Phillip Bergson

The Polish Film Spring came early into London this year, as Kinoteka unreeled, for the 15th time, from 17th March to 5th April, 2017,in various venues across the capital, presenting new and classic features and shorts, documentaries and animations, with workshops,talks,master-classes, art, music, a dinner,and a plethora of tasty Polish cakes.

It is quite literally a rich programme, capably curated as ever by movie-mad Marlena Lukasiak, and her old and new colleagues in the Polish Cultural Institute in Londyn.This year the Opening Gala relocated to what for me is now London's loveliest cinema,the Regent Street, historic site of the Freres Lumiere's first presentation of film on this side of the Channel in 1896, in  a theatre which was part  of the Royal Polytechnic Institution. After the Second World War it became a celebrated art-house, the Cameo-Poly, and subsequently a Classic Cinema (where I recall seeing Sidney Lumet's The Seagull when very small), until it again became a teaching space for 30 years.As the Poly was translated into the University of Westminster, the venue was gradually transformed, thanks to individual benefactors and sundry Funds and Trusts, with the 1936 Compton Organ refurbished,and the Art Deco interior splendidly renovated for its re-opening as a full-time cinema in May 2015.It is now a congenial home for classic double-bills,marvellous musical matinees (for its recent screening-I think as a 35mm print- of Kismet,I had to join a queue that snaked along Regent Street- how long is it since you saw an actual line at any box-office, in our days of Apps and booking online?),and frequent foreign film weeks and festivals,It was the perfect venue for the UK premiere of Andrzej Wajda's final film, his autumnal envoi Afterimage (Powidoki),a moving tribute to the avant-garde painter Wladislaw Strzemynski, severely handicapped after being wounded in the Great War.He was born in Minsk,and a student in St Petersburg and colleague of Malevich and Chagall, but  film focusses on his last years, as a victim of Stalinist policies,his abstract art vilified in the 1950s era of social realism,and himself hounded from the Art Institute he founded,humiliated and even prevented from painting, in penury and ill.It is a heroic performance by Boguslaw Linda who now has more than a look of Wajda himself (who completed the film with his customary vigour, clearly himself remembering the political regimes under which he often himself suffered, but sadly he died less than a month after its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, though at 90 was still planning a further film).The film is handsomely shot by Pawel Edelman ,the cinematographer who  worked with Wajda several times and was Oscar-nominated for Polanski's The Pianist, and aptly features music by Andrzej Panufnik, who had to pursue his career outside a Poland dominated by Stalin's  strictures. Forced to teach in secret to his devoted students, Strzemynski's theories on art were posthumously published and the film appropriately concludes with a blaze of colour from some surviving canvases.

A lively, informal Reception followed  the screening in the cinema's own cafe-bar,where guests included the Quay Brothers (they really are twins, I never know which one is which) who have again made a  characteristic festival logo/trailer, and the bright star of Polish stage and screens big and small, Maciej Stuhr, who features in the selections Planet Single, the successful romantic comedy directed by Slovenia's Mitja Okorn, and the 1950s music- drama Eccentrics, The Sunny Side of the Street(showing on Sunday 26th March, 7.30pm,Regent Street Cinema).There was an  abundance of sumptuous cakes from co-sponsor The Polish Bakery, and in the evident  absence of wodka,  vouchers for 20% discounts throughout the Festival in the DRY MARTINI Bar, a short walk away in the historic hotel partner, the Melia White House, the Art Deco  hotel-cum-apartment house on to which Kenneth Williams's  windows looked for many years.

Kinoteka continues with screenings of eight great films by Wajda, from early classics such as Ashes and Diamonds to Man of Marble,more or less smuggled into the  Cannes Film Festival  where the film caused a sensation in 1977, winning the FIPRESCI Prize ,and its follow-up Man of Iron, which also premiered at a later Cannes (and incidentally initiated my regular reportage on Polish cinema on the BBC Polish Service, as I was covering the festival for domestic BBC outlets and subsequently interviewed Wajda many times, though we mostly spoke French together, off-microphone.I later saw his own exquisite art works exhibited during the European Film Festival in Lecce, evidently inspired by Japan,with delicate drawings and exquisite colours.The last time I saw and spoke with  the master film-maker was at the inauguration(with retractable roof)  of the marvellous Shakespeare Theatre in Gdansk, a project he had long championed).There are also newer films, documentaries, and other events in many venues . Kinoteka returns to the Barbican for its spectacular close, pairing the live music of British Sea Power with animated shorts by such internationally-awarded talents as Piotr Dumala (Wednesday 5th April, 8pm, Barbican Hall). Polish films have been performing well in their own country as well as collecting awards around the world and Kinoteka always assembles a striking showcase of the classic and contemporary It is a timely addition for Brexiteers and Polonists alike.Na razie!

Phillip Bergson

For full programme and ticket details see www.kinoteka.org.uk   For wodka martinis , melia.white.house@melia.com