MetaFilter posts tagged with Polish

The Old Believers

djstig — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:18:50 -0800

Riabina who come from near Augustow in NE Poland where established in 1988 are apparently the only musical group of "Old Believers." Here are is a small selection of videos about Riabina by a filmmaker who stumbled across the singing group in a small town in Poland. It looks like these are trailers for a full length documentary that doesn't seemed to have happened yet. However there is enough interesting stuff in the 15 or so minutes that are up on Youtube.

"blue eyes that had seen Franz Josef in his glory at the Court Opera in 1908 close upon a view of rusty bed frames and cracked concrete walls."

orthogonality — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 04:05:41 -0800

"Habsburg! A vile being, heir to an illustrious name, born to a fortune, to honours, to soldiers, to prestige, and who finished as the lowest of Montmartre pimps, living from the money of a poor and unstable girl whom he sent to commit his foul deeds in his place!"

That was after this Polish scion of the most famous family in Europe and commander of a soi disant "Ukrainian Legion" failed to finagle the crown as a Socialist king of The Ukraine, and became instead a patron of the rent boys of Paris who "handled women by necessity and men for pleasure". And all that before he turned successively a Nazi sympathizer, a British spy, and finally came, for the first and last time, to Ukraine's capital Kiev as a victim of Stalin and the Twentieth Century.

One Minute Languages

sveskemus — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:34:32 -0800

At One Minute Languages you can learn greetings, talking about names, counting, and more in Catalan, Danish, French, German, Irish, Japanese, Luxembourgish, Mandarin, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, and Russian.

Imperium Kontratakuje

genghis — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 10:11:21 -0800

Apparently whenever US movies were released in Soviet-era Poland, the posters were discarded and replaced by new versions by Polish artists. Alternately disturbing and frickin' awesome, and often containing political comments of varying subtlety. Previously.

Jerzy Duda-Gracz

Meatbomb — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:43:31 -0800

I'll bet if you aren't Polish you've never heard of Jerzy Duda-Gracz. Poor guy doesn't even have an English Wikipedia page [pl], even though he's the most popular post-war painter [pl] in his homeland. Come inside to see some of his work. There was nothing that couldn't be made mundane, ugly, and worthy of our pity or derision in Duda-Gracz's broken, dirty world. There's always something to be ashamed of, embarrassed about... and yet the work is still beautiful and compelling.

Painting 1632, reconstruction attempt. Not hard to read the symbolism in an ephemeral hasidic Jew half-fading into the flaking paint of a neglected old wall.
Babel 2, as constructed by the noble Polish working classes. Always a good time for a short break.
The Beautiful Pipefitter (first one on the page). One of my personal favourites - even if everyone is ugly, somebody gets to be the prettiest.
Summer Gal
Painting 1332, village - father. Notice the technique, present in much of his work, in which the rot and decay of the surrounding environment seeps into and infects the subject.
Painting 1668 - Polish Motif - Waiting 2. Sometimes his anti-patriotic streak can get quite vicious - this one mocks the standard "King on Horseback".
Painting 876 of the Jurassic Cycle - in this period of his work he was able to raise bleak and hopeless emptiness and ruin to a transcendent level.
Painting 1675, Dry Valley - Beautiful Death of the Older Woman.
One more. Riders of the Apocalypse, or Moonlighting. One of his more well-known communist era works, here he again conveys the sorry fuckedupedness of the "incurable disease called Poland", in the form of three dejected proletarians desperately pulling a state-owned cement mixer to a privately organised job. It also delivers a backhanded profane homage to Józef Chełmoński's Czwórka.

Things suck today, but don't worry - they can and will get worse.

Behold the Protong!

louche mustachio — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 21:18:19 -0800

Stanislav Szukalski was born in Warta, Poland on December 13, 1893. When he was only six years old, a teacher sent him to the headmaster's office for whittling a pencil. The headmaster examined the pencil more closely and discovered that young Stanislav had carved a tiny, near-perfect figure. Szukalski studied art in the United States as a teen, then returned to his native Poland, where in 1934, he was declared "The Greatest Living Artist" by the Polish government, and was to be given his own museum to house his works. Unfortunately, The Siege of Warsaw forced him to flee to the United States. The museum was destroyed by bombing, and much of his work was destroyed. Back in the States, he toiled in obscurity until 1971, when his work was discovered by Glenn Bray. Bray became his patron, and issued two publications of his work. Bray also attempted to generate interest from museums, but despite the quality and quantity of Szukalski's work, they were not interested. Szukalski's strange and passionate belief in his "science" of Zermatism may have contributed to their antipathy. He believed that all human culture was derived from a single perfect race that originated on Easter Island, and that racial variation was due to interbreeding with the Yetinsin, an interbreeding that would ultimately lead to the downfall of humanity.

The hermit of the Wolverhampton Ring Road

low_horrible_immoral — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 05:05:00 -0800

Joseph Stawinoga, tramp, hermit, holy man, Facebook celebrity and (alleged) former member of the SS, has died, aged 86.

Bacterial marketing: the other Oskar Schindler

goodnewsfortheinsane — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 18:20:23 -0800

Upon the Nazi invasion of Poland, pediatrician Eugeniusz Łazowski and his friend Stanisław Matulewicz fabricated a fake typhus epidemic to save Polish Jews from the Nazis. Knowing that typhus-infected Jews would be summarily executed, non-Jews were injected with the harmless Proteus OX19, which would generate false positives for typhus. Anglicising his name to "Eugene Lazowski", the doctor moved to the United States after the war. He lived and worked in Chicago from 1958, and passed away in late 2006 at the vernerable age of 92, in Eugene (!), Oregon. Oddly little is written about Lazowski and Matulewicz on the web; although apparently there has been work on a documentary titled "A Private War" by a filmmaker named Ryan Bank. So feel free to add supporting links if you are aware of any.

Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz

Meatbomb — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 07:21:39 -0800

Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz , Witkacy for short. Art ist, photographer, absurdist playwright, surrealist novelist, philo sopher, witness to the Russian revolution, art theoretician and critic, the Great Malinowski's closest friend, drug fiend, and by most accounts a raving maniac and self-involved pain in the ass. His greatest novel was sadly prophetic: fleeing east to escape the invading Nazis, and then hearing the news that the Communists were also on the way, he slit his wrists on September 18, 1939 in the village of Jeziory, a martyr and victim to his obstinate belief in the freedom and independence of man against the bankruptcy of ideology and the coming wave of totalitarianism.
Previously here, but this guy's work is just too bizarrely compelling, and his legacy too obscure, to not get a little bit more attention.

Larger Than Life: Christine Granville

Medieval Maven — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 16:56:57 -0800

The Real-Life Vesper Lynde. Known to history as Christine Granville, Krystyna Skarbek was first Polish nobility and later Churchill's favorite spy. Undaunted by weather, Christine skied over the Tatras from Hungary to Poland to gather intelligence and participated in the liberation of France. She was awarded the Croix de Guerre, but found herself ill-suited to normal employment, and worked as a saleswoman at Harrods and as a telephonist before becoming an oceanliner stewardess. Along the way, Christine met Ian Fleming, who may have based his first "Bond Girl" on the intrepid spy. Want to know more? Read her recently republished biography or order her file from the Briish National Archives.

Stanislaw Lem: 1921-2006

jdroth — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 08:54:05 -0800

Stanislaw Lem: 1921-2006. Polish science-fiction giant Stanislaw Lem died this morning. He was 84. Though Lem was not as well known as Asimov or Heinlein or the other "Masters", he was just as important to the genre. Lem was not a fan of traditonal science-fiction, and in his work tried to approach futuristic themes from a more humanistic, almost psychological, perspective. (And his books are funny!) His best-known work, Solaris, was twice made into a film, most recently in 2002. [Woefully out-of-date official site.]

Slavomir Rawicz

afu — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 12:58:17 -0800

Slavomir Rawicz was a Polish calvary officer, who was imprisoned by the Soviets and eventually taken to a prison in Siberia. With 7 companions, including one mysterious american, he escaped and journeyed to the south, crossing Mongolia, the Gobi Desert and Tibet before making it to British India. Or at least this is what he claims in his book "The Long Walk." Nobody has ever found evidence that he was ever in russia or that any of his companions ever existed. Oh and he also claims to have seen Yetis.

Polish movie poster gallery

jonson — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 16:23:59 -0800

The always great (and frequently linked) RetroCrush currently has an exhibit on Polish movie posters for western films; seemingly devoid of the original branding & identity art, it's fun to try and guess what movie the images could even be trying to promote. Some are beautiful, some are amateurish, all are intriguing.

Power mad conman and the Polish Mafia

ClanvidHorse — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 02:47:56 -0800

The delusional world of Robert Hendy-Freegard, assasin/spy/carsalesman The tale of a power-mad car salesman. The guy managed to get so many people to do so many crazy things that I suggest you read the link for yourself. Unbelievable.

maybe adam sandler will make a song

tsarfan — Mon, 28 Mar 2005 11:19:03 -0800

Happy Dingus Day! The little known day-after-Easter holiday originally celebrated in Poland involves men dumping water on women and women chasing men around with sticks or pussywillows.

Piles of Polish Posters (Plakaty) Posted Presently.

.kobayashi. — Sun, 13 Mar 2005 21:16:28 -0800

Freedom on the Fence: The Polish Poster. While we're at it: The history and culture of the Polish poster and an analysis of American Films in Polish Posters. Or, if you'd prefer, The Classic Polish Film Poster database (where the Disney/Children's film posters are quite lovely). Also, The Wallace Library at the Rochester Institute of Technology has a fantastic searchable and browse-able database, with many hi-res images. Finally, some other Polish Poster Galleries. (What's that? You want more? You want artist-specific galleries? Okay. Here's work by Mieczyslaw Gorowski, Piotr Kunce, Wieslaw Walkuski, and Jan Sawka. Oh, you wanted Communist-era Polish propaganda posters? Fine. Here ya go.) [previous MeFi discussion on Polish film posters; also, some of the images from these links may be NSFW, depending on how S your W environment is.]

m-azing

Man O' Straw — Fri, 04 Mar 2005 13:23:23 -0800

What is m-city.org? Well, it’s part urban street-art movement, part online, interactive stencil and community gallery. It’s got interchangeable buildings and people (not to mention robots and monkeys!), but this isn't your father’s SimCity™. Unless maybe your father’s a Polish tagger.

A History of Polish Jazz

Bighappyfunhouse — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 22:48:27 -0800

A History of Polish Jazz

Czeslaw Milosz

lilboo — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 13:19:55 -0800

Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) - one of the greatest poets of the 20th century - passed away on Saturday in Krackow, Poland. I want to remember him here with this: "Conversation with Jeanne"

patrickje — Thu, 16 May 2002 17:02:56 -0800

Polish movie posters. The Polish Poster Gallery has a fascinating collection of artist renditions of american movie posters. The collection compares favorably with the 50 Greatest Movie Posters, as listed by Premiere magazine.
(via fark)

kliuless — Thu, 27 Sep 2001 17:53:48 -0800

polish posters not only does poland have the best cinematographers, but their movie posters are really awesome, too. inflammatory, erotic, surreal, and cute... well, not cute :) truly art as advertisement and good for decoration!

Mo Nickels — Sat, 08 Sep 2001 08:50:37 -0800

Polish slang! Having just moved to Greenpoint, Brooklyn, the heart of Polish New York City, I've been digging for Polish links. English-Polish computing dictionary. Useful Polish phrases, with audio. Simple Polish lessons and email list. Polish spelling dictionary. Warsaw Voice English-language newspaper. Warsaw Business Journal, in English. Warsaw Insider, a city guide. Portal for Wroclaw, capital of Lower Silesia. Kracow Academic Radio. Radio KRAJ from Brisbane. Polish Reader's Digest. Finally, The Official Site of His Serene Highness Dennis Fürst Blücher von Wahlstatt.