Facets' Daily Find

How the Wizard of Oz should have ended. Pure hilarity.

Find more "movie endings" over at How It Should Have Ended. Beware: this site will eat hours from your life.

Facets' Daily Find

Sita Sings the Blues! In its entirety! This animated feature by Nina Paley was one of Facets' favorite films of 2008.

Click here for larger, hi-res version (and for info on donating to a fund to help Paley pay off the $50,000.00 loan she took out to pay for the film's music rights).

Facets' College Corner: Mall Girls

Guest blogger and Oakton Community College student Katarzyna Prokop attended the Polish Film Festival in America, which played in October at a variety of venues around the city, including Facets Cinematheque. Katarzyna reviews one of the more popular films in the festival, Mall Girls, exclusively for Facets Features.


On October 8th I had a chance to attend the 21st Polish Film Festival in America, which showcased a diverse selection of features. Mall Girls (Galerianki) was directed by a young Polish filmmaker named Katarzyna Roslaniec. This talented woman created a story with tough realism about today’s world of teenagers in Poland. The main character, Alicja, is an outsider and an ordinary student who wants to be like the popular girls in her class. She soon finds herself in a hip group of schoolgirls and discovers how they make money to buy the latest, fashionable clothes and cell phones. Along the way she undergoes a tough initiation. After school, her new group of friends goes to the local malls and takes money from strangers for sexual favors. The situation becomes more complicated when Alicja discovers that she has feelings for one of her classmates. She then has to decide if she wants to be accepted by the group of friends or go her own way and follow her emotions.

The storyline of the film made an impression on me, though the movie itself has its weaknesses as well as its strengths. The narrative structure of the film is very simple and undemanding because it’s linear. The viewer doesn’t have to pay special attention to the order of events, which makes the movie slightly dull and ordinary.

However, Roslaniec uses mise-en-scene very well. For example, the natural-looking lighting style and location shooting give a dark and depressing look to the movie. It perfectly illustrates the harsh reality of life in Poland among the poor segment of society, and it gives an idea of the type of environment teenagers grow up in. Poverty combined with peer pressure pushes adolescents to violent behavior, deprivation, drugs, alcohol, and prostitution. Troubled teenagers have no other way but to pick the path of self-destruction, which takes a toll on their emotions and sense of humanity.

Roslaniec also knows when to move the camera. In the opening scene, the camera follows a group of three girls walking in the mall and then later walking through school, which signifies that the action is going to revolve around them. Motivated camera movement also appears in the scene in which Alicja is going to see a man named Zbyszek who’s suppose to be her first sponsor. This telegraphed that something bad might happen, because the tension was heightened in the scene by the moving camera. In the fight scenes between Kaya and Alicja and later between Milena and Alicja, Roslaniec uses hand-held camera. It makes the scenes seem more realistic and adds a “you are there” feeling to the action.

Roslaniec employs a simple symbolism for the movie that is so integrated into the storyline that we don’t notice that it’s symbolism. We see a significant close-up of Alicja’s handmaid bracelets. The bracelets are a symbol of Alicja’s innocence. We see her taking them off when she finally decides to become a part of the group. It’s at that moment that she chooses to give up her purity and become like the rest of the girls.

The ending of the movie is happy even though it might not be that obvious to some viewers. In the final scene we see a close-up shot of Alicja’s face. She’s smiling and looking in the bathroom mirror, washing off her makeup and fixing her hair in the way she used to wear it. She’s becoming a regular and innocent girl again. By washing off her shameful past she goes back to her normal and ordinary life.

The Polish Film Festival in America was a very interesting experience, especially for someone like me, who comes from Poland. I haven’t had a chance to see a Polish movie in a couple of years. It was very strange but at the same time exciting to see a Polish film, mainly because Polish cinema differs so strongly from American.

Polish filmmakers have a more realistic, rough and sometimes pessimistic approach to their material. After seeing and experiencing both Polish then American movies, I can truly say that I’ve gained more appreciation for Polish cinema. Festivals like these are not only an entertainment for the Polish community in America, but they’re also very educational. They promote foreign movies all around the world and make people familiar with specific styles in filmmaking in other countries. Thanks to this experience I have noticed the artistic approach to filmmaking among Polish directors, and realized how less commercial it is in comparison to America.

Facets' Daily Find

Pictures at an exhibition de Chris Marker

Facets' Daily Find

Fight (or wallow in) the post-holiday blues with a stunning clip from Bela Tarr's Damnation.

Facets' Daily Find

The fingers. They hypnotize.

Facets' Daily Find

A short from the Czech Republic for the holiday travelers: Cesky Den, directed by Genevieve Bailey!