Movie reviews

WARSAW JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL

MARINA, MABUSE UND MORITURI (MARINA, MABUSE AND MORITURI)

Watchable. The film presents Artur Brauner about whom I heard from his also successful daughter which made me actually want to see the documentary about him. I'm impressed with his hard work, creativity and sense of the market. I hadn't realized the superb "Wunderkinder" ("Prodigies") which I had seen at the festival had been his production too. You hear him and about him. I guess it would have been more interesting if I had seen his other movies but he had started producing right after the war so they are mostly ancient and not shown nowadays. I also doubt I'd like such archaic ones.

The quality of movies at this year's festival varied, just like before, but I'd say those I saw were 50/50 excellent or decent. The novelty was the number of venues, especially the newly created Helios cinema - the quality of the screening was the same as in Polin but the seats less comfortable. On the other hand, Polin is always a bit of a hassle because your luggage is screened at the entrance. Polin also has a larger screening room and Helios was too small taken such a huge interest. I also see little point in issuing entry tickets one or two hours before the movie because letting people in on a first come first served basis, without paper tickets, would cause less frustration.