suppose, if all rights were still owned by the state, the list of films banned by the Law and Justice Party would have been a lot longer!

[MichaelB]

Post-Communist rights tangles have posed regular headaches - in fact, on one of my projects the filmmaker was on the point of suing the company claiming to be the rightsholder, but I gather he deliberately delayed legal action so that my project could be released, as he thought that it was more important to have the work in circulation. (I believe he subsequently won.)

[TMDaines]

My understanding from when Seksmisja was released on Blu-ray in Poland is that the video had been cropped from the original 1.37:1 to 1.85:1. For some reason, a number of Polish comedies got this treatment, but seemingly far fewer dramas or auteurial works, from the same labels. There’s a handy highlighted round-up here. I deliberately skipped buying Seksmisja and Vabank for this reason.

Yet I now see Vinegar Syndrome also appear to be releasing the film cropped to 1.85:1? Am I missing something?

@MichaelB, do you have any light you could shed?

[mhofmann]

Isn’t it quite likely to assume that these were projected matted to 1.85:1 (or at least 1.66:1) in cinemas?

[TMDaines]

Everything I read at the time, and have subsequently re-read tonight, from enthusiastic Poles suggested despair at the trend for these films being widescreened for modern TVs. Lots of Polish films in this period were still in Academy ratio.

[MichaelB]

Isn’t it quite likely to assume that these were projected matted to 1.85:1 (or at least 1.66:1) in cinemas?

It’s certainly not safe to assume that with regard to pre-1990s Polish films, which are far more likely to be 1.37:1 than otherwise - but by the same token they were shooting in matted widescreen aspect ratios as early as the late 1950s (there being no doubt that this is true of Ashes and Diamonds).

I’m not in a position to check my Blu-Ray right now, but I’ll report back when I’m home tomorrow night.

[MichaelB]

OK, I'm home now, and it's swings and roundabouts.

The Polish BD is framed at 1.85:1, my old Polish DVD is framed at 4:3, but while the BD expectedly has a bit cropped off the top and bottom, the DVD has a bit cropped off the sides.

And a quick spin through the DVD reveals plenty of headroom, while a quick spin through the BD doesn't betray anything obviously too tightly cropped.

So my hypothesis is that it was shot full-frame and intended for projection at either 1.37:1 (i.e. in Polish cinemas) and 1.85:1 (i.e. internationally) - the fact that it's specifically 1.85:1 rather than a screen-filling 16:9 further supporting that contention.

And it's also worth noting that original cinematographer Jerzy Łukaszewicz is credited in the supplementary restoration credits as "nadzór artystyczny", or the man responsible for overall artistic supervision.

[TMDaines]

Thanks, MichaelB. Now I need the same analysis for the Vabank films that have received similar treatment! I can see some screenshots here: https://poral.eu/vabank_1981_blu-ray.php

I have my father-in-law staying over from the Ukraine at the moment, and we've started to watch a number of Polish classics as a three. Neither me nor my wife (his daughter) knew he understood Polish enough to be enthusiastic enough watching films without needing any form of subtitles, but suggest Hoffman's Znachor as one he liked, which we watched. Shame no Blu-ray of that yet, despite it very much being pure melodrama. We also did Wajda's Panny z Wilka, which was my choice. He then mentioned both Seksmisja and Vabank as films he would like to watch again, but they are some of the very few Blu-rays I skipped over because of the re-framing confusion annoyingly.

[Aunt Peg]

Can anybody recommend a Polish on-line seller who ships internationally?

I found out recently that Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi's Forever Young (2022) has been released in Poland on Blu Ray with English subtitles.

[MichaelB]

I generally buy from Empik or DVDMax these days. Both are pretty much indistinguishable in terms of how they operate.

[Aunt Peg]

I generally buy from Empik or DVDMax these days. Both are pretty much indistinguishable in terms of how they operate.

Thanks Michael.

[Stefan Andersson]

Pre-war films The White Trail and the Spring of Skiers on bluray from Filmoteka Narodowa:
https://www.calameo.com/fiaf/read/0009185400f1e5f9a7f62

[djvaso]

Pre-war films The White Trail and the Spring of Skiers on bluray from Filmoteka Narodowa:
https://www.calameo.com/fiaf/read/0009185400f1e5f9a7f62

This and other editions of Filmoteka Narodowa cannot be purchased directly from them online.

[Kauno]

There’s a handy highlighted round-up here. I deliberately skipped buying Seksmisja and Vabank for this reason.

This is a good list. Am I right in assuming that the golden age of Blu-ray releases in Poland is over? I mean, there aren't good amounts of new releases coming?

[MichaelB]

They've all but abandoned the Blu-ray format. I've popped into multiple branches of Empik over the last two or three years, and we're talking single shelves, almost invariably of Hollywood blockbusters, whereas previously they'd get a whole multiple-shelving unit (at least). I've had to buy a fair number of very recent releases on DVD because there's no alternative (aside from region-locked streaming services in Poland, which most likely don't offer English subtitles).

I don't think Blu-ray was ever especially popular in Poland.

[TMDaines]

There’s a handy highlighted round-up here. I deliberately skipped buying Seksmisja and Vabank for this reason.

This is a good list. Am I right in assuming that the golden age of Blu-ray releases in Poland is over? I mean, there aren't good amounts of new releases coming?

The only recent thing of note is the Has boxset. It is available on DVDMax but very expensive.

[MichaelB]

It's also completely barebones. Or rather, it includes the short films (mostly Socialist Realist-era documentaries), but the only contextual material is in the book - although that's fully bilingual and pretty hefty.

Oh, and transfers are at 25fps, as is pretty standard for Polish archival releases, so it may not play at all on non-European setups.

I could justify it as a business expense - I'm curating the BFI/ICA/Kinoteka upcoming complete Wojciech Has retrospective in London this April - but "very expensive" is something of an understatement! It ended up costing me, inc delivery,

SpoilerShow

£299.13, which at today's rate is €356.02/US$373.93.