Paweł Wysoczański

Dear Guests!

We invite you to the fourth screening in the series The Documentary Film and Its Makers. Another film by Paweł Wysoczański, about an extraordinary Polish doctor helping people with leprosy in India. The film was made in 2019. After the screening there will be a meeting with the doctor and the director of the film. You are warmly invited. Free admission.

Tomasz Kucharski, Mayor
of the Praga-Południe District of Warsaw,
the Szaserów Housing Cooperative
together with the Piwnica Poetycka ENS Foundation invite you to the series:
The Documentary Film and Its Makers
Paweł Wysoczański

A graduate of directing at the Krzysztof Kieślowski Faculty of Radio and Television of the University of Silesia in Katowice and of film studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Author of documentary and feature films awarded at festivals in Poland and abroad, including the documentary Jurek about Jerzy Kukuczka. An expert of the Polish Film Institute.

Screening IV: “Jutro czeka nas długi dzień” (A Long Day Awaits Us Tomorrow), a film shot in India about Dr Helena Pyz, an outstanding Polish doctor helping people with leprosy. A meeting with the director and the heroine of the documentary!

Thursday, 9 May 2024, 6 pm, Kredens pod Oknami, 13 Szklanych Domów Street, free admission

Dear Guests!

We warmly invite you to the second screening in our series “Film dokumentalny i jego twórcy” (The Documentary Film and Its Makers). Join us on Friday 15 March 2024 at 6 pm for a screening of the film “Jurek” by Paweł Wysoczański, followed by a meeting with the director. Free admission.

On 24 October 1989 Jerzy Kukuczka died during an expedition to Lhotse. For the first time he had gone to the Himalayas with money and equipment; he was already famous by then. Paweł Wysoczański’s documentary paints a portrait of a man who climbs upwards – literally, but also metaphorically. He travelled an extraordinary path: he was a scout who loved the mountains, became a star of the international media, began without money and became a man competing with Reinhold Messner to win the Crown of the Himalayas. The director spoke with Kukuczka’s family and friends, and we will also see archive material: photographs, recordings, and excerpts from television programmes and interviews, which together make up a portrait of the Himalayan climbing community of the 1980s. It is also a picture of the times in which they lived – hard and colourful at once, when idealism was worth more than fame.

“Very interesting, focused and dense. And non-judgmental – although one feels the director’s admiration for his subject, it was not made on bended knee, and it does not hide the awkward issues connected with Himalayan mountaineering (and, to a large extent, with Kukuczka himself), nor does it gloss over his dark side. It is also very solid work from a craft point of view: besides the typical documentary material there are staged scenes. That is always a risky combination – they usually introduce formal confusion, look out of place and jar with their artificiality and illustrativeness. Here they blend perfectly into the fabric of the film, enter seamlessly and are practically indistinguishable.”

Paweł Mossakowski, “Gazeta Wyborcza”

Dear all! This is the third screening in the series “The Documentary Film and Its Makers”, and the third meeting with Paweł Wysoczański. The next one is on 9 May. Today we invite you to a film that had its premiere only recently!

On 18 March at 6 pm, a screening of the film “MENSCH” at Kredens pod Oknami. We warmly invite you!

Ludwik Hirszfeld's life story could supply several heroes. The history of the first half of the 20th century is reflected in his fate. The hero of the film “Mensch” kept rising again even though the events he lived through destroyed his life and his work. Doctor, scientist, idealist. A forgotten hero, better known in the world than in Poland. A scientist “of blood”, which the world divided into “better” and “worse”. He made difficult choices, went against the current and believed that the world could be better. A cosmopolitan who could have continued his scientific career in Switzerland, but chose Poland. He could have lectured in America just after the war, but returned to Poland. His fate in the Warsaw ghetto is harrowing. Ludwik Hirszfeld's marriage to his wife Hanna was perhaps the most important choice he made in his life.

“Mensch” is the first feature-length film about Ludwik Hirszfeld. It contains never-before-shown archive material and statements from leading Polish, American, German, Swiss and Serbian scientists. The action is built from re-enactments that carry us into the reality in which Hirszfeld lived: into many realities, because “our” Hirszfeld was in fact a citizen of the world.

The film does not turn his biography into a tribute. Hirszfeld was not, and is not, a monument. He was close to people, lived and worked with people, for people. Ludwik Hirszfeld – Mensch.

We warmly invite you to the first documentary film in the series and to its maker, the film by Paweł Wysoczański:

"Kiedyś będziemy szczęśliwi" (We Will Be Happy Someday), 2011
Free admission. After the screening, a meeting with the director.

"Kiedyś będziemy szczęśliwi" is a film about a boy from the poorest district of Silesia – Lipiny. The hero of the film, Daniel Furmaniak, wants to live differently. He begins to shoot a film with his mobile phone. He asks his peers questions about their dreams.

Who would they like to become in the future? Will the teenagers be able to fulfil their dreams? Will reality not destroy their plans? Do dreams make sense? The film shot by Daniel is an opportunity to show the relationship between the boy and his charismatic grandmother Aniela.