Presented by Film at Lincoln Center in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute, the Andrzej Munk's Films: A Virtual Retrospective event showcases seven pivotal films by the late Polish director, all newly restored, with the aim of bringing his cinematic contributions into sharper focus.
Considered to be one of the founders of the Polish Film School movement, along with Andrzej Wajda and Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Munk began his career making agitprop documentaries during the Stalinist era in Poland.
In the aftermath of the 1956 Polish thaw, he came to artistic maturity with a suite of shrewdly incendiary features, according to the Polish Cultural Institute in New York.
Although his career was brief—he died in a car accident in 1961, during the making of his final feature, Passenger—the films made by Munk throughout the 1950s have come to encapsulate the spirit of rebellion in postwar Poland, according to the organizers behind the New York retrospective.
"These works bristled with cool skepticism, and indefatigable elements of satire and irony that evaded state censorship guidelines; many explored the perverse survival instincts and displacement arising from war, while others witnessed the hardship and beauty of everyday labor," the organizers said ahead of the event.
Munk received a posthumous award at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival recognizing his entire oeuvre, and his influence persists, visible in the work of renowned Polish filmmakers such as Krzysztof Zanussi, Krzysztof Kieślowski, and Jerzy Skolimowski, Munk’s former student, the Polish Cultural Institute in New York noted.
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Source: instytutpolski.pl