Szyfry (Wojciech Has, 1966)

Playing at London's Closeup Cinema on October 30, 2022. – EK

Championed for his intricate narratives and hypnotic imagery by people like Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia, Luis Buñuel and Martin Scorsese, Wojciech Has uses a historical frame only to bend the notions of time and space. The result, Szyfry (meaning the codes), is one of the most complex Polish films about the moral dilemmas of Second World War.

Made right after his international breakthrough, The Saragossa Manuscript, and using the same star (Zbigniew Cybulski, in one of his final roles, before dying in an accident a year later), Szyfry is about a Second World War veteran returning to Warsaw from his long London exile to meet the wife and son he has left behind. The son (played by Cybulski), a former member of the resistance, open his father's eyes to the fate of the fourth member of their family, his disappeared brother, and the inconvenient truth that he might have been a Nazi collaborator. Featuring some of Has's most staggering dream/nightmare sequences, this rarely seen gem is one of the essential films of Polish cinema of the 1960s.

11 Minutes (Jerzy Skolimowski, 2015)

11 MINUTES
Jerzy Skolimowski; Poland/Ireland, 2015
Reviewed by Kiomars Vejdani

A series of events run alongside each other: A young attractive woman is having an audition by a film director in his flat; A jealous and suspicious husband is trying to find the whereabouts of his wife; A pregnant woman is taken to hospital by ambulance; A young man is trying to commit suicide; A motor cyclist driving very fast worried about his affair with a married woman being exposed; And a street vendor selling hot dogs to three nuns. As the stories of these characters move parallel to each other the tension of each situation begins to rise, and as the tempo of parallel action increases we begin to suspect some connection between them. Their stories seem to be converging towards a collision point, and as they get closer to this point the tension of the drama increases until at the moment of collision it ends in a catastrophic tragedy. Only in retrospect we realize we were watching 11 minutes in the lives of these people (hence the title of the film). The aim of Skolimowski's tense drama is ultimately to show the role of fate in our lives.

Like One of Truffaut's Dreams [Il Cinema Ritrovato, 2014]

فانتوماس - Fantômas

گزارش بيست و هشتمين جشنوارۀ Il Cinema Ritrovato، بولونيا، ايتاليا، 7 تا 14 تير 1393

مثل يكي از خواب‌هاي تروفو

احسان خوش‌بخت

شبحِ صدساله و جوان هانري

پياتزتا پازوليني. حياطي در محاصره سالن‌هاي سينما، موزه، كتابخانه و ستاد فرماندهي سينه‌فيلياي امروز، چينه‌تِكا بولونيا در دل شهري كه پير پائولو پازوليني در آن به دنيا آمد. هنوز هم روي ديوارهاي شهر به جاي چه گوارا يا باب مارلي صورت مكعب-مستطيلي پازوليني را مثل كد رمزي از دنياي زيرزميني نقاشي مي‌كنند. فكر اين كه كساني در نيمه‌هاي شب، دور از چشم پليس و رهگذران، اين پازوليني‌هايِ شابلونيِ سياه و سفيد را روي ديوارهاي قهوه‌اي و نارنجي شهر قرون وسطايي حك مي‌كنند خودش به رويايي سينمايي مي‌ماند، مثل يكي از آن خواب‌هاي فرانسوا تروفو.

 در گوشه‌اي از حياط پازوليني، ژان دوشه، يكي از آخرين تفنگداران نسل اول «كايه دو سينما» زير سايه چتري نشسته است. عكسي از او را كه در تهران دهۀ چهل شمسي در دفتر مجلۀ «هنر و سينما» گرفته شده به دوشه نشان مي‌دهم. چشمانِ گردش گردتر مي‌شود. «آآآآآآ». يك «آ»ي خيلي طولاني از سر تعجب و به خاطرآوردن سرعت گذر زمان كه سريع‌تر از يك كمدي باستر كيتن است. دوشه از دو مرد جوان ديگر حاضر در عكس پركنتراست مي‌پرسد. به او مي‌گويم يكي پرويز نوري است و آن يكي كيومرث وجداني و هر دو هنوز فعالند. دوشه به احترام دوندگان استقامت لبخند مي‌زند.