Polish films on Sunday: ‘Katyn’ 117min

The film is about the 1940 Katyn massacre directed by Andrzej Wajda. It was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film for the 80th Academy Awards.

In the movie the events of Katyn are related through the eyes of the women, the mother, wives and daughters of the victims executed on Stalin’s order by the NKVD in 1940.

The Polish museum is for all New Zealanders

“GLAM” Gallery, Library, Archive, Museum

Howick is a destination that offers variety including Howick beach, Stockade Hill, various Fencible sites and historical walks, All Saints Church, Uxbridge Creative Arts Centre, Te Tuhi Gallery and Howick Historical Village.

The quaint Howick village shops are a 5 minute walk from the museum and the Botany Town Centre is a 10 minute drive.

We look forward to welcoming you to “Polish films on Sunday”, the Howick district and the Polish Museum.

‘Poles Apart is the story of 733 Polish orphans who came to New Zealand in 1944. With a backdrop provided by the events of World War Two, the documentary traces their long and arduous journey from Poland through Siberia, Uzbekistan and Persia to New Zealand: a journey that takes them from the warmth and comfort of their homes in Poland, to the freezing barracks of Siberian forced labour camps, to the suffocating heat of the mud huts of Uzbekistan, to converted harems and stables of the Shah of Persia and finally to a former army camp in Pahiatua, New Zealand.’

‘Polish children in Persia 1942-44’ and ‘Little Poland in Pahiatua’ exhibition of photographs are on display in the Upper Gallery for viewing after the film.

This documentary was made for the 60th reunion and has a number of the now adults interviews on their thoughts about this incredible story

”Soviet Story’ is the most powerful antidote yet to the sanitation of the past.The film is gripping, audacious and uncompromising.’ The Economist

This is a story of an Allied power, which helped the Nazis to fight Jews and which slaughtered its own people on an industrial scale.

Assisted by the West, this power triumphed on May 9th 1945. Its crimes were made taboo and the complete story of Europe’s most murderous regime has never been told till now.

Mature audience only.

In 1976, a young woman, Agnieszka is making her diploma film, looking behind the scenes at the life of Birkut, at how that heroism was created, and what became of him. She gets hold of out takes and censored footage and interviews the man’s friends, ex-wife, and the filmmaker who made him a hero.

The film chronicles the fall from grace of a fictional heroic Polish bricklayer, Mateusz Birkut, who became the symbol of an over-achieving worker in Nowa Huta, a new socialist city created in the 1950’s near Krakow. Dozens of men were lined up in the mud in a food line. There are no women to be seen. The men are housed in barracks. When presented with a single fish on a plate for lunch, they begin spontaneously to pelt the Party Official with the fish and succeed in driving him out. Birkut is one of these workers…

It is a surprise that Wajda would have been able to make such a film, revealing the use of propaganda and political corruption during the period of Stalinism.

In 1980, during the strikes in Gdansk, Wajda visited the shipyard. A worker shouted to him “Now you must make a film about our story – ‘Man of Iron.’

The workers thus directly commissioned Wajda’s second film. Its production, from beginning to end, was completed in nine months.

The story unfolds…In Warsaw in 1980, the Party sends Winkel, a weak, alcoholic TV hack, to Gdansk to dig up dirt on the shipyard strikers, particularly on Maciek Tomczyk, an articulate worker whose father was killed in the December 1970 protests. Posing as sympathetic, Winkel interviews people who know Tomczyk, including his detained wife, Agnieszka. Their narrations become flashbacks using actual news footage of 1968 and 1970 protests and of the later birth of free unions and Solidarity.

‘Stara Basn’ or ‘When the Sun was God’ is an outstanding story, with fast action, bloody battles, romance, territorial feuds, exceptional visual scenes and spectacular costumes.

Stara Basn, produced and directed by Jerzy Hoffman, presents us with one of Poland’s oldest legends on film. This is a story from Poland’s prehistory pagan time; a story that has been told and re-told and Hoffman does a fantastic retelling of this story on film, giving the viewer an indication of how Poland was back then.

In this powerful tale, the fates of the characters interlace in an everlasting fight between the good and the evil and in the human passions of love, hatred and the greed for power.

If you enjoy historical movies you have to watch this one

 This dramatised documentary recounts how, during the most decisive phase of Battle of Britain, a single squadron of 34 Polish fighter pilots wreaked havoc on the Luftwaffe, in the process helping to change the course of history and overturning RAF prejudices.

Based on a diary kept by the Pilots of the 303 Squadron.

Belatedly, the Poles were cleared for active service and had an immediate impact. By the time the Battle of Britain was won, they had claimed 126 enemy planes, but as the war ended, their joy turned to despair as they saw their own country handed to Stalin

In September 1939 Poland was overrun by the German and Russian, yet the Polish fighting spirit remained unbroken… They were displaced fighting forces, which would exact revenge for the occupation of Poland, fighting first in France, and than alongside with British in almost every campaign in the desert and Western Europe

After 7 years of fighting, many of those soldiers who returned home from the war were arrested , murdered or deported to Siberia by the Soviets who now occupied Poland.

The Free Polish forces will be remembered as the Gladiators who were willing to sacrifice everything to rescue their country.

The ‘1920 Battle of Warsaw’ is the only battle fought by the Poles themselves (unassisted by others) since the seventeenth century,  with a winning result. This battle maintained the newly regained Poland’s independence for 19 years and halted the Red Army march on Europe, forcing Lenin and Trotsky to resign from lighting the “flame of world revolution”.

However, it is not the historical figures, except Pilsudski, that will play a decisive role in this film. The entire burden of action and the involvement of the audience’s emotions falls on the shoulders of two literary characters: Ola a revue theatre actress and her recently married husband Jan, a communism-supporting idealist. The fighting lines will be shown by Jan’s fate. Ola will be a participant in and be a witness of the emotions experienced by the residents of Warsaw.

School Holiday Film  ‘In Desert and Wilderness’

Enjoy your school holidays with this amazing film.  ‘ In Desert and Wilderness’ is an adaptation of the popular young adult novel, in Polish called ‘W pustyni i w puszczy’ written by Henryk Sienkiewicz.   Beautiful photography. Film recommended for 7-8 years+

The main characters are fourteen year-old Stas Tarkowski and eight-year-old Nel Rawlinson who are thrilled to be with their fathers in the exotic land of Egypt. The palm trees and beaches offer a welcome change from the chills of Europe and the children are fascinated by the different languages and religions that make up the cultural fabric of North Africa….

For more details give us a call

Museum Hours: Tues – Fri 10-4   Sun 12-5