East End Review

Tag: Poland

  • Kinoteka Film Festival set to showcase best of Polish film history

    Kinoteka Film Festival set to showcase best of Polish film history

    Letting the side down: Polish film director Jerzy Skolimowski, whose films feature at this month's Kinoteka Polish Film Festival
    Letting the side down: Polish film director Jerzy Skolimowski, whose films feature at this month’s Kinoteka Polish Film Festival

    The Kinoteka Film Festival gets underway this month, with East London venues set to screen work by some of Poland’s most renowned filmmakers.

    A retrospective of the films of Jerzy Skolimowski will be held at the Barbican.

    Skolimowski is a maverick filmmaker who has worked as a director, writer and actor for over 50 years, and is regarded as one of Polish cinema’s most iconic figures.

    For the opening gala on 7 April, Skolimowski will be there in person to introduce his new film 11 Minutes, which focuses on 11 minutes in the lives of a variety of characters whose paths cross as they race towards an unexpected finale.

    The film, described as an “inventive metaphor for our modern hectic lives driven by blind chance”, will be followed by an onstage question and answer session with the director.

    Over the month the Barbican will be showing more films from Skolimowski’s extensive back catalogue, including rarely screened titles such as 1960s psychological drama Barrier (with an introduction by Skolimowski), Deep End, a comedy-drama about obsession, and the 1982 film Moonlighting starring Jeremy Irons, which was awarded Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival.

    The Shoreditch-based Close-Up Cinema will be hosting festival films too, as part of their Masters of Polish Cinema season. These include a screening of Skolimowski’s loose trilogy featuring his on-screen alter ego Andrzej Leszczyc: the films Identification Marks: None, Walkover and Hands Up!

    The boutique cinema is also planning to show three early psychological thrillers by Roman Polanski: his Skolimowski-scripted debut Knife in the Water; the controversial, mind-bending exploration of psychosis, Repulsion; and the paranoiac ménage-à-trois Cul-de-sac.

    Then later in the month the cinema will show Pawel Pawlikowski’s debut feature, Ida, the Oscar-winning film that delves through 20th century Polish history, scripted by East London resident Rebecca Lenkiewicz.

    closeupfilmcentre.com
    barbican.org.uk

  • Stik’s missing ‘community mural’ discovered on sale in West London

    Gdansk Community Mural
    Gdansk Community Mural. Photograph: Stik

    East London street artist Stik has complained of “commercial exploitation” after a community mural he painted in Poland was discovered in pieces and on sale for £10,000 at a West London gallery.

    Stik and a group of local children from Gdansk in Poland painted the Children’s Community Mural on a shipping container in 2011.

    The public art work went missing from the Polish city in 2014, only to resurface at Lamberty Gallery in Belgravia, where individual pieces of the now dissected mural were found on sale for £10,000.

    “I want to see them returned to the community who helped paint them,” Stik told the East End Review.

    “My intention was to give a gift to that local area and that is what I agreed with the gallery who commissioned the mural. We agreed it was for educational purposes only and I would like them to remain what they were contracted to be.”

    Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art, the Polish gallery that commissioned the 2011 mural, has confirmed it went missing “in circumstances unknown” and that Polish authorities are investigating the disappearance.

    Andrew Lamberty, director of Lamberty Gallery, did not respond to a request for comment, but has released a statement attempting to “put the record straight”, stressing that the work was purchased legally.

    “Lamberty purchased these containers from a recreation ground beside a canal after viewing them in autumn 2014,” the statement reads.

    “We commissioned a Polish agent to find and pay the owners and beneficiaries, who we understand were the Canoe club and the Director of the local school.

    “We have recently been contacted by an arts institution called Laznia that was involved with Stik to create the project in 2011. Laznia did not notice that the containers had been removed until Stik contacted them a year later.

    “Lamberty legally purchased these works with full documentation. We removed them from a harsh outdoor climate and prepared them for indoor instalment.”

    Talking to the East End Review, Stik was tight-lipped over what he could disclose about the case, which is now in the hands of lawyers.

    He did reveal, however, that a dialogue has opened between the two galleries.

    “I am assisting them but as it stands Lamberty has the pieces and has given no indication that he’s going to return them but we are optimistic,” Stik said, adding that he will not authenticate remains of the art work.

    Stik describes himself as “duty bound” to help the people of Gdansk retrieve their mural.

    “Local residents have written to me asking what’s happening and I have promised them I will get it back for them,” Stik said.

    “I feel a good sense of solidarity with that community. Really this piece has not been stolen from me – it’s not about me – it’s about that community and the artwork that the young people created in 2011.”