An abridged version of the Seattle Polish Film Festival closed out on Sunday, May 6, with a screening of the highly controversial "We Are All Christs" by veteran maverick director Marek Koterski. Only nine films were screened during the abbreviated week, but the closing entry featuring an alcoholic father bearing a full sized cross and a suffering son with a crown of thorns throughout, was an eye-opener. The screening was attended by Mister Koterski and his wife, an actress who appears in the film, which sort of makes it a family affair, as the thorn bearing son is also the real life son of the director.

Marek Koterski, (60), is a kind of insider-outsider in the Polish film industry somewhat akin to Woody Allen in the States in that his kwirky films consitute a genre of their own, turn some people off and turn others into diehard fans. Yet, like Woody, he is sufficiently esteemed by his peers so that top Polish actors are willing to take a turn in his pictures, even in the kinds of roles that may make them look pretty weird themselves. In this one, for example, top Polish leading man, Marek Kondrat, takes his second turn as a weirdo in a Koterski flick. The previous one was, in fact, called "Day of the Weirdo"! -- and both are significant departures from Kondrat's usually heroic persona.

Koterski makes relatively few but carefully crafted films which like Woody Allen's take potshots at entrenched social institutions -- like the church and social drinking in this particular film -- and like Allen he uses his films as a kind of personal psychotherapy to exorcise his own demons. The main difference is that although his films are always autobiographical, he doesn't appear in them himself, and his brand of humor is far more sarcastic and dark than Woody's.

All this being said, the current "We Are All Christs" film is probably his most difficult to take although it won numerous prizes last year in Poland.
The subject matter is basically a father-son relationship in which the son wears a croown of thorns throughout the to indicate how much he is suffering from his father's generic-genetic alcoholism. Another odd twist is that the father (Koterski?) is played by two different actors at two different stages of his life. Alkie-daddy at age 60 is Kondrat, while in flashbacks, at age
33 he becomes Andrzej Chyra! Considering that Chyra played another egregious alcoholic in "Palimpsert" only a few days before, the audience must have been reeling a little from this double shot of Chyra -- Poland's most notable bad guy these days. The group drinking scenes are intended to be humorous but get to be rather sickening after a while, and the film is generally dedicated to a kind of bludgeoning of the senses and sensibilities of its intended Catholic (and generally, heavy drinking) audience. The result is some kind of massive group therapy which was amply rewarded last year in Poland with a number of esteemed prizes including Best director at Gdynia, which is basically the Polish equivalent of the American Oscars. The film was lensed by top Polish cinematographer Edward Klosinski attesting further to Koterski's prestige in the industry.

A second director to visit Seattle earlier in the week was Michal Rosa, here to present his latest film "What the Sun has Seen" which is set in Silesia where three working class stories are interwoven on the streets of a large industrial city. The fate of three strangers is tied together by a commun need to raise some quick cash fast. In the process young Sebastian, teenage Marta, and fiftyish Jozef fight to maintain their dignity intact and their dreams alive. The screening followed a well oiled wine tasting sponsored by the local Columbia Winery which served simultaneously as an opening ceremony with speeches and Polish conviviality. The director was accompanied by star actress Kinga Preis. In the event, the effect of the wine seriously impaired my critical faculties such that I was unable to tell whether I liked the film or not -- in fact, I was barely able to tell what was going on, but t did look good.

One other film worthy of discussion was "Facing Up" (Przebacz. This is a low budget picture facing up to the grim realities of the lowlife struggle for existence in the slums of yet another Silesian industrial city while taking a few sideswipes at the pernicious influence of American pop-culture on Poland's contemporary youth. The young hero, or anti-hero in the traditional sense, seems to survive on american style junkfood but both his older employer (an ex jailbird) and his alcoholic mother constantly advise
him to stick to traditional Polish dishes. A girl is raped by a group of
neighborhood hoods and Stan, the hero, is the one who actually committed the penetration in a darkened alley. Later however, he befriends the victim, a more middle class young lady who works in a hospital the hospital where he was admitted to treat injuries suffered in a failed robbery attempt. Only later will she realze he was the rapist, an act for which he is deeply contrite. Simple plot, but well executed, well acted and well directed.

Judging by the fuzzy outlines in some images it was probably shot with digital equipment and the barrenness of the sets -- a garage, an empty lot, some grubby apartment interiors -- attest to the shoe-stringiness of financial means, and yet this gritty tale by Marek Stacharski who also wrote the screenplay, manages to convey something greater than the sum of its minimal parts. It also introduces two young actors, Bartek Turzynski and Aleksandra Niespelak in the principal roles, who seem destined for much bigger things in the near future. The one thing that most stands out from this abridged presentation of new Polish cinema is the quality of the acting and the number of promising new faces that were seen in neatrly every film.

Because of limited availability of the new festival venue in the state-of-the-art McCaw Theater (which is housed in the newly renovated Opera House complex) the festival this year was "dark" for four days resulting in a steeply shortened slate of films. Festival topper, Greg Plichta, says however, that the theater availability problem has been dealt with and that next year the festival will be back to normal with a full agenda of films direct from Gdynia and elsewhere. We look forward ...

Alex Deleon