The inaugural Polish Film Festival at the Irish Film Institute in Dublin highlights the similar experiences of the Poles and the Irish, writes Rachel Dugan
'I just had them printed today," confides Klementyna Kasprzyk-Kucharz, as she shyly hands over a small, quirky business card. It is fashioned in the style of a section of film reel, with a black strip dotted with small white squares along the edge and, at the top, an image of a projector illuminating the phrase "Polish Film Festival in Dublin".
The festival opened at the Irish Film Institute (IFI) on Friday, November 10th, and was launched amid a cacophony of central European accents, with the presence of a Polish television crew, headed by a charismatic, dark-haired female presenter, and lots of fashionable young Poles adding to the lively atmosphere. The genus of the idea, however, came from the girl with the quirky card.
"When I came here to Dublin I decided to organise an event, and I have a very good friend who is a cinematographer who helped me with the choice of films," explains Kasprzyk-Kucharz, who moved to Ireland last year and now writes for the Polski Herald, the Polish language newspaper for Poles living in Ireland. The impetus behind organising such a festival was not to provide Ireland's burgeoning Polish community with access to some home-grown flicks, but to open out a Polish cultural event to the widest audience possible.
"My original idea was to organise something integrated, because there are many Polish events that are very closed," says Kasprzyk-Kucharz. "That was the main idea, to open it up to Irish people, and also foreigners, so all the films have subtitles."
Soon, various groups and partners at both extremities of the European Union were brought on board, and the end result is a collaborative effort between the IFI, its Polish counterpart, the Polish embassy and the Pomerania Film Foundation.
The deputy director of Poland's film institute, Maciej Karpinski, who travelled to Dublin for the opening, maintains that it is vital that these kinds of festivals originate from within the community itself.
"It usually starts like this," notes Karpinski, who is a writer, actor and producer. "If it is really going to work, I mean work for the general public and be visible by, say, the wider portion of society, then it is important that some people take it on themselves to organise it, exactly as the situation is here."
Karpinski gestures around at the steady stream of people flowing into the foyer of the IFI, some buying tickets and others grabbing a quiet cappuccino.
"They have put this into the middle of everything, it's not some remote cinema or rented venue," he says, noting the early Saturday morning buzz. "This is the place, this is where people come to see French films one week, German the next, and now they also come to see Polish films."
It not solely the films that have been drawing people to the IFI this week. Actor Jerzy Stuhr and director Krzysztof Zanussi, two of contemporary Polish cinema's biggest names, are in town for the event, with a number of talks and public interviews scheduled. Stuhr, who starred in Three Colours: White, part of Krzysztof Kieslowski's famous French/Polish film trilogy, arrived on Saturday and created quite a stir among those who came along to Sunday evening's screening of Tomorrow's Weather, the 2003 film he directed and starred in.
"It was like having Tom Cruise in the building," recounts the IFI's public relations officer Fiona Breslin, adding that all last weekend's screenings sold out, with limited tickets available for remaining shows.
With one or two exceptions, an effort has been made to bring to Ireland what would be considered contemporary Polish cinema.
"Most of the films are fairly recent, and the main objective was to show films of a recent vintage, ie the last two or three years," explains Peter Walsh, cinemas manager at the IFI.
According to Maciej Karpinski, contemporary Polish cinema is still struggling to find its direction and identity, a struggle that was instigated after the end of the communist regime 17 years ago.
"I think this process is still going on, I don't feel that we have this new definition of Polish cinema yet, but it is nevertheless progressing," says Karpinski. "It became clear that many of those who spent their creative lives in the old regime may have had some difficulty adjusting - it requires a big change of attitude."
It is in the newest generation of film- makers that Karpinski is beginning to discern the future of Polish cinema, and a number of the festival's screenings exemplify this younger breed of cinematic cubs.
The black comedy, The Wedding, is one of these quite recent films, and the one which Kasprzyk-Kucharz appears most excited about.
"It's about a Polish wedding, but I heard that might be similar to an Irish wedding, and its very controversial because . . ." she pauses, looking to a nearby friend for assistance.
"The dark side, pathological?" he suggests helpfully.
"Yes, it's about the negative side of Polish mentality, drinking and lying," agrees Kasprzyk-Kucharz.
It is Ode to Joy, however, the 2005 film directed by three recent graduates of the National Film School in Lodz, Poland, which is perhaps best-placed to promote the integration and understanding between Ireland and its Polish community which Karpinski and Kasprzyk-Kucharz stress are underlying objectives of the festival.
"It is interesting for Irish audiences because it shows young Poles who are considering immigration, and the reasons why," says Karpinski, adding that this is a topic which appears more and more frequently in scripts, but has found its first full treatment in Ode to Joy. It tells the story of three young people from opposite ends of Poland but, in a way, it tells the story of Kasprzyk-Kucharz and the 199,999 other Poles living in Ireland.
The Polish Film Festival continues at the Irish Film Institute until tomorrow. Director Krzysztof Zanussi will be attending a number of screenings and giving a public interview today at the IFI