Working at Facets Multi-Media has introduced me to foreign films most movie-goers don’t even know exist—from Krik Krak, the long-forgotten experimental documentary from Haiti, to Yesterday Girl, Alexander Kluge’s debut feature that introduced the New German Cinema. My friend Lew from Rentals exposed me to Lady Terminator and the wonders of 1980s Indonesian horror, while Charles, our intrepid cinematheque programmer, started my year off with a good laugh via Four Lions, an English comedy about terrorism.

Among my favorite films released on the Facets DVD label are many from Poland, particularly those from the post-communist film industry. To many film scholars, Polish cinema means the work of Andrzej Wajda and the so-called “cinema of morality” of the 1970s or even the “Polish School” of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Directors like Wajda, Jerzy Hoffman, and Krzysztof Zanussi were renowned for the formal characteristics of their styles and for the subtexts of their films, which were often veiled criticisms of communism. Wajda and his peers attracted an arthouse crowd to their films and the devotion of educated audiences and intellectuals in Poland and around the world. But, Polish cinema to me brings to mind directors like Juliusz Machulski and stars like Boguslaw Linda. While I admire the work of the great directors of the communist era, who smartly weaved social commentary and criticism as subtexts in their narratives, I am amused by the often uneven but always entertaining movies of the post-communist era.

READ MORE