Poland
DVD: Polish Cinema ClassicsFriday, 02 March 2012
There’s a phrase in Andrzej Wajda’s 1960 film Innocent Sorcerers, “spirit of our time”, that perfectly captures the atmosphere of the four films on Polish Cinema Classics, originally dating from 1957 to 1960 whose great black and white photography... Read more... |
Barbican Centre, 2012 SeasonTuesday, 10 January 2012
London's Barbican Centre is 30 this year, and with a special Olympics subsidy boost as the world's eyes turn to the British capital this summer, it aims to be as lovely inside as it is famously unlovely outside. Film beauties Cate Blanchett and... Read more... |
Digging the Great Escape, Channel 4Tuesday, 29 November 2011
The archaeological documentary is becoming the obligatory format for tackling legendary tales of the British at war. Someone seems to recreate the Dam Busters raid every six months, the wrecks of battleships HMS Hood and the Bismarck have been... Read more... |
The Passenger, English National OperaTuesday, 20 September 2011
No two creative artists have a stronger right to make a valid statement about Auschwitz than a Polish-born composer who escaped his family's fate by fleeing to Russia, only to fall into another anti-Semitic trap, and a Polish writer whose clear-eyed... Read more... |
DVD: Deep EndFriday, 15 July 2011
Filmed in 1969 by Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, the London-set Deep End captures the late-Sixties comedown mood. The lack of swinging trappings, a perverse attitude to sexuality and the dowdy mundanity of its setting make the film... Read more... |
Essential KillingSaturday, 02 April 2011
There are certain film-makers who like to give themselves a headache. Buried confined its only character to a coffin. Phone Booth stuck Colin Farrell in – what else? – a phone booth. Essential Killing imposes another kind of confinement on its main... Read more... |
Skolimowski film reignites Gallo controversy - genius or twat?Friday, 25 March 2011
Kinoteka, the adventurous Polish film festival, opened last night with a gala screening at the Curzon Renoir of veteran director Jerzy Skolimowski’s Essential Killing, a film that has provoked some vicious responses. The Observer said it was “deeply... Read more... |
Douglas Gordon: K.364Friday, 11 February 2011
After writing about a recent survey of French artist Philippe Parreno at the Serpentine Gallery last year, I found myself wondering about his collaboration with the Scottish artist Douglas Gordon. In 2006 the two artists made the acclaimed film... Read more... |
The Portrait, Opera NorthWednesday, 02 February 2011
Based on a short story by Gogol, Alexander Medvedev’s libretto for Mieczysław Weinberg’s The Portrait was originally conceived for Shostakovich. It was subsequently passed to Weinberg, who finished his opera in 1980. It’s a bleak, Faustian tale... Read more... |
Ivona, Princess of Burgundia, Network TheatreSunday, 09 January 2011
I suspect there is a different production waiting to be unveiled for Witold Gombrowicz’s 1938 black comedy Ivona, Princess of Burgundia. Under the arches at Waterloo, tucked beside the station down a dark and dank service road is the Network... Read more... |
Bloody Foreigners: The Untold Battle of Britain, Channel 4Tuesday, 29 June 2010
The part played by Polish fighter pilots during the Battle of Britain has hardly gone undocumented, and the Hun-zapping exploits of the Polish 303 Squadron will be familiar to anyone with a historical interest in the subject, so you’d have to say... Read more... |
Szymanowski Focus, Wigmore HallWednesday, 05 May 2010
Poland's most imaginative composer after Chopin, and his natural heir in the realm of sensual reverie, certainly knew how to yoke a full orchestra to his dreams and fantasies. Yet the work by Szymanowski I've most longed to hear in concert is the... Read more... |
