A nation in search of itself

By Kevin Crust

April 27, 2006 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

THE Polish Film Festival marks its seventh annual appearance in Los Angeles with selections from Poland’s recent cinema that explore themes of family and identity -- both personal and national. Dozens of films screen between now and Wednesday, and coming weeks will bring events celebrating the work of Krzysztof Kieslowski.

The festival opens tonight with writer-director Przemyslaw Wojcieszek’s “The Perfect Afternoon,” an intergenerational comedy about a young hipster couple’s preparations for their impromptu wedding. A young filmmaker working on a documentary about old opposition members who dropped out of politics meets Mikolaj and Anna through Mikolaj’s uncooperative father, Andrzej, and offers to be the videographer for the wedding. The young couple are preoccupied with their nascent publishing business -- their first release tanked -- hence the haphazard arrangements for their nuptials.

Andrzej is a former transit worker whose obsession with Solidarity cost him his marriage to Mikolaj’s mother, Maria, but after 12 years of divorce he seizes the opportunity to pursue her anew. Wojcieszek contrasts contemporary Poland with its past through his characters’ wry political debates that are wrapped in the warm context of family dysfunction.

The strongest film available for preview is “My Nikifor,” directed by Krzysztof Krauze from a script he wrote with Joanna Kos. The film’s story is that of real-life outsider artist Nikifor Krynicki (real name, Epifan Drowniak), a diminutive, petulant man startlingly played by actress Krystyna Feldman. The uncommunicative, filthy Nikifor -- who refers to himself in the third person -- appears suddenly one day in the studio of arts manager Marian Wlosinski (Roman Gancarczyk) and declares that he will paint.

Their difficult relationship slowly evolves from contempt to something greater as Wlosinski defers his own mediocre career to promote the native, untrained talent of Nikifor. Krauze visually dramatizes the tale of artistic self-sacrifice with an affecting canvas of wintry white snow and the earthen colors of 1960s Poland punctuated by the bold red of Soviet-era flags.

“The Collector,” Poland’s official 2005 submission for the Academy Awards, stars Andrzej Chyra as a merciless bureaucrat whose callous, arrogant pursuit of the indebted leaves him vulnerable. Even once he is painfully shown the error of his ways, he finds it is not so easy to make amends. The slick, stylish morality tale was directed by Feliks Falk from a screenplay by Grzegorz Loszewski.

Chyra also stars in Jacek Borcuch’s sentimental ensemble drama “Tulips,” as a man who returns home when his race-car driver father (Zygmunt Malanowicz) is sidelined by a heart attack. The real treat of the film is seeing Polish acting lions Malanowicz, Jan Nowicki and Tadeusz Plucinski playing three longtime friends in their 60s who find their lives going in different directions.

On the documentary side is Mariusz Kotowski’s “Life Is a Dream in Cinema -- Pola Negri,” a straightforward look at the career of the silent-screen vamp. Negri’s star faded with the advent of sound and the introduction of the Hays Code, and she is sometimes remembered more for her relationships with Rudolph Valentino and Charlie Chaplin, but the film gives Negri and her piercing eyes her due as one of the silent greats.

Robert Gliski’s awkward romantic allegory “The Call of the Toad” stars Krystyna Janda and Matthias Habich as a middle-aged woman and man who meet in Gdansk in 1989. Aleksandra (Janda) was born in Vilnius but was forced to leave in 1945. The same year, Alexander (Habich) left Gdansk to live in Germany. The two exiles fall in love and work toward Polish-German reconciliation. Gliski previously directed the bleak but powerful drama “Hi, Tereska.”

Three by Dorsky

You may find yourself holding your breath not wanting to shatter the fragile aura created by silence in the films of Nathaniel Dorsky, a Bay Area filmmaker noted for his poetic use of light. REDCAT presents “The Devotional Cinema of Nathaniel Dorsky,” three short works that turn on a spiritual weightlessness created by a quietude seldom found in life or cinema.

“Threnody,” an offering to the late Stan Brakhage, features repetitions of patterns, assemblages of light and shadow found in the natural and man-made worlds. Leaves and mannequins coexist in a visceral world of gently connected images -- “edited” seems like too severe a word to describe it. In “The Visitation,” Dorsky unpacks a series of densely shrouded compositions and ghostly images that have a peaceful meditative effect. Clouds strung along power lines and the dancing waters from a sprinkler move at an otherworldly pace as the film unfurls. Also screening but unavailable for preview is “Love’s Refrain,” described as a “coda in twilight.”

Inspirational films

Beginning Friday and continuing through the weekend, the Inspiration Film Festival presents a series of features and shorts intended to uplift. Among the highlights are Philip Groning’s grand documentary “Into Great Silence,” depicting daily life inside the Grand Chartreuse Catholic monastery in the French Alps.

Nearly three hours of stillness may not sound terribly exciting, but the profound simplicity of the monk’s lives is truly stirring. The unhurried sights and sounds unfold with uninflected beauty. The echo of shuffling footsteps in a dark hallway or the solo chant of a monk become the soundtrack for the film.

Groning’s spare images -- an apple and a piece of bread on a table, the ruddy-faced friars getting their heads shaved and performing their communal chores, the red-tiled roofs blanketed by snow -- illuminate in the manner of great religious paintings.

Screenings

Polish Film Festival

* “The Perfect Afternoon”: 8:30 tonight

Where: Directors Guild of America, 7920 Sunset Blvd., L.A.

* “Life Is a Dream in Cinema -- Pola Negri”: 5 p.m. Saturday

* “The Call of the Toad”: 7 p.m. Saturday

* “My Nikifor”: 7 p.m. Sunday

* “The Collector”: 9:30 p.m. Monday

* “Tulips”: 7 p.m. Tuesday

Where: Laemmle’s Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood

Info: (818) 982-8827, www.polishfilmla.org

REDCAT