May 20-21, 2023
Forum cinema, 5 Legionowa Street
tickets: 16/18 PLN per movie, available at the Forum cinema’s box office (5 Legionowa Street), Ludwik Zamenhof Centre’s box office (19 Warszawska Street) and on bilety.bok.bialystok.pl
Screening schedule:
May 20, 2023
14:15 And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine / Sweden, Denmark 2023, 88′
And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine is a plunge into the vast historic ocean of media culture. From the birth of the camera obscura to the screening of the first moving picture and from the invention of the webcam to the first viral video, the witty and thought-provoking documentary chases the rise of image culture as we know it. By collaging historic archive material of great dictators parading in front of cheering crowds with home videos, live-streaming content and clips of thrill-seekers hanging out at the top of a skyscraper, or harrowing press photography exhibiting violence, it offers an emblematic study of cinema and the social history it creates: What are the implications of being exposed to the billions of images competing for our attention?
16:00 All the Beauty and the Bloodshed / USA 2022, 113′
From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras (HBO and Participant’s “Citizenfour”) All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is an epic, emotional and interconnected story about internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin. The story is told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the opioid overdose crisis.
18:15 Lynch/Oz / USA 2022, 110′
“There is not a day that goes by when I don’t think of ‘The Wizard of Oz”’, said David Lynch. Red shoes, hollow winds and young women lost between realms are some of the elements present in “Blue Velvet”, “Wild at Heart”, “Mulholland Drive” and “Twin Peaks”. As Lynch doesn’t analyse his own work, director Alexandre O. Philippe invites critics and filmmakers including John Waters and Karyn Kusama to explore one of the most fascinating puzzles in the history of motion pictures: the enduring symbiosis between America’s primordial fairy tale, “The Wizard of Oz”, and Lynch’s singular brand of popular surrealism.
May 21, 2023
15:00 After Work / Sweden, Norway, Italy 2023, 81′
Kuwait’s constitution says that every person has the right to a job, so in some places 20 people are employed for one person’s job. In South Korea, they work so much that a policy has been introduced to turn off computers at the end of the day so that employees can’t work any more. In the US, they give up over 500 million holiday hours each year, while Amazon’s drivers are trying to form a union. Meanwhile, robots are poised to take over most jobs and put the rest of us out of work. Work is so crucial to our identity and what we spend our waking hours on that it is barely noticed anymore. A lot has happened since a group of Puritan priests invented the concept of work ethic in the 1600s, and in the 21st century the very concept of work is in many ways disintegrating. A perfect situation for a filmmaker like Swedish mastermind Erik Gandini, who travels the world to explore what the concept of work means today – if it means anything at all. A perceptive film with an X-ray eye for details, shot through with dark, existentialist humour.
16:45 Polish Prayers / Poland, Switzerland 2922, 84′
The tenth edition of Polish Pride parades a colorful trail of rainbow flags through the streets of Warsaw. Along the route, Antek and his friends line up to warn of the “pink threat” in prayer and edifying hymns. As traditional Catholics, he and his Brotherhood hold deeply conservative views: sex before marriage is out of the question, homosexuality can be cured, abortion is a great evil and Poland is for the Poles. His sister thinks his homophobic ranting is pointless, because in a few years the planet will be destroyed anyway as nobody is doing anything about climate change.
For a long time, as this observational portrait follows him in measured chapters from church visits to demonstrations, festivities and Brotherhood meetings, Antek seems completely in his element in his right-wing Catholic world. Around him, couples get married young to start procreating. But when Antek himself falls in love, doubts begin to set in—first about the prohibition of premarital sex, and ultimately about the existence of God.
18:30 Smoke Sauna Sisterhood / Estonia, France, Iceland 2023, 89′
In the darkness of a smoke sauna, women share their innermost secrets and intimate experiences, washing off the shame trapped in their bodies and regaining their strength through a sense of communion.