National Audi­ovisual Insti­tute has released a set of doc­u­ment­ary films by Paweł Łoziński on DVD, as a part of the series “Pol­ish School of the Doc­u­ment­ary”. Among the films, there are “Chemo”, the win­ner of Prix Europe, and “Struc­ture”, not well-​known school etude by the director.

Tadeusz Sobolewski, the series’ editor, wrote in the book­let accom­pa­ny­ing the DVD:
” As soon as his fam­ous debut, awar­ded Grand Prx in San Fran­cisco and Mar­seilles, “Birth­place” (1992), Paweł Łoziński found his own way, revealed a dis­tinct documentarist’s tem­pera­ment. At the same time, he remained faith­ful to the tra­di­tion of Pol­ish doc­u­ment­ary. Maybe he is the best doc­u­ment­ar­ist? Paweł Łoziński defines the tra­di­tion of Pol­ish doc­u­ment­ary school in this way:” to care­fully look and listen to the world which seem super­fi­cially unat­tract­ive. What can be attract­ive in people lying on hos­pital beds and tak­ing intra­ven­ous chem­istry? But for me it is inter­est­ing. I do not look for out­side attrac­tions, I look for things which are abso­lutely ordin­ary, but ones in which people can find them­selves, in which the viewer can see him­self.” Such situ­ations are rarely noticed by the media, act­ing under the ter­ror of sen­sa­tions, chas­ing drastic sub­jects, easier to sell. One needs to stop, let the real­ity play its drama before us. A spe­cial gift is neces­sary — a gift unit­ing sens­it­iv­ity and dis­cip­line, empathy and dis­tance. Paweł Łoziński has both these tal­ents.” (an excerpt)

The two-​disc release con­tains the fol­low­ing films:

STRUC­TURE, 1989
100 YEARS AT THE CINEMA, 1995
SLA­WOMIR MROZEK PRESENTS, 1997
THE SIS­TERS, 1999
A WOMAN FROM UKRAINE , 2002
KITTY, KITTY, 2008
BIRTH­PLACE, 1992
THE WAY IT IS , 1999
CHEMO, 2009

The cost of the pack­age is 36 PLN. You can find the order details here.

Łoziński’s films are another NIA release in the series “Pol­ish school of the doc­u­ment­ary “. So far, there have been released albums present­ing the doc­u­ment­ar­ies of the fol­low­ing dir­ect­ors: Krzysztof Kieślowski, Mar­cel Łoziński, Woj­ciech Wiszniewski, Maciej J. Dry­gas and Jacek Bławut. Albums of Władysław Ślesicki and Andrzej Titkow will fol­low.

More inform­a­tion here. 

(05.01.2010)