Polish Treats

Three friends — a Polish,a German and a Jew — are united by a single purpose. To build a factory. Set in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution that hit Europe,Polish filmmaker’s Andrzej Wajda’s The Promised Land (1975) captures the pace with which textile production picked up in Poland in the first half of the 19th century. The film was nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Academy Awards the following year.

It will be screened for the first time in India on November 23 as part of the debut edition of the Kinoteka Polish Film festival (November 18–23) at the India Habitat Centre. While Bollywood might have introduced scenic sights of Poland through films such as Fanaa,this film festival aims to acquaint people with the classics of Polish cinema. The festival opens with the screening of an Indo-Polish production A Little Poland In India about a small community of refugees from WW II who took refuge in Gujarat to escape being persecuted by the Nazis. “Since it is the first edition of the film festival,we are showing Classics from Poland,” says Anna Tryc-Bromley,director of the Polish Institute in Delhi.

A total of eight films will be screened at the festival including Krzysztof Zanussi’s 1972 film Illumination,a landmark film which is an insightful fusion of science and art; Wojciech Marczewski’s 1990 anti-totalitarian satire Escape from Liberty Cinema. As part of the festival,a special screening of Wajda’s latest film Walesa.Man of Hope will be held in Mumbai at PVR cinemas. The film is Poland’s official entry to the next edition of the Oscars.