Open-air screenings in Main Market Square

11.07.2014 00:00 |

Redakcja www.wroclaw.pl

Outdoor cinema at 14. edition of T-Mobile New Horizons IFF

For ten consecutive summer evenings (from 25 July to 3 August at 10 pm), film screenings will be available in Wroclaw's Main Market Square as part of the T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival. The initiative offers a great opportunity to re-engage with the Polish classics, attend the evening session with the National Film Archive and meet the winner of the last year's edition of the T-Mobile New Horizons International FIlm Festival. All screenings are free of charge.

The open air screenings at the Wroclaw festival are here to show that the cinema is all about communality and pleasure. The audience flock even to those events that are considered ambitious or difficult.

This year's open air screenings will start on Frida 25 July The Great Beauty by Paolo Sorrentino. The film, which tells the story of an ageing journalist who roams the streets of Rome and reminisces on his passionate and long lost youth, has garnered a number of prizes, including the Academy Award 2014 for the Best Foreign Language Film of the Year, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe and European Film Award.

The programme will also feature Psy by Władysław Pasikowski as well as Greek and Russian films, including Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari directed by Alexey Fedorchenko (the film received the Grand Prix at the last year's T-Mobile New Horizons Festival).

The screening of Year 1863 by Edward Puchalski with live music will be a real gem in this year's programme . This legendary film was digitally remastered as part of the Polish National Film Archive’s Nitrofilm project. The music will be performed live by the Zespół DesOrient ensemble: Marta Maślanka - dulcimer; Małgorzata Szarlik - violin; Mateusz Stankiewicz - accordion; Bogdan Kupisiewicz - guitar; Mariusz Puchłowski - flute; Robert Siwak - percussion; Michał Woźniak - contrabass. Year 1863 is the first screen adaptation of Stefan Żeromski’s novel The Faithful River.

During one of the battles of the January Uprising, Józef Odrowąż miraculously survives. Seriously wounded, he manages to reach a manor house in Niezdoły, He is taken care of by the relative of the Niezdoły estate owners Salomea Brynicka, who risks her life to save the insurgent. She can rely on the help of her faithful servant Szczepan, who just as other peasants is hostile towards the insurgents. Odrowąż survives several brushes with death as he is carried to specially prepared hiding places to escape searches of the carried out by the Russian soldiers. With her dedication and commitment, Salomea helps him slowly recover. The young man and woman soon fall in love with each other. The Rudecki family, who are the owners of the estate, return to the manor. The owner of the estate, as he cannot get over the death of his two sons who died in the uprising, contemplates the decline of his patrimony and soon dies. Duchess Odrowąż arrives at the manor. Despite all the gratitude that she feels towards Salomea, the Duchess is not able to accept the feeling that developed between her only son and the impoverished gentlewoman. She makes her son leave Poland, and the lonely and sorrowful Salomea is left to her own fate. The faithful river, as is suggested in the book's title, remains a silent witness to these dramatic events.

Edward Puchalski began his career as a film director during World War I, and he enjoyed success in the Russian Empire. . After his return to Poland, he became one of the country’s best-known directors and screenwriters. Ryszard Sobiszewski, a popular actor in the early 1920s, and the great Aleksander Zelwerowicz starred as Prince Odrowąż and Margrave Wielopolski, respectively. The film features real participants in the January Uprising. A group of aged and bearded men can be seen in the solemn church service. This moving scene serves as a symbolic and meaningful coda to Puchalski's cinematic tale.