Ida - Inaugural film of Polish Film Series Announced

Auggie Heschmeyer, Film Series Chair, says he chose this film because it represents a modern Poland looking backwards, rather than a Poland stuck in its past. “A huge number of Polish films of the last 50 years have dealt with the injustices suffered by the Polish people at the hands of the Nazis, painting the Polish people as nothing but victims,” says Heschmeyer. “Ida, however, feels modern in the fact that the film tries to come to terms with Poland's own involvement in the Holocaust, showing the Polish people as three-dimensional people, rather than blameless victims.

“In addition to the content of the film looking into the past, the filmmaking, itself, represents this same theme. Written and directed by is from acclaimed director Pawel Pawlikowski, a child of postbellum Poland, the film utilizes old-style filmmaking techniques to tell its story. Rather than using the latest and greatest in technology to create a colorful and over-the-top aesthetic, so common in today's cinema, Pawlikowski chooses to, simply, keep his camera on a tripod and shoot the film in black and white. The result is something much more potent and affecting than any film of a similar ilk.

The film is a bookend of sorts to the film we collaborated with last month at the Youngstown Jewish Film Festival. This critically acclaimed, intimate drama is about a young novitiate nun in 1960s Poland who is on the verge of taking her vows. Before she does, she is told she must spend the weekend with Wanda, her only living relative. Both women start a journey not only to find their family's tragic story, but also to see who they really are and where they belong. They question what they used to believe in. Both of them are trying to go on living but only one eventually can. Critics describe it as “the latest masterpiece in a powerful tradition.”

For mroe info call 330-647-4600
Auggie Heschmeyer
Chair