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Cultural manager and producer Magdalena Sroka will replace Agnieszka Odorowicz as the new Head of the Polish Film Institute starting October 3, 2015. Agnieszka Odorowicz is stepping down after 10 years as head of Pisf which is the longest period a director can serve under the statutes of the organization.

Magdalena Sroka was unanimously recommended to the Minister of Culture and National Heritage by a special committee created by Małgorzata Omilanowska and consisting of film professionals including: Agnieszka Holland, Borys Lankosz, Juliusz Machulski, Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Zanussi, Andrzej Fidyk, Olgierd Łukaszewicz, Roman Gutek, Katarzyna Janowska, Jakub Szurmiej and Robert Kijak.

"One of the key elements in my presentation was to showcase the role and significance of the regional film funds and local film commissions and how cooperation with the Polish Film Institute could help them develop. I also presented my ideas on how to introduce legislative reforms that will facilitate the activities of regional funds and film funds and how we should implement the new European directives on public commissions that will take effect in 2016", Sroka said during the recruitment process.

A Jagiellonian University graduate in 2003, Magdalena Sroka was a part of the Krakow Festival Office 2000. She was responsible for several cultural projects organized when Krakow was the European Capital of Culture in 2000, including the Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival, the Opera Film Festival and Crossroads Festival Krakow. In 2008-2010 she was the Director of theKrakow Festival Office. She is also one of the creators of Krakow Film Commission, the Krakow Regional Film Fund and the Polish Culture Congress. She is currently the Deputy President of Krakow for Culture and Promotion.

Apparently, after all those magnificent years of creating hilarious, crowd-pleasing comedies Juliusz Machulski (Vabank, Sexmission, Kiler) has finally lost his comedic touch. His oeuvre is like an almost never-ending bag of laugh-inducing creations and a source of great joy, mostly for all fellow compatriots who tried to escape from the harsh reality of People's Republic of Poland by plunging into an expertly designed world filled with timeless gags, wacky slapstick and spot-on dialogue. Though still far from retiring (at least everyone hopes so), Machulski and his creative vision seem to be growing further and further apart since 2004, a year in which he gave the world his last great film, Vinci.AmbaSSada (EmbaSSy, a title which refers to Nazi Party's elite military unit Schutzstaffel), Machulski's latest...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Uberto Pasolini’s Still Life to open this year’s Warsaw Film Festival (Wff) tonight, which will close with Roman Polanski’s Venus In Fur on Oct 20.

The number of world, international and European premieres in the Wff line-up have never been as high as this year, with the selection of no less than 22 world premieres, 21 international premieres and 22 European premieres.

The world premieres include six titles in the festival’s main International competition:

Romanian film-maker Anca Damian’s English-language feature debut A Very Unsettled Summer, her first film since Crulic

Estonian Ilmar Raag’s unusual love story in a small village Love Is Blind

Zaza Urushadze’s Estonian-Georgian co-production Tangerines, which has also been invited to festivals in Mannheim-Heidelberg and Cottbus

Iranian director Amir Toodehroosta’s Paat where dogs go underground in Tehran

Zdeňek Tyc’s moving drama Like Never Before about an oddball painter approaching death in his country home

In addition, there will be...

Juliusz Machulski, the director of many awe-inspiring hit Polish comedies (Vabank, Sexmission, Kiler), is going to tackle the topic that many Polish filmmakers have worked on since time immemorial. Meaning his next has a lot to do with World War II and Adolf Hitler. However, don't let the first impression from the trailer fool you - AmbaSSada (the double S is intended as it stands for the elite Nazi unit called Schutzstaffel) is an inventive surrealistic comedy that merges the past and present through a magical elevator that works as a random time traveling machine. A young couple that's about to move to a new apartment discovers a dark secret behind the history of their seemingly typical town house. Alternating between 1939 and 2012, the...

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In this isle of Britain we seem to be obsessed with regional dialects. We construct opinions based on the sounds and cadences they form. Stereotypes can be derived from even a simple “hullo”. A Liverpudlian accent makes you a thief, a Birmingham accent means you are dull/dim witted, a London accent makes you a geezer! The region and strength of the enunciation can make your brain subconsciously decide whether the accused speaker is friend or foe. This makes delivery of vocabulary in these alternate timbres very powerful. As such, we prize these intonations in language very dearly.

So, it was no surprise to me when the people of the United Kingdom were so vehemently offended about a story regarding an American actress trying and failing to replicate the intricate tones of a much cherished regional drawl, made it on to BBC national news, -far beyond the vales and boundaries...

Around the middle of 2009 Romanian-British vampire comedy attracted a lot of attention in these parts thanks to its very old-world spin on the vampire mythos. It played well here in Toronto with an awful lot of people falling in love with it but there were also those who felt that it played the old-world part of the equation a little too strongly while the horror and comedy both lagged behind. Well, to those people, may I introduce upcoming Polish effort Kolysanka, or Lullabye.

Like Strigoi this is very clearly and Eastern European spin on the vampire mythos. But it also has a fantastic sense of absurdist humor, some fantastic slapstick gags - the vampire spin on a glory-hole is priceless - and a score that sounds as if it could have come from Danny Elfman. Yes, please. Check the trailer below!

In the mysterious circumstances inhabitants and visitors of some picturesque little town disappear.

KARLOVY VARY, Czech Republic -- A Polish film that cast an 80-year-old actress in the lead male role scooped three top awards, including the Crystal Globe main prize, at the closing of the 40th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival here Saturday. Polish director Krzysztof Krauze won best director and best film for his high-art My Nikifor (Moj Nikifor), a co-production between Polish state television and Polish director-turned-producer Juliusz Machulski. Actress Krystyna Feldman, who played famous naive painter Nikifor Krynicki, a mentally and physically disabled but gifted artist, won best actress for her "astonishing transformation (and) outstanding performance."...

KARLOVY VARY, Czech Republic -- A Polish film that cast an 80-year-old actress in the lead male role scooped three top awards, including the Crystal Globe main prize, at the closing of the 40th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival here Saturday. Polish director Krzysztof Krauze won best director and best film for his high-art My Nikifor (Moj Nikifor), a co-production between Polish state television and Polish director-turned-producer Juliusz Machulski. Actress Krystyna Feldman, who played famous naive painter Nikifor Krynicki, a mentally and physically disabled but gifted artist, won best actress for her "astonishing transformation (and) outstanding performance."...

PALM SPRINGS -- Jerzy Stuhr, a great Polish actor who has made acclaimed films with Krzysztof Kieslowski, Agnieszka Holland, Krzysztof Zanussi and Andrzej Wajda, makes his ambitious second film as director a tricky but successful comic fable in which he plays four characters.

"Love Stories" is a visual delight and was a crowd-pleaser at the recent Nortel Palm Springs International Film Festival, but it faces tough competition as Poland's candidate for a foreign-language Oscar nomination. Still, the film deserves to go the select-site route domestically for savvy moviegoers unfazed by subtitles and nonlinear storytelling.

In each of the four short, engaging stories woven together like a cinematic quilt, a 45-year-old man is faced with unexpected turmoil and choices because of love: A university teacher becomes involved with one of his students, a sweet, pretty lonelyheart; an army colonel with a dreary life rekindles his passion for a former flame, a pretty Russian woman who then threatens his career; a teenage girl announces she is the daughter of a priest, forever changing his life; and, in his most colorful incarnation, Stuhr boisterously plays a passionate petty criminal in prison with an untrustworthy lover who lies to and blackmails him.

Stuhr, with the help of costume changes but no elaborate makeup, plays the four leads with subtle differences and broad strokes; he has rarely been more entertaining.

Inserted throughout are curious scenes in which the four men are interviewed by a pollster and reveal their feelings and convictions. The film becomes a morality play, in which some characters are punished and others are not, but Stuhr stays with a whimsical approach. His direction is superb, and excellent editing keeps the puzzle pieces smoothly into place.

LOVE STORIES (Historie mitosne)

Zebra Film Prods.

Canal Plus Poland, WFDiF

Credits: Writer-director: Jerzy Stuhr; Producers: Juliusz Machulski, Jacek Moczydlowski, Jacek Bromski; Director of photography: Pawel Edelman; Set designer: Allan Starski; Music: Adam Nowak; Editor: Elzbieta Kurkowska. Cast: Jerzy Stuhr, Katarzyna Figura, Dominika Ostalowska, Irina Alfiorowa, Karolina Ostrozna, Jerzy Nowak. No MPAA rating. Running time -- 87 minutes. Color/stereo.