Cinema Scene
A shot of Polish cinema with Oscar-winner "Ida"
POLISH VODKA will be poured on Monday night at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand as the Contemporary World Film Series continues with this year’s foreign-language Academy Award-winner, “Ida”, from Poland.
A gobstoppingly beautiful film, shot in lovely black-and-white and framed in the classic 4:3 ratio, the drama follows an orphaned young novitiate nun in 1960s Poland. Before taking her vows, she’s encouraged to track down her aunt, her sole surviving family member. Boozing, chain-smoking and full of self-loathing, the aunt is a disgraced but still-formidable state prosecutor from the Stalinist era. She and her niece take a road trip to bring closure to a dark family secret dating back to the Nazi occupation.
The screening, courtesy of the Embassy of Poland, comes with Zubrowka vodka cocktails, but please don’t try to keep up with that hard-drinking aunt! Szarlotka apple pie will also be served. The screening is at 7pm. Admission is Bt150. For details, check www.FCCThai.com.
Also showing
Since December, an initiative branded Doc Holiday has brought accalimed recent documentaries to SF cinemas. They have included the found-photos treasure trove of “Finding Vivian Maier”, “Life Itself”, about influential film critic Roger Ebert and the Oscar-winning public-surveillance expose “Citizenfour”.
It’s all the doing of the Documentary Club, a personal project started by Bioscope magazine editor Thida Plitpholkarnpim, who came up with a grass-roots way of tapping into the welcome recent trend of documentaries being eaten up by local audiences.
The latest entry is “1971”, lookin back at a burglary of an FBI office that led to the exposure of Cointelpro, J Edgar Hoover’s secret, illegal surveillance programme.
It is on until Sunday at SFW CentralWorld and SFX Maya Chiang Mai. Bookings through SFCinemaCity.com are encouraged. More shows may be added, but to find out for sure, you have to check www.Facebook.com/DocumentaryClubTH.
