March 4, 2012
Recently Doug and I attended a Polish film screening in Alexandria, sponsored by the Polish Embassy. The film was 1920: Battle of Warsaw (1920: Bitwa Warszawska).
The movie is set in 1920, in the battle east of Warsaw, as the Poles cleverly and successfully stopped the march of the Red Army across Europe.
It was a typical film by Jerzy Hoffman, because it is an epic battle movie with loads of blood, guts, and guns, and of course a sappy underlying love story. Several of my classmates and teachers hated the film, due to it's gory content and the unsatisfying love story. For me, it was the best 3D movie that I have ever seen; excellent cinematography. Better than Avatar!
If you love history and war movies that are slightly less graphic than Saving Private Ryan and if you get the chance to see this film in 3D somewhere in the US...DO IT.
The film that I enjoyed the most that day was a 6-minute short digitally animated film called Miasto Ruin, that was shown before the 3D movie.
A group decided to put together a digital reconstruction of the city of Warsaw in the Spring of 1945. We all know that the city of Warsaw was leveled during World War II.
This short film really drives home the sheer expanse of that destruction. If you have never seen photos of post-WWII Warsaw, you must see this film. It is very moving.
The pilot in me loves this film, because you really feel like you are flying in an airplane over the ruins of Warsaw. The scenes include you climbing, descending, and slowly banking left and right very gently, just as a sight-seeing flight would be.
You other pilots out there will also notice how the animators paid close attention to detail in that you can hear propeller noise, and how the camera moves is different as the aircraft banks left and right, which is of course due to a certain degree of prop yaw (P-factor).
You simply MUST watch this short film, and the entire Miasto Ruin is on YouTube. Watch it now! Be sure your speakers are on, it is set to some nice music.
Do watch the entire film.
And just because I was curious, I found an interesting short animated film from the 2010 Polish Expo in Shanghai: An Animated History of Poland.
I hope that you enjoy this small taste of recent Polish films!
I also hope that it inspires you to check out the Polish films available on Netflix (the majority have English subtitles) and in the theatres.
