DISAPPEARING ACT: European Cinema from New Wave to New Wave

It\'s Me, Now (Teraz ja, 2005, Poland, 85 min.), Anna Jadowska’s solo debut as a screenwriter and director, won the Best Debut Award at the 2006 Polish Film Festival in Gdynia, Poland. A 2004 graduate of the National Film School in Lodz, Jadowska has earned critical praise in Poland for her intricately developed characters and stunning images. It’s Me, Now is the story of a young couple, Hanna and Pawel, on separate but similar trips through Poland. Hanna makes a spontaneous decision to hop on a bus to anywhere in order to escape her life with Pawel; Pawel journeys in search of Hanna. Jadowska’s exploration of Hanna’s fears of intimacy and her circuitous quest for guidance is a prime example of the new Polish cinema: An inquisitive, sensitive, beautifully written story of a woman learning to make peace with the discrepancies between reality and her expectations. With Agnieszka Warchulska, Maciej Marczewski, Ewa Szykulska, Elzbieta Gruca.

Scratch (Rysa, 2008, Poland, 89 min.) is directed by Michal Rosa, one of the most active and admired young filmmakers in Poland today. Rosa’s What the Sun Has Seen won top honors at the 2006 Polish Film Festival in Gdynia and was selected for the 2007 New Directors / New Films series at MoMA / Walter Reade Theater. His third feature, Scratch, explores the dilemma of a woman, Joanna, who is forced to question the foundations of her marriage when she discovers a videotaped interview that suggests that her husband, Jan, was coerced into marrying her by the secret police forty years earlier. In her quest to learn the truth without holding her husband responsible for any insincerity or wrong-doing, she asks questions about the choices that people made under the communist regime and the way these choices are regarded today. Rysa won the Best Screenplay Award at the 2008 Polish Film Festival in Gdynia and a Special Prize for Outstanding Artistic Contribution at the 2008 Cottbus Film Festival of Young East European Cinema. With Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieslak, Krzysztof Stroinski, Ewa Telega, and Ryszard Filipski.

Disappearing Act: European Cinema from New Wave to New Wave is a series presented from April 16 to 23 by the Czech Center New York in its newly opened digital cinema. It features 18 contemporary feature films by young directors from nine European countries: Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia, as well as a short film by a Serbian student of the Prague Film Academy.

The series will feature a panel discussion on April 17 at 6:30 PM, chaired by Richard Pena, Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and New York Film Festival and Professor of Film at Columbia University. The discussion will attempt to shed light on the legacies of the New Wave cinema movements and new discoveries in the represented countries, as well as examine foreign film distribution in the U.S.

The series is curated by Irena Kovarova and organized by the Czech Center New York in partnership with the Austrian Cultural Forum New York, the Consulate General of the Slovak Republic with the support of +421 Foundation, the Cultural Service of the Embassy of France, the Goethe-Institut New York, the Hungarian Cultural Center, the Italian Cultural Institute, the Polish Cultural Institute, and the Romanian Cultural Institute. The program also marks the Czech Republic\'s Presidency of the European Union.

The Polish Cultural Institute in New York and the Czech Center New York

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SATURDAY APRIL 18, 2009 1:00 PM --- ANNA JADOWSKA, IT’S ME, NOW

TUESDAY APRIL 21, 2009 8:15 PM --- MICHAL ROSA, SCRATCH

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Czech Center New York at Bohemian National Hall
321 East 73rd Street (btwn. 1st & 2nd Aves.)
New York, NY
Tel. 646.422.3399
Admission: free, first-come, first-serve basis.
Reservations only for opening night and panel discussion at reservations@czechcenter.co