Martin Scorsese Presents Masterpieces of Polish Cinema

6/14/14 to 8/21/14

"An incredible opportunity to discover for yourself the great power of Polish cinema on the big screen in brilliantly restored digital remasters," says Martin Scorsese of this touring series, which he helped organize. Spanning the years from 1957 to 1987, Masterpieces of Polish Cinema features films by Wojciech Has, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Zanussi, and more.

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Past Films

  • Saragossa Manuscript

    Saturday, June 14 7pm
    Wojciech Has (Poland, 1964) Digital Restoration! Alice in Wonderland by way of Napoleon, this surrealist Polish fantasy was a favorite of both Luis Buñuel and Jerry Garcia. An army officer during the Napoleonic Wars gets lost-waaay lost. (184 mins)
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  • Ashes and Diamonds

    Sunday, June 15 6:30 pm
    Andrzej Wajda (Poland, 1958) Digital Restoration! On the last day of the war, a young Resistance fighter (Zbigniew Cybulski) is caught in a Hamlet-like quandary: to kill or not to kill. (104 mins)
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  • Eroica

    Friday, June 20 7 pm
    Andrzej Munk (Poland, 1958) Digital Restoration! Composed of two separate stories, Munk's breakthrough film was heralded as capturing “the heroic gesture and bitter irony of Polish fate.” (85 mins)
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  • Black Cross

    Sunday, June 22 6:30pm
    Aleksander Ford (Poland, 1960) Digital Restoration! Honorable knights, fair maidens, and sadistic villains battle for glory and love in this epic adaptation of one of the great works of Polish literature. “A super spectacle” (The Guardian). (173 mins)
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  • Mother Joan of the Angels

    Wednesday, June 25 7 pm
    Jerzy Kawalerowicz (Poland, 1961) Digital Restoration! A real-life devil possession in medieval France forms the basis of one of the most visually striking Polish New Wave films, “a protest against all dogmatism” (Jerzy Kawalerowicz). (101 mins)
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  • Innocent Sorcerers

    Friday, June 27 7 pm
    Andrzej Wajda (Poland, 1960) Digital Restoration! A jazz-playing, motorcycle-riding doctor represents Poland's lost generation of the fifties, who survived the war but couldn't face the peace. (88 mins)
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  • Night Train

    Sunday, July 6 5 pm
    Jerzy Kawalerowicz (Poland, 1959) Digital Restoration! Several strangers find themselves on a speeding train with a murderer on board in this fascinating resetting of an American film noir in socialist Poland. Best Director and Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival. (99 mins)
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  • The Hour-Glass Sanatorium

    Thursday, July 10 7 pm
    Wojciech Has (Poland, 1973) Digital Restoration! A young man searches for his father in a distant sanatorium in this surrealist epic, and finds instead a world where “death” and “time” have little meaning. An adaption of the works of cult author Bruno Schulz. Winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes. (125 mins)
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  • The Promised Land

    Thursday, July 17 7 pm
    Andrzej Wajda (Poland, 1975) Digital Restoration! Wajda's epic, this Dickensian portrait of greed in turn-of-the-century Lodz is “a prophetic vision of the industrial revolution impinging on the pastoral life of Poland”(Variety). (170 mins)
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  • Camouflage

    Wednesday, July 23 7 pm
    Krzysztof Zanussi (Poland, 1976) Digital Restoration! A naïve young teacher gets schooled in the social order by a disillusioned older professor in Zanussi's powerful parable of blending in, selling out, and sucking up. (101 mins)
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  • The Constant Factor

    Saturday, August 9 8:35 pm
    Krzysztof Zanussi (Poland, 1980) Digital Restoration! An idealistic young graduate in Communist Poland dreams of scaling the Himalayas, but must settle for barely clearing the hurdles of everyday life, in Zanussi's searing condemnation of a world of utter conformity. (91 mins)
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  • A Short Film About Killing

    Friday, August 15 7 pm
    Krzysztof Kieslowski (Poland, 1987) Digital Restoration! This absolutely uncompromising attack on capital punishment follows the movements of three apparently unconnected characters whose paths mysteriously cross: an unemployed adolescent, a taxi driver, and a young lawyer. (86 mins)
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  • Man of Iron

    Thursday, August 21 7 pm
    Andrzej Wajda (Poland, 1981) Digital Restoration! Wajda's loose sequel to Man of Marble is an inventive feature shot during the very event it portrays, the 1980 Solidarity shipyard strike in Gdansk. Winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes. (154 mins)
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