Rochester’s Polish Film Festival once again kicks off at the Dryden Theatre with Part I of the festival. Featuring archival prints as well as one new release, these films represent six decades of Polish cinema. After digging into the holdings of the George Eastman Museum for last year’s festival, this year brings four films—two features and two shorts—to the screen from the Harvard Film Archive. Passenger (1963) will be screened with Labyrinth (1961), an animated dreamscape, and Tango (1981), a technologically complex film featuring multiple overlapping narratives in a single room. Also from Harvard is Moonlighting, Jerzy Skolimowski’s UK-based film about Polish workers emigrating for work. The George Eastman Museum archive contributes Interrogation (1982), banned in Poland for seven years, while Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (2025) is the newest film from the Brothers Quay exploring the writings of Polish-born author Bruno Schulz.
Dates and Titles:
October 22: The Passenger (Andrzej Munk, Witold Lesiewicz, Poland 1963, 63 min., 35mm, Polish with English subtitles)
November 5: Moonlighting (Jerzy Skolimowski, UK 1982, 97 min., 35mm, English and Polish with English subtitles)
November 7: Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay, UK/Poland/Germany 2025, 75 min., DCP, Polish with English subtitles)
November 8: Interrogation (Przesluchanie, Ryszard Bugajski, Poland 1989, 118 min., 35mm)
November 11 (7 p.m.): Chopin, Chopin! (Michal Kwiecinski, Poland 2025, 133 min., DCP)
Events in this Series
Chopin, Chopin!
Polish Film Festival Who is this young daring pianist? Who is this Polish composer transcending the power of music? Who is this star that makes all Parisian eyes turn? They call him Chopin. He is the talk of the town, the most romantic figure of decadent Parisian nights.
Interrogation (35mm)
Polish Film Festival Completed in 1982, Interrogation was deemed so upsetting to the Polish government of the time that it did not receive a theatrical release until 1989 and the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc.
Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
Polish Film Festival | Rochester Premiere | Stop Motion as an Artform In the small world of contemporary stop motion animation, The Quay Brothers are the most legendary and revered figures. Their third feature film, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass is an adaptation of a dreamlike novel-in-stories by Bruno Schulz, often called the “Kafka of Poland”.
Moonlighting (35mm)
Polish Film Festival | Polish Films from the Harvard Film Archive After his 1981 film, Hands Up!, was banned in his native Poland, writer/director Jerzy Skolimowski’s films produced in other countries took on themes of exile, alienation, and the struggles of the Polish diaspora.
Passenger / Tango / Labyrinth (35mm)
Polish Films from the Harvard Film Archive Director Andrzei Munk died in a car crash before he could complete Passenger. Fellow director Witold Lesiewicz used the completed footage and still photography to assemble a version of the film that could be released.