The 8th Kinoteka Polish Film Festiwal takes place between 4 March and 12 April 2010 and Radio ORLA.fm is proud to be its media patron for a second successive year.

Back and bigger and bolder than before, this year’s line up boasts an impressive and diverse selection of internationally acclaimed titles from first time filmmakers, seasoned auteurs, as well as the work of celebrated musicians and visual artists. Bringing together the cream of contemporary Polish culture, KINOTEKA is presented by the Polish Cultural Institute and Wyborowa Wodka and supported by Onet.eu, the Polish Film Institute and the Polish National Tourist Office. Kinoteka 8’s programme spans 10 different venues across the capital for screenings, concerts, exhibitions, special events and onstage Q&As from Poland’s leading lights; Riverside Studios, BFI Southbank, Empire Leicester Square,  Prince Charles Cinema, the Barbican, Tricycle Cinema, West London Synagogue, Roxy Bar, Imperial War Museum and Tate Modern.

The Festiwal opens with Borys Lankosz’s, Reverse (4 March, Riverside Studios), winner of the Golden Lion at 2009’s Polish Film Festival and official Polish entry for the best foreign language Academy Award. Lankosz’s darkly comic cross-generational drama kicks off a celebration of the best New Polish Cinema from 2009. Highlights include All That I Love (6 March, Riverside Studios), selected In Competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Jacek Boruch’s film is a coming of age tale, set against the backdrop of early 80’s Poland and the rise of Punk rock; Michal Rosa’s Scratch (7 March, Riverside Studios), a tender and touching drama, looking at the personal impact of Poland’s recent history, frequently compared to The Lives of Others, as well as Xawery Zulawski’s (son of Andrzej), kinetic, larger-than-life adaptation of Dorota Maslowska’s controversial, post modern, bestseller, Snow White, Russian Red (8 March, Empire Leicester Square); widely regarded as Poland’s answer to Trainspotting with its portrait of the hedonistic, drug-fuelled excesses of Poland’s post-Communist youth.

In stark contrast, legendary director Andrzej Wajda returns to the festival with Sweet Rush (7 March, Riverside Studios), his latest film, about desire and its consequences focusing on the story of a middle-aged married woman searching for happiness in the arms of a much younger man. Set in a retirement home for actors, well known documentarian Jacek Bawut’s first feature film, Before Twilight (7 March, Riverside Studios), brings together the greats of Polish stage and screen (Jan Nowicki, Beata Tyszkiewicz, Nina Andrycz), as their characters rehearse for one last performance.
 
To coincide with the UK release of The Ghost Writer, Kinoteka has programmed a retrospective season of Roman Polanski’s shorts (6 March, Riverside Studios) and early films focusing on his on-screen collaborations with the internationally acclaimed composer and jazz pianist Krzysztof Komeda; a crucial figure in the Polish Modern Jazz movement. The Barbican will screen Knife In The Water, Rosemary’s Baby (for which Komeda was nominated for a Golden Globe), Cul-de-sac, and Dance of the Vampires (7, 13, 21, 27 March respectively, Barbican). The season is accompanied by a screening of Marina Zenovich’s documentary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (6 March, Riverside Studios) and complimented by an impressive exhibition both at the Riverside Studios and the Barbican of film posters from his movies from across the globe, as well as unseen photos and archive material selected from the Lodz Museum of Cinematography’s recent exhibition Roman Polanski, Actor. Director, providing an insight into Polish Cinema’s most famous son, and confirming Polanski’s status as one of the foremost European directors of the Post-War era.

Kinoteka’s Centrepiece Gala is a spellbinding celebration of Krzysztof Komeda‘s film compositions (including his collaborations with Polanski) with a live concert by the internationally acclaimed and respected pioneering Jazz trumpeter Tomasz Stanko, a close friend and  member of  The Komeda Quintet (the Barbican, 27 March). Preceeding the concert there will be the world premiere screening of the Quay Brothers new film Maska, adapted from The Mask, a short story by Stanislaw (Solaris) Lem.

In commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the WFDiF production company which gave birth to the world-renowned Polish Documentary School, Kinoteka is showcasing a selection of its award winning documentaries from the 1960s with 2 programmes including work by Andrzej Munk, Krzysztof Kieslowski and Kazimierz Karabasz (Riverside Studios 14, 21 March). Alongside this documentary strand are new works by contemporary documentary filmmakers; The Polish Battle of Britain (Imperial War Museum 21 March); presented in partnership with Channel 4, dramatised documentary based on the diaries of the Polish pilots from 303 Squadron who wreaked havoc on the Luftwaffe and Jolanta Dylewska’s award-winning film Po-Lin, using archival material to reconstruct the lost world of 1930’s Jewish Poland (West London Synagogue, 16 March, in collaboration with Spiro Ark). In addition, in partnership with the London Documentary Film Festival, Kinoteka is screening Bartek Konopka’s humorous, Oscar-shortlisted film, Rabbit a la Berlin, telling the untold story of the wild rabbits inhabiting the ‘Death Zone’ between the Berlin Wall and the impact of their sudden liberation after the fall of the wall. (Tricycle Cinema, 23 March)

This year’s festival also marks the first time that Kinoteka has partnered up with the Birds Eye View Film Festival to present a special screening of Katarzyna Roslaniec’s Mall Girls (9 March, BFI Southbank), exploring social issues facing contemporary Poland. Kinoteka will be holding a Polish Shorts film club night (18 March, Roxy Bar and Cinema) giving an opportunity to new and emerging filmmakers to showcase their work.

Kinoteka 8 culminates with a programme of video artworks by up and coming Polish artist Anna Molska and a special in conversation event at Tate Modern between the artist and Joanna Mytkowska, Director of The Modern Art Museum of Warsaw. Molska’s short video works (including Tangram and The Weavers) take the performing body as her primary medium, drawing on the history of the Soviet Bloc, focusing on abstract geometric forms with rudimentary dialogue that hints at power relations between Russia and Poland (Tate Modern, 12 April).

Highlights from the Kinoteka 8 Festiwal will go on tour regionally at select cinemas including Belfast, Exeter, Sheffield and Bath throughout March and April.