CINEQUEST FILM FESTIVAL 21 - WAR GAMES AND THE MAN WHO STOPPED THEM

War Games and the Man Who stopped them

Reviewed by Lidia Thompson & Marcus Siu

1. Ryszard Kuklinski at the Warsaw Pact Conference, 1980

© Apple Film Production

Were it not for the actions of one Polish Colonel, we might all be living in the wreckage of a nuclear war – Charlie Cockey

In the 1970s, the Warsaw Pact armies under the USSR control occupied Poland and most of Central Europe. The Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, commonly known as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty, subscribed to by eight communist countries in Europe.   In May 1955, it was established by the USSR’s initiative and realized in Warsaw, as a military response to an integration of West Germany to NATO Pact.

Colonel Ryszard Kukliński, who served over twenty years in the rank with the Polish Army, solely subordinated to political interests of the Soviet Empire. In 1972, Kukliński contacted the CIA, and for nine years, handed them over 40,000 secret Warsaw Pact documents.  His position had made him one of the most important sources of information that the Western world had in the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War era. His increasing knowledge about the Warsaw Pact plans, while working in the Operation Board of the General Staff, also played a significant role.  According to the plans, Poland could be destroyed and become a nuclear desert as a result from a possible third World War.  In 1980, after the Solidarity movement was established, Kukliński continued to inform Washington about the Polish government plans to suppress the Solidarity movement and implement the Martial law in Poland.  In November 1981, with his covert operations close to being exposed, Kukliński and his family evacuated to Berlin, and then afterwards, to the United States. On December 13^th, 1981, the Martial law was established in Poland, becoming reality; military vehicles and soldiers patrolled the major cities of Poland, telephone lines were disconnected, airports and main roads access were closed.  Democracy was suppressed for eight long years.   

In 1984, in a secret court trial, the Warsaw Military Court sentenced Kukliński  to death.  In 1990, a year after the communist regime collapsed, his death sentence was changed to 25 years in prison.   In 1995, his sentence was cancelled and his ranking of Colonel was completely restored.  In 1998, he visited Poland but never returned, remaining in exile during the last years of his life in the United States.   His decision to not return to Poland remained controversial, as the Polish people did not know whether or not to deem him as a hero or a traitor. That issue was never fully solved for many Poles.   

“War Games and the Man Who Stopped Them”, written, directed and produced by Dariusz Jablonski, is a well done documentary.   Jablonski approaches the story from many angles by interviewing the members of the highest echelons from both sides and those most closely associated with Kukliński; from the U.S. head of espionage, General William E. Odom to the Warsaw Pact, Commander-in-Chief Viktor Kulikov, the Polish General, Wojciech Jaruzelski, and former Polish President, Lech Walesa, and to friends and family.  The film asks probing questions about Kukliński .  When did he become convinced to make his move to contact the CIA?  Did he ever regret what he did?  

In addition to the extensive archive footage, we see the officials during tightly-framed interviews and meetings in voice-over filmed with a small, often half-hidden camera.  Photos of Kukliński come to life with 3D motion effects, and the recurring theme of the war games.

Internationally renowned, Dariusz Jablonski, a graduate of the Directing Department at the Film Academy in Lodz, and recipient of many national and international awards, worked on some of the most ambitious film projects of Polish cinema in the Eighties.  He was the First Assistant Director on “The Decalogue” (1989), directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski, and a First Assistant Director on “Magnat” (1987) directed by Filip Bajon.  Jablonski is also member of the European Film Academy and the Board of the European Producers Club.  He is the founder of Apple Film Production; one of the first and leading independent production company in Poland, which to date has produced 21 documentaries, nine feature films and 15 television series.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGz8PlGxiso

Director: Dariusz Jablonski; Producers: Izabela Wojcik, Violetta Kaminska; Co-producer: Patrik Pass; Writer: Dariusz Jablonski; Cinematographers: Tomasz Michalowski, Pawel Banasiak; Editors: Milenia Fiedler, Bartosz Pietras; Music: Michal Lorenc; Cast; Józef Szaniawski, Hanna Kuklińska, Stanisław Radaj, Zbigniew Brzeziński, Walter Lang; Countries: Poland, Slovakia; Language: English; Length: 110 min.; Genre: Drama

War Games and the Man Who Stopped Them plays on March 5th at 1:30pm, March 9th at 9:30pm, and March 10^th at 3:45.  All screenings are at the Camera 12.

Buy tickets: http://www.cinequest.org/event_view.php?eid=1560

2. Ryszard Kuklinski at his yacht

© Apple Film Production

CINEQUEST FILM FESTIVAL 21 - IRENA SENDLER

IRENA SENDLER: IN THE NAME OF THEIR MOTHERS

Reviewed by Lidia Thompson & Marcus Siu

Courtesy of Cinequest 2011

As a Polish Catholic social worker, Irena Sendler along with a group of young women in Nazi-occupied Poland managed to rescue 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto.  They smuggled them under garbage, in suitcases, in boxes, though the canals, as well as other inconceivable passageways that would rescue them from being deported to the concentration camps, saving their lives from the Nazis.  Their unspeakable act of heroism and bravery was kept quiet for decades during the communist era.  The documentary “Irena Sendler: In the Name of Their Mothers”, directed and co-produced by American filmmaker Mary Skinner, brings this miraculous and profound story of human goodness to life.  Extensive archive footage and interviews with survivor, Sendler, her co-workers and the children she had rescued, is indeed, an unforgettable experience. 

In 1939, when World War II began, over 3 million Jews lived in Poland with 400,000 residing in Warsaw, making up one third of its population.  In 1940, the Warsaw Ghetto was established and was the largest of all the ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe.  The conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto were unbearable and worsening each day.   In 1941, the average food rations for Jews were limited to 186 calories, compared to 1,669 calories for Poles and 2,614 calories for Germans.  People in the Ghetto were starving and dying on the streets, while hundreds of orphans begged for a piece of bread.  The situation was traumatic for everyone, but especially for defenseless children. 

Irena Sendler was 29 when the Nazis invaded Poland.  She served as a social worker in the Polish Underground and later with the Żegota Resistance Organization.  As an employee of the Warsaw Social Welfare Department, she had a special permit to enter the Warsaw Ghetto to check for signs of Typhus; something the Nazis feared would spread beyond the Ghetto.  During these visits she and her co-workers intercepted approximately 2,500 Jewish children and smuggled them to safety, rescuing them from their certain death in concentration camps.   Their risk of helping Jews in any way was extremely dangerous; if they were discovered by the Nazi’s.

“Nothing was more dangerous than as hiding a Jew” quotes, Polish Resistance Activist, Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, “because if you are hiding a box of ammunition, you don’t need to feed it every day, you don’t have to care for it if it becomes ill, and the neighbors don’t need to know about it”.  Not only did Sendler and those young women smuggle Jewish children out of the Ghetto, but they also provided them with false documents sheltering them in Polish families, and then were sent off to safer places like the catholic convents outside Warsaw.  In addition, Sendler maintained the identities of those young survivors.  She buried a jar keeping track of their original Jewish names along with their newly created Polish names, so when the war ended they could be reunited with their parents, if they were still alive.  In 1943, Sendler was arrested by the Gestapo, severely tortured, and sentenced to death, but in the last minute was rescued by the Polish Resistance.  She survived World War II, but during the communist regime she was prosecuted because of her connections with the Polish Resistance.  Her story was unknown for many years.

In 1999, Kansas students produced a play based on research into Irena Sendler's life story entitled “Life in a Jar”.  This drama has now been performed over 285 times across the United States, Canada and in Poland.  It has since been adapted to television as “The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler” and over 1,500 media stories.

Mary Skinner, director of the documentary, acknowledged on the official film website, “I grew up with stories about the courage and compassion of Polish heroines like Irena Sendler.  I heard about them from my Polish mother.  She was barely a teenager in 1941, when she was rounded up in Warsaw and sent to a concentration camp for smuggling food.  Her father had been killed, her mother was dying, and her brother and sister had already been taken.  No one else in her family survived the war. 

But my mother never forgot the ordinary women like Irena Sendler – the ‘angels of mercy’ in Warsaw who detested war, but would go to the devil for a war-wounded child like her.  Right before my mother died, I felt I needed to find those women, to tell their stories, to remember them.”

http://www.irenasendlerfilm.com/

Director: Mary Skinner; Producers: Mary Skinner, Betsy Bayha, Piotr Piwowarczyk, Richard Wormser, Jan Legnitto, Paul Mitchell, Richard Adams; Cinematographers: Andrzej Wolf, Slawomir Grunberg; Editors: Marta Wohl, Anna Ksiesopolska; Music: Tom Disher; Countries: USA, United Kingdom; Language: English, German, and Polish, (w/ English subtitles); Length: 60 min.; Genre: Documentary

Preceded by the short film: Living For 32; Director: Kevin Breslin; 40 min.; USA; The inspirational story of a survivor of the tragic Virginia Tech shooting massacre and his courageous journey of renewal and hope.

Irena Sendler: In the Name of Their Mothers plays Sunday, March 6^th, 2011 at 2pm at the San Jose Repertory, and Wednesday, March 9^th, 2011 at 9pm at the Camera 12.

Buy tickets:   http://www.cinequest.org/event_view.php?eid=1510

CINEQUEST FILM FESTIVAL 21 - MIDNIGHT SON

MIDNIGHT SON (USA)  

After having vampire symptoms and watching a vampire video on his TV, Jacob (Zak Kilberg) tests to see what would happen if he put a wooden cross against his forehead. He is happily surprised that his forehead did not burn.

Vampire movies produced in today’s Hollywood system have become too “popcorn” for my tastes.  I have become quite cynical when I see endless lines of teenage girls camped out several days in advance for a special midnight advance screening of the latest in the series of a franchise movie at their local Cineplex, so they can scream and drool over their favorite heartthrob, and perhaps, see the movie at least two or three more times before it is mandatory for them to return to school the following Monday. 

Not to say these particular movies don’t have any redeeming values to them.  If you look past all the blatant supernatural visual effects and vampire cliché’s that Hollywood bestows on its audiences, you will see that there can be something a little more cerebral hidden behind all those computer graphics (CGI). 

Recent international offerings in the last couple of years brought us a new wave of realism for vampire films, such as Sweden’s “Let the Right One In” and Korea’s “Thirst”, which make watching them a much more thought provoking and intriguing.   The independently made, “Midnight Son” belongs to this group, as it gives the overdone genre a new fresh perspective.  

Jacob (Zak Kilberg), a 24-year old security guard who works nights, has a rare skin disorder that prevents him from going out during the day.  He seals off his windows in his basement apartment, so he is not exposed to sunlight.   While painting artistic sunsets on canvas, he starts to discover that whatever he eats (mainly microwavable meals loaded with carbohydrates), his appetite is not satisfied, regardless of how much food he consumes.  He is diagnosed by a doctor who tells him his body is malnourished and thinks Jacob is lying about him “eating like a horse”, and tells him that his body is craving something.   As each night progresses, his body continues to change; much like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.

As he starts to slurp the beef juices from the Styrofoam meat packages, he begins to recognize what his body truly craves.  Replenishing his empty Starbucks coffee cup with “red liquid” that he picked up at the local neighborhood meat market, he walks around naturally along the streets and into late night video stores.  He is slowly transforming into what we know as a vampire, but he is still trying to figure it out for himself, as his diet continues to change before us.   To fulfill his new appetite, he finds more creative ways to find his meal, so he doesn’t grow weak. 

In the meantime, Zak’s only social outlet is going to the neighborhood bar in the wee hours of the night, where he meets Mary (Maya Parish), who gets his attention by selling him candy and cigarettes outside the bar.  As they get to know each other, a relationship between them starts to bloom and develop.  At the same time, his condition worsens, as does Mary’s, who also has personal problems of her own, as well.   Strange things start happening even at work, where Zak becomes oblivious to strange events that happened nearby, surprising even the police department.  This is where the film takes you in for a wild ride. 

Director and writer, Scott Leberecht, along with an all around excellent cast led by Zak Kilberg and Maya Parish, create a moving, sort of a “coming of age” vampire movie; injecting humanity and compassion into their characters.   The chemistry within the two leads is quite natural and credible as they begin their relationship and both try to overcome their personal struggles.   

From the opening notes of the eerie musical score to some bleak cinematography, this is one film that grabbed me from the beginning and took me on a journey in different directions.   “Midnight Son” is an impressive feature film debut for Leberecht, and I certainly hope to see him continue his work as a filmmaker.   After all, “Everybody’s got their thing”.

Reviewed by Marcus Siu

Watch trailer:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS2nLbEoMy8

Director: Scott Leberecht; Producers: Scott Leberecht, Matt Compton; Executive Producers: Eduardo Sanchez, Reed Frerichs; Writer: Scott Leberecht; Cinematographer: Lyn Moncrief; Editors: Ian McCamey, Scott Leberecht; Music: Kays Alatrakchi; Cast: Zak Kilberg, Maya Parish, Jo D. Jonz, Larry Cedar, Tracey Walter, Arlen Escarpeta; Country: USA; Language: English; Length: 88 min.; Genre: Drama

Midnight Son plays on March 4th at 9:30pm at San Jose Repertory Theatre, March 6th at 6:45pm at the Camera 12, and March 11th at 12:30pm at the Camera 12.

Buy tickets: http://www.cinequest.org/event_view.php?eid=1521

Jacob (Zak Kilberg) tries to conceal himself from Mary (Maya Parish) after his eyes turn yellow in a very intimate moment.