EMBASSY OF THE REPUBLIC OF POLAND, NEW DELHI

INDO POLISH CHAMBER OF COMMERCE & INDUSTRIES

&

INDO CINE APPRECIATION FOUNDATION

Present

POLISH FILM FESTIVAL

22 & 23 -Aug-08 - View Calender

Synopsis

KATYN / Dir: Andrzej Wajda / 2007/ colour / 121min - 22.Aug 08 - 6.15 p.m.

Plot: An examination of the Soviet slaughter of thousands of Polish officers and citizens in the Katyn forest in 1940, was covered up with a conspiracy of silence or blamed on the Germans. The truth about it has survived thanks to the collective memory of families of the murdered as well as to the publications issued first by Polish emigré circles, or to the illicit historical publications in the country. Yet it took 18 years to wait for the first feature about Katy? since Poland regained her full freedom.

Awards: 5 wins Nominated for Oscar

TECHNICAL INFORMATION ABOUT KATYN - BY ANDRZEJ WAJDA

“Katy?” was produced with the usage of the most advanced technologies. Having been shot on 35 mm print with the equipment by Panavision, it was edited in an electronic way and finally worked over digitally. Thanks to that it was possible to reach an absolutely unique facture treatment of the picture. How is it possible that despite gradual extinguishing of colors, shots are not becoming gray, remain in true colors and reach effect of deepness? This is the result of an extraordinary technology, named 4K, so far used in some spectacular American productions only. It enables four time higher resolution in the post-production, than commonly used 2K process. Revolutionary technology 4K gives a chance to work over the smallest detail even, make precise corrections of the part of picture or chosen color and enables digital addition of some parts of the pictures. When it went through the process, “Katy?” consisted of 8 terabits, which is 8.000.000.000.000 bits, prior to the transfer on 35 mm print. “Katy?” was the first movie shot not only in Poland, but in the entire Europe, in which the 4K technology was used.

TIME TO DIE/ Pora umierac - Dir: Dorota Kedzierzawska - 2007 - B&W - 104min - 23Aug08 - 3.15 pm

Plot : Aniela, is as much a sprightly, unyielding relic of the past as the big dacha-style house surrounded by tall trees in which she lives alone with her impetuous dog, Philadelphia. Across the way, she disapprovingly observes a boorish fat nouveau-riche man in a big new house, and over in a corner, a shabbier building occupied by a struggling music school, everybody wants Aniela’s house or her land. When nouveau-riche neighbors, aided by her cold-hearted son, conspire to gain her property, she finds a way to outsmart them.

Awards:4 wins

TRICKS / Sztuczki - Dir: Andrzej Jakimowski - 2007 - colour - 95min - 23 Aug 08 5.00pm

Plot : Charming, bittersweet narrative unfolds from siblings Stefek , 6, and Elka , 18, and Elka’s car mechanic boyfriend Jerzy during a sun-drenched summer. The siblings live with their shopkeeper mother. Their father left her for another woman when Stefek was very young. Six year old Stefek challenges fate. He believes that the chain of events he sets in motion will help him get closer to his father who abandoned his mother . His sister Elka , 17, helps him learn how to bribe fate with small sacrifices. Tricks and coincidences eventually bring the father to the mother’s doorstep but things go wrong. In despair Stefak tries his good luck with the most risky of his tricks.

Awards: 7 wins & 4 nominations

12th Aug 2008 to 14th Aug 2008  - View Aug-08 Calender

Synopsis

SWING GIRLS - 2004 - 105min - Dir: Yaguchi Shinobu - 12^th August 2008 Tue - 6:15 p.m.

Plot : A group of school girls in northern Japan are stuck in class for the summer, where they find nothing interesting. One girl Tomoko encourages her classmate to deliver the lunches for the school brass band cheering for their school baseball team, thereby getting out of the class for a day. Tomoko and her friends realize helping Takuo’s plan to fight the next big game could get an opportunity for them to skip the math class all summer. Takuo not having enough members to form a brass band decides to make the girls into a big band swing group. Tomoko buys a saxophone and starts to learn on her own. With the help of Takuo, she makes the other girls involved. They start to practice and slowly learn how to play. The Swing Girls are born.

The film has won seven prizes at the 2005 Japanese Academy Awards and ranked 8^th at the Japanese box office in 2004. - Award : 11 WINS 2 Nominations

DORAEMON – Nobita’s Dinosaur - 2006 - Animation - Dir : Watanabe Ayumu - 13 August - Wed - 2008 6:00 p.m.

Plot : Doraemon is an animation movie produced by Masuko Sojiro and Sugiyama Noboru. One-day Suneo shows off his peace of dinosaur fossil to friends. Nobita, who feels jealous, promises friends that he would excavate fossils of a whole dinosaur. While Doraemon is trying to stop him, he happens to find a fossilized egg of a dinosaur with the help of Doraemon’s tools. They hatched the egg and began raising the dinoasaur. He names it Pisuke. As it grows too big, the town slips into turmoil,

FIRST LOVE - 2000 - 113min - Dir Mr. Tetsuo Shinohara - 13 August - Wed - 2008 - 8:00 p.m

Plot Satoka Aida, a 17-year high school student, comes to know that her mother’s hospitalization for cancer is disturbing the harmony of her home life. Satoka rarely communicates with her father like in many Japanese families, and without her mother, her relationship with her father deteriorates. Satoka one day finds an unsent love letter written by her mother long ago to her first love. Satoka on reading the letter sets out to fulfill her mother’s long lost wish to meet her first love under the “Cherry Tree of Wishes” in her mother’s hometown. But her mother’s first love, Shinchio Fujiki is no longer the dashingly handsome young man mentioned in her mother’s letter. - Awards– 1 win & 3 nominations

GHOST PUB - 1994 - 110min - Dir Watanabe Takayoshi - 14 August - Thurs - 2008 6:00 p.m.

Plot Sotaro runs a small, drinking establishment called Kazusaya in Yokohama. A kind and loving man, he sincerely promises his wife Shizuko on her deathbed he will never marry again. But he is being buckled by his brother’s pressure to consider an arranged marriage with a lovely young woman named Satoko. When Sotaro comes to know that Satoko is also interested in him, he agrees to the marriage. In the meantime Shizuko returns as a ghost haunting the scared couple. Sotaro being fed up with this obstacle, consults a priest. The priest, lends Sotaro a special scroll, that acts as a door to the world of the dead and a trap to Satoko, but unfortunately a thief steals the scroll. - Awards — 13 wins & 5 nominations

MY SONS- 1991 - 121min - Dir Mr. Yamada Yoji - 14 August - Thurs - 2008 8:00 pm.

Plot The story revolves around the life of a father and a son. Tetsuo is a young man living alone in Tokyo. One day his father calls him to hurry home to the countryside for his mother’s first death anniversary. Tetsuo returns to Tokyo and finds a new job of delivering steel rods. One day he delivers steel rods to a factory and finds a pretty cute girl who accepts the delivery slip from him. He tries to impress the girl and asks her name. But the girl does not answer his question. During the next day’s delivery he comes to know that the girl is deaf and dumb. Tetsuo falls in love with the girl and communicates with her using a fax machine. - Awards : 25 wins & 8 nominations

CZECH FILM FESTIVAL

4th Aug 2008 to 7th Aug 2008

Synopsis

ZELARY / Zelary / Dir : Ond?ej Trojan / 2003 / 150 min - 4th August 2008 - 6.15 pm

Plot It is the 1940s and the Czech lands have been occupied by the Nazis. Eliska is a young woman who unable to complete medical school because of war , works as a nurse. She is also involved in the resistance movement. One night, a man is brought to the hospital with serious injuries and desperately needs a transfusion. Eliska is the only one with the same blood type. Her blood saves his life and a connection is formed between the two. The resistance group that the doctors are involved in is discovered and hunted by the Gestapo. Zelary tells the story of a clash between two different worlds and two different people. Awards: 4 wins & 10 nominations . Nominated for Oscar.

DARK BLUE WORLD / Tmavomodry svet./ Dir : Jan Sverak /2001/ 113 min / 5th August 2008 - 6.15 pm

Plot : During World War II a number of Czech airmen flew alongside British RAF pilots against the Germans.. Seasoned pilot Franta (Ondrej Vetchý) and young hot-head Karel (Krystof Hádek), travel to Britain to offer their skills. When Karel’s plane is shot down not far from the base, he finds himself made welcome by an English woman, Susan (Tara Fitzgerald), who overcomes her initial suspicion of his accent. Her husband is missing in action and the two comfort each other with more than kind words. Young Karel is in love, but Susan appears more interested in his best friend Franta. One of the greatest strengths of Dark Blue World is that it shows the tragedy of people helping to win a war, only to be forgotten by the victors.

Awards:6 wins & 8 nominations

REBELS / Rebelové / Dir: Filip Renc /2001/ 110min/ 6th August 2008 - 6.15 pm

Plot : This is a musical film set in hot summer of 1968. A small town in Czech border region, three final year school girls and three “rebels”, who just do not wish to have anything in common with the present totalitarian regime. Circumstances in which the young heroes meet and what follows is the main plot of a great love story. A film with a lot of songs, which provide the film story with an important and un-changeable character of the end of sixties period mood of easygoing, and non-committal, in association with fate , interweaving of personal and political development forms the structure of this tragicomedy.

Awards:5 wins & 2 nominations

WILDFLOWERS / Kytice / Dir: F.A.Brabec / 2005/ 58 min./ 6th August 2008 - 8.00 pm

Plot : Kytice is a series of seven short films thematically linked and based on a series of ballads written 200 years ago by K.J Erbena, regarded by some as the Czech equivalent of William Shakespeare. They are famous folk-stories and fairy tales, well-known to anyone in the Czech Republic. Wildflowers/ Kytice/ A woman dies in a thunderstorm while out in the fields. She is buried and her children care for her grave which bears forth wildflowers.. Waterman/ Vodník / A young girl goes to the river despite her mother’s warnings of dangers she has foreseen. The girl falls into the river and is taken to be the wife of a creature who lives in the river. Wedding Shir / Svatební Košile / A young maiden prays for her fiancé’s return from the war, whatever the cost. She doesn’t know that he has died in the war however and when her prayer is answered, she appears not to notice that he has returned from the grave and wants to take her back with him.

Noon Witch / Polednice/ Preparing food in the kitchen, a mother is frustrated by the constant crying of her child. She threatens the child that the noon-witch will take him away if he doesn’t stop crying. The noon-witch hears her call. Golden Spinwheel / Zlatý Kolovrat / A royal prince spies a beautiful girl bathing in the woods. He finds where she lives and demands to have her as his bride. Her stepmother plans to kill the girl and to have her own daughter take her place in the royal palace. Daughter’s Curse /Dcerina Kletb / A girl kills the child she has borne illegitimately and is to be hanged for her crime. She curses her pious mother from the gallows. Christmas Day / Štedrý den / A young maiden believes the superstition that her future love will appear reflected in the lake on at midnight on a moonlit Christmas Eve. She goes with her sister and they see the death of their mother also foretold to them. Seventh Seal Style parade of the dead characters being led from the church that features in several of the episodes.

Awards: 5 wins & 4 nominations

AUTUMN SPRING/ Babi leto / Dir: Vladimír Michálek/ 2001 / 95 min. 7th August 2008 - 6.15 pm

Plot A tragicomedy featuring a youthful 75 - year - old man, an eternal dreamer who, unlike his beloved and overly -worried wife, refuses to reconcile himself to getting older. He lives life as never ending challenge in which every day becomes a delightful opportunity for new adventures. He and his devoted longtime friend from the operetta act out their theatre roles in real life situations in an attempt to make his dreams come true. The protagonist appears as an emeritus member of Metropolitan opera who buys castles, as a ticket checker, a philanthropist, and even a mountain climber. In a number of funny scenes laced with gentle black humor, he fights with his wife for carefree and independent ways he uses to demonstrate the ART of LIVING.

Awards:7 wins & 5 nominations

HANELE / Hanele / Dir: Karel Kachna / 1999 / 99 min. 7th August 2008 - 8.00 pm

Synopsis Hanele” is a timeless tale of generational and ideological conflict set in an enclave of religious Jews in Sub-Carpathian Ukraine in the 1930′. Without dowry, and refusing to marry the slow-witted village boy who wants her hand, beautiful Hanele escapes provincial Polana by joining a Zionist youth group recruiting young men and women for work in the big city. There she meets and falls in love with Ivo Karadzic, a handsome, successful free thinking secular Jew who has renounced all traditional religious belief. When Hanele brings Ivo home to ask for her father’s permission to marry, the resulting collision of the modern and the traditional worlds causes shocks and reverberations that threaten to both ruin her family and end the engagement to Ivo. Award-winning Director Kachyna, already in his seventies when making this film, has created a stirring period melodrama about love, belief, family and difficulty of making choices.

Awards: 3 nominations