MetaFilter posts tagged with polish

Paths of Hate

Joakim Ziegler — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 18:36:00 -0800

Paths of Hate is a highly stylized Polish CGI animated short movie which to an extent mimics traditional cel animation, but goes far beyond what's practically possible with traditional techniques. It also has some excellent, high-intensity aerial combat. Possibly NSFW for some light blood and gore.

Wie??

narain — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 14:23:35 -0800

Polish names are hard for Germans. The Danish language is hard for the Danes. Singing in French is hard for New Zealanders. (MLYT) (Previously: An English-esque song that is hard for English speakers.) In the Polish war comedy Jak rozpętałem drugą wojnę światową (How I Unleashed World War II), "Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz" is a fake name that the protagonist, Franek Dolas, gives to mislead and confuse the Gestapo. For those of you who speak Polish, the whole film appears to be on YouTube (parts one, two, three). The send-up of the Danish language is from Uti vår hage, a Norwegian sketch comedy series. The Danish number system really is very complicated (via Language Log). Uti vår hage have made a sequel to their Danish language sketch, but it doesn't quite have the magic of the original. Flight of the Conchords, formerly "New Zealand's 4th most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo", have of course been on MetaFilter many times previously.

The Seventh Voyage of Ijon Tichy, by Stanislaw Lem

Egg Shen — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 14:23:52 -0800

It was on a Monday, April second - I was cruising in the vicinity of Betelgeuse - when a meteor no larger than a lima bean pierced the hull, shattered the drive regulator and part of the rudder, as a result of which the rocket lost all maneuverability. The voyages of Ijon Tichy have been loosely adapted into a German television series. You can watch its second and fifth episodes with English subtitles.

Arthur Rubinstein plays Chopin

Trurl — Tue, 29 May 2012 18:18:20 -0800

As a tribute to Frédéric Chopin, we take you to the home of Arthur Rubinstein - one of the most distinguished interpreters of his works. Of course that charm was buttressed by the mind of a superb musician, and by the fingers of a spectacular technician. Rubinstein coaxed a big, sonorous, golden tone from the instrument, and his fingers were in total command of anything in his repertoire. And that, paradoxically, was true even when he dropped notes or smudged passages here and there. For it was clear that a sloppy episode resulted not from lack of native ability but rather from sheer scorn of pedanticism. He was daring, he took chances, and if a few notes suffered en route that was unimportant. He was a natural, born to play the piano, and when he was on the concert stage one felt as though the piano itself was welded to his body. Musician and instrument were one. - Harold C. Schoenberg The Nocturnes Op. 9, No. 1 Op. 9, No. 2 Op. 9, No. 3 Op. 15, No. 1 Op. 15, No. 2 Op. 15, No. 3 Op. 27, No. 1 Op. 27, No. 2 Op. 32, No. 1 Op. 32, No. 2 Op. 37, No. 1 Op. 37, No. 2 Op. 48, No. 1 Op. 48, No. 2 Op. 55, No. 1 Op. 55, No. 2 Op. 62, No. 1 Op. 62, No. 2 Op. 72, No. 1

Get your pussy willows and squirt guns ready!

ridiculous — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 08:37:14 -0800

Happy Dyngus Day! Like St. Patrick's Day for the Polish.

Prisoner 918

zarq — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 12:21:42 -0800

802 Prisoners attempted escape from Auschwitz. 144 were successful. Kazimierz Piechowski, a Polish boy scout, was one of them. Today, at age 91, he tells his story. "Uciekinier (The Escapee)" is a 42-minute documentary about him. Here's an additional short (3-minute) documentary about / reenactment of his escape, narrated by Mr. Piechowski.

Opera and Ballet, Explained

bwg — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 17:17:27 -0800

Satiric Art by Polish artist Pawła Kuczyńskiego (Paul Kuczynski).

R.I.P. Henryk Górecki

aught — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 07:08:23 -0800

Composer Henryk Górecki, known for his choral and orchestral works in the "sacred minimalist" style, has died. He was best known for his Symphony #3, "Sorrowful Songs," (YT sample) premiered in the U.S. in 1994. Górecki's Symphony #4, scheduled to premier in 2010, was postponed because of the composer's extended illness, will not be completed.

The Manuscript Found in Saragossa

misteraitch — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 14:27:21 -0800

The Saragossa Manuscript is an unusual movie based on a strange book by a remarkable man. Praised by Buñuel, admired by Coppola and Scorsese, Wojciech Has’ 'The Saragossa Manuscript' (Rękopis znaleziony w Saragossie) is a 3-hour-long black-and-white epic with a confusingly complex structure of nested plots and subplots. Byzantine as it may be, the film greatly shortens and simplifies the convolutions in the book, 'The Manuscript Found in Saragossa' (Manuscrit Trouvé à Saragosse), on which it was based. The book's author, Jan Potocki, was an "historian, archaeologist, traveller, ethnographer, orientalist [...] collector, political activist and publicist, printer, aeronaut, novelist and dramatist" whose death, reportedly, was no less extraordinary than the rest of his life:

The thought that he had become a werewolf obsessed him. Potocki is said to have taken the silver knob of a sugar bowl, formed in the shape of a strawberry, and filed this into a bullet, which he had blessed by the castle chaplain. Then on 20 November 1815 (or, depending on your source, 2 or 11 December), he put the bullet in his pistol, stuck the barrel in his mouth, and pulled the trigger, thus earning himself the sobriquet of being “the man who shot himself with a strawberry.”

Poland reels

Busy Old Fool — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 02:37:45 -0800

The President of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, his wife and 130 others, including a huge proportion of the elite of Polish politics, have died in a plane crash. The Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, is one of the few major governmental figures who was not on the flight. It crashed near Katyn, scene of one of the greatest of Poland's many tragedies, where thousands of Poles, mainly the top army officers, were killed by Russians 70 years ago. The flight was taking them to a memorial for the massacre. The dead include the army chief of staff, 6 top generals, the governor of the central bank, the deputy foreign minister, the ambassador to Russia, 15 MPs from all parties, 2 vice presidents of parliament, one vice-president of the Senate, most of the top figures from the families of the victims of Katyn memorial society and Ryszard Kaczorowski, the final president of the London-based government-in-exile during Soviet rule.

How to Iron a Shirt

chunking express — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:58:09 -0800

How to iron a shirt. Everything is cooler in Japan. Bonus! How to polish your shoes.

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.