March 22- 31, 2024 | at Walter Reade Theater | 165 W 65th St. New York, NY 10023
“The Long Strange Trips of Wojciech Jerzy Has,” is a comprehensive celebration of the Polish filmmaker’s singularly inventive filmography, featuring an array of new digital restorations. The retrospective will be presented at Film at Lincoln Center from March 22 through March 31 and includes each of Has’s 14 features and all of his short films.
In addition to Has’s feature films, select titles will be preceded by a short film by Has. The series will also include a separate program that collects Has’s early fiction and documentary shorts, ranging from fascinating industrial films to assured miniature parables.
The Noose
1958 96 minutes
March 22 | 9:15 PM
March 30 | 9:15 PM
Has’s debut feature—following a day in the life of a desperate, chaotic drunkard—expressionistically renders the post-traumatic delirium dwelling within the everyday.
Farewells
1958 Poland 97 minutes Polish with English subtitles
March 24 | 1:00 PM
March 26 | 3:30 PM
Has’s second feature chronicles a budding, doomed romance between a bourgeois student and a world-weary barmaid in prewar Poland.
One Room Tenants
March 24 | 8:30 PM
March 28 | 1:30 PM
1960 Poland 92 minutes Polish with English subtitles
Has continues his preoccupation with the relationship between cinema and literature in his darkly funny third feature, about a sickly writer and the overcrowded single-room apartment he shares with a motley assortment of acquaintances and near-strangers in 1930s Warsaw.
Goodbye to the Past
1961 Poland 72 minutes Polish with English Subtitles
March 24 | 6:30 PM
March 26 | 1:30 PM
Has’s fourth feature follows a decorated actress (Lidia Wysocka) as she returns to her hometown to attend her grandfather’s funeral, occasioning her to revisit her family’s own history.
Gold Dreams
1962 Poland 92 minutes Polish with English subtitles
March 25 | 6:00 PM
March 27 | 1:00 PM
Memory and guilt intertwine and drive a young drifter to hide out at a remote mining outpost populated by men desperate to strike it rich.
How to Be Loved
1963 Poland 92 minutes Polish with English subtitles
Introduction by Annette Insdorf on March 27
March 22 | 6:45 PM
March 27 | 3:30 PM
One of the most acclaimed works of his early career, Has’s sixth feature follows a popular radio actress on a trip to Paris, where she crosses paths with another actor with whom she had a fraught love affair during World War II.
The Saragossa Manuscript
Wojciech Has 1964 Poland 183 minutes Polish with English Subtitles
Introduction by Annette Insdorf on March 23
March 23 | 5:30 PM
March 29 | 6:30 PM
March 30 | 3:00 PM
Based on one of the greatest works of world literature, Has’s most enduringly influential achievements centers on a mountain-crossing that turns into a sequence of supernatural and frightful events for a military officer wandering through Spain.
Codes
1966 Poland 80 minutes Polish with English subtitles
March 25 | 8:30 PM
March 28 | 3:45 PM
A haunted man’s return to Kraków following 20 years of self-imposed exile in London serves as the narrative setup for Has’s eighth feature, one whose thematic and formal developments presage his later masterpieces.
The Doll
1968 Poland 153 minutes Polish with English subtitles
March 24 | 3:30 PM
March 28 | 8:45 PM
March 31| 6:30 PM
Has’s lavish period epic, depicting the decline of the Polish aristocracy as their social perch is usurped by the ascendant capitalist class, follows a new-money merchant and his many attempts to capture the heart of a down-on-her-luck contessa.
The Hourglass Sanatorium
1973 Poland 124 minutes Polish with English subtitles
Introduction by Annette Insdorf on March 30
March 23 | 9:00 PM
March 28 |6:00 PM
March 30 |6:30 PM
The collective trauma of the Holocaust looms over this adaptation of Jewish author Bruno Schulz’s visionary and poetic reflection on the nature of time and death, which won the Jury Award at Cannes.
An Uneventful Story
1983 Poland 106 minutes Polish with English subtitles
March 26 | 6:00 PM
March 29 | 1:00 PM
Returning to the smaller-scale storytelling of Has’s earlier films and working from a story by Anton Chekhov, this intimate yet kaleidoscopic film follows an aging medical professor as he looks back on the events of his life regretfully.
Write and Fight
Wojciech Jerzy Has 1985 Poland 120 minutes Polish with English subtitles
March 26 | 8:30 PM
March 29 | 3:30 PM
One of Has’s most potent satires, Write and Fight is set at the outset of World War I and follows a young journalist who finds himself incarcerated in a Russian prison, where he’s forced to share a cell with a safecracker and a monk-turned-murderer.
Memoirs of a Sinner
Wojciech Jerzy Has 1986 Poland 114 minutes Polish with English subtitles
March 27 | 6:00 PM
March 31 | 1:30 PM
Set in 19th-century Scotland, this film concerns a deceased young man whose corpse is exhumed by grave robbers, only for the young man to return to life in order to recount the events that preceded his demise.
The Tribulations of Balthazar Kober
Wojciech Jerzy Has 1988 Poland 115 minutes Polish with English subtitles
March 27 | 8:30 PM
March 31 | 4:00 PM
One final journey for Has’s final film: a young alchemy student and his teacher flee the inquisition, embarking on a voyage across a 16th-century Germany ravaged by plague on which they meet a succession of eccentric religious figures.
Wojciech Jerzy Has Shorts Program
Wojciech Jerzy Has Poland 76 minutes Polish with English subtitles
March 30 |1:00 PM
A varied program collecting several of Has’s early fiction and documentary shorts, ranging from fascinating industrial films to assured miniature parables.
Organized by Dan Sullivan (FLC), Jedrzej Sablinski (DI Factory) and Polish Cultural Institute New York. Retrospective is co-financed by Polish Film Institute.
Acknowledgements:
Annette Insdorf and Milestone Films
Interrogative Design: Symposium and Book Launch in
