Recent Posts

Most Used Categories

Tag: Arts

You are Here :
Poland - Polish - Polonia, , ,

The Ychtis Girl’s Choir to perform in Buffalo, NY

The Ychtis (from the Greek word for fish) Girls Choir, made up of girls from the Katowice area in Poland, will visit Buffalo next week Thursday and Friday.

The group will perform on Friday, July 25 at 7pm in Corpus Christi Church. They will also sing at the Polish Mass at 11:30 am on Thursday.

Admission is free, and free will offerings to benefit the choir will be welcome and appreciated.

The girls of the Ychtis Choir are chosen from families that are not very well to do and are provided an opportunity for professional song and dance training.

Dziewczęcy Zespół Wokalno-Taneczny Ychtis z Katowic wystąpi w kościele Bożego Ciała w Buffalo 25 lipca o godz. 7 wiecz.

Zespół zaśpiewa piosenki oparte na wierszach ks. Jana Twardowskiego

Wstęp wolny

Grupa również zaśpiewa podczas Polskiej mszy św. o 11:30 rano w czwartek 24 lipca

po dalsze informacje, proszę dzwonić do o. Anzelma Chałupki na numer tel. (716) 896-1050.

Current Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia,

TR Warszawa performs Macbeth, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn, NY

Brooklyn, June 17th through the 29th, 2008.

TR Warszawa, Poland’s most exciting theater company, arrives in New York with a spectacular production of Macbeth that boldly reinvents the classic for the twenty-first century. With a huge cinematic sweep, the production takes multi-media theater to the limit, directed by the gifted Grzegorz Jarzyna. A dramatic two-story set, video walls, special effects, an extraordinary, layered soundscape, and a deep well of acting tradition transform Shakespeare’s web of intimacy, politics and the supernatural into a contemporary living film.

TR Warszawa, formerly Teatr Rozmaitosci in Warsaw, has for decades been one of Poland’s best-known stages. It has secured a reputation as a contemporary theatre that is open to new ideas while preserving theatrical traditions. TR has made its mark in Europe and won numerous awards at national and international theatre festivals. Poland’s most popular stage directors —“ Grzegorz Jarzyna (artistic director since 1998, since 2006 also general director), Krzysztof Warlikowski, and Krystian Lupa —“ as well as the country’s most famous actors, work at TR.

St. Ann’s Warehouse will create an outdoor theater in the Civil War-era Tobacco Warehouse, located in Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park, across the street from St. Ann’s Warehouse. This historic site’s romantic, open air and column-free structure is well-suited to St. Ann’s visionary programming, at the gateway to the Brooklyn Waterfront.

Macbeth will be performed in Polish with English supertitles.

St. Ann’s Warehouse is at 38 Water Street, DUMBO, Brooklyn. For ticket information and directions, call (718) 254-8779.

This historic production is sponsored in part by the The Kosciuszko Foundation.

Poland - Polish - Polonia, ,

New York City – Szymanowski’s oratorio, “Stabat Mater,” to be performed

Karol Szymanowski’s (1882 – 1937) magnificent oratorio, “Stabat Mater,” will be performed Wednesday, April 16 at 8 PM at St. Ignatius Loyola Church (980 Park Avenue, 83 / 84 Streets, Manhattan). Kent Tritle will lead the Choir and Orchestra of St. Ignatius Loyola and soloists in this great work, one of Szymanowski’s towering achievements and one of the outstanding choral works of the twentieth century.

Although it ranks with Stravinsky’s “Symphony of Psalms” and Faure’s “Requiem,” the “Stabat Mater” is rarely performed; the most recent hearing in New York was nearly 20 years ago, and this is a rare chance to hear this wonderful composition. Tickets are $35. Preferred seating is $45, students / seniors $25.

The concert includes Camille Saint-Saen’s monumental “Organ Symphony” (Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 78) and Joseph Jpngens “Hymn for Organ and Orchestra.” At 7 PM, renowned organ virtuoso Ken Cowan, Assistant Professor of Organ at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ, performs a pre-concert organ recital featuring music by Widor, Ducasse, Saint-Saí«ns and Dupre.

Additional information is available at Sacred Music in Sacred Spaces, by E-mail, or by telephone at (212) 288-2520.

Christian Witness, Media, Perspective

The ABC on Philip Pullman

From The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams which I picked up from Why Pullman Killing God is no Bad Thing:

I read the books and the plays as a sort of thought experiment: this is, after all, an alternative world, or set of worlds. What would the Church look like, what would it inevitably be, if it believed only in a God who could be rendered powerless and killed, and needed unceasing protection? It would be a desperate, repressive tyranny. For Pullman, the Church evidently looks like this most of the time; it isn’t surprising that the only God in view is the Authority.

…

But this should not be read as a way of wriggling out of Pullman’s challenges to institutional religion. I end where I started. If the Authority is not God, why has the historic Church so often behaved as if it did indeed exist to protect a mortal and finite God? What would a church life look like that actually expressed the reality of a divine freedom enabling human freedom?

A modern French Christian writer spoke about “purification by atheism” – meaning faith needed to be reminded regularly of the gods in which it should not believe. I think Pullman and Wright do this very effectively for the believer. I hope too that for the non-believing spectator, the question may somehow be raised of what exactly the God is in whom they don’t believe.

Amen.

Christian Witness, Media, Perspective

The case of God Be Gone etal.

I ran across a blog called GodBeGone.

Looking at the writing there I drew an immediate comparison to the recent controversy over the Golden Compass movie.

Fr. Martin Fox pegged the objections to the movie in his article: Golden Compass author: ‘My books are about killing God.’

In it he saysHe attributes the citations in the second paragraph to research done by Jimmy Aikin as noted in Philip Pullman Is A Liar:

Parents can’t always keep up with popular culture—”and when a movie is promoted as a fun adventure, featuring children riding enchanted polar bears, all in time for the Christmas season, what’s not to like?

Unfortunately, the film’s makers have an agenda. The film is based on the works of author Phil Pullman, who has written a series of entertaining stories called “His Dark Materials.” In his own words: “‘I’m trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief,’ says Pullman. ‘Mr. Lewis [C.S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia] would think I was doing the devil’s work'” (from the Washington Post, Feb. 19, 2001). And, “I’ve been surprised by how little criticism I’ve got. Harry Potter’s been taking all the flak…. Meanwhile, I’ve been flying under the radar, saying things that are far more subversive than anything poor old Harry has said. My books are about killing God” (from the Sydney Morning Herald, Dec. 13, 2003)…

I read a review of the Golden Compass in The Atlantic, aptly titled How Hollywood Saved God.

That’s true in that Hollywood watered it down so as to make it meaningless.

Substitute any characters in the movie – plug Saint Francis in here or Bing Crosby in there, and we’d all be singing White Christmas as we process to church with little animals at our side.

Mr. Pullman got ripped off big time. Hollywood took his book and turned it into a movie that was 99% fluff and little substance. So much for the strength of his convictions standing before the all powerful Hollywood money machine.

What I was most struck by as I read through the Atlantic review and the GodBeGone blog was the lack of reasoned argument and scholastic integrity from the “there is no God” folks.

…and isn’t that it.

I fully agree with people’s right to believe or disbelieve as they see fit. I am confident enough that Jesus Christ and the Holy Church can stand up in any reasoned argument, but these folks rarely bother with reasoned argument.

Mr. Pullman is just repeating a mantra made up by someone else. He’s offering his literary skills as a mouth piece for that mantra without any real study of the points-of-view involvedOk, I could be wrong, so send me his CV – the one indicating his study of history, theology, and philosophy, etc. which just makes him intellectually dishonest.

Any debate or discussion that relies on unstudied diatribes (Mr. Pullman going off on the crusades, witch hunts, blah blah) and the repetition of accusations as a substitute for reasoned argument or scholastic integrity is meaningless. In the GodBeGone blog you find repeated shots at God through the improper use of the English language (let’s not capitalize Jesus or Christianity or anything else we find silly because, well that’ll get ’em).

Consider the historical parallels.

If we repeatedly accuse a group of folks of all sorts of bad things, supporting such with horrible literature, twisted history, and bad scholarship, and we use language in such a way as to make them inhuman (don’t capitalize their names – they’re not human anyway), don’t we set them up for inhumane treatment, concentration camps?

Scholarship takes more than sound bites. It takes more than blog entries. It takes time, study, an understanding of the core beliefs of your opponent, unadulterated by fluff and histrionics.

As the Young Fogey might point out, tolerant conservatism does not demand that you believe what I believe, nor does it force my beliefs upon you. It does demand that we be gentlemen about the process and that you respect my rights equally, including my right to be treated humanely and to profess my beliefs.

So have at it. Tell me how wrong I am.

Christian Witness, Homilies, Poland - Polish - Polonia,

What My Father Believed

All Souls Day - Poland

I received a very kind E-mail from John Guzlowski of the Lightning and Ashes blog. This blog has linked to John for awhile now.

John has three published editions of poetry: Lightning and Ashes, Third Winter of War: Buchenwald, and Language of Mules.

John’s poetry is primarily focused on his parents who had been slave laborers in Nazi Germany. His website notes the his poems try to remember them and their voices.

John was extremely generous and sent along a poem which he asked me to include on these pages. He said:

I want to give you a poem about my father and his beliefs. He was a “faith-filled” man, and always took Jesus and the things the priests said seriously.

This poem is particularly appropriate as we remember the faithfully departed this All Souls Day. I will certainly remember John’s parents Jan and Tekla in my prayers at Requiem Holy Mass tomorrow. Eternal rest grant onto them O Lord!

What My Father Believed

He didn’t know about the Rock of Ages
or bringing in the sheaves or Jacob’s ladder
or gathering at the beautiful river
that flows beneath the throne of God.
He’d never heard of the Baltimore Catechism
either, and didn’t know the purpose of life
was to love and honor and serve God.

He’d been to the village church as a boy
in Poland, and knew he was Catholic
because his mother and father were buried
in a cemetery under wooden crosses.
His sister Catherine was buried there too.

The day their mother died Catherine took
to the kitchen corner where the stove sat,
and cried. She wouldn’t eat or drink, just cried
until she died there, died of a broken heart.
She was three or four years old, he was five.

What he knew about the nature of God
and religion came from the sermons
the priests told at mass, and this got mixed up
with his own life. He knew living was hard,
and that even children are meant to suffer.
Sometimes, when he was drinking he’d ask,
—Didn’t God send his own son here to suffer?—

My father believed we are here to lift logs
that can’t be lifted, to hammer steel nails
so bent they crack when we hit them.
In the slave labor camps in Germany,
He’d seen men try the impossible and fail.

He believed life is hard, and we should
help each other. If you see someone
on a cross, his weight pulling him down
and breaking his muscles, you should try
to lift him, even if only for a minute,
even though you know lifting won’t save him.

Everything Else,

2007 Annual Polish Film Festival – Skalny Center, Rochester, NY

The Skalny Center for Polish and Central European Studies at the University of Rochester is proud to announce the 2007 Annual Polish Film Festival.

The festival is sponsored by a generous grant from the Louis Skalny Foundation.

All films are in Polish with English subtitles.

List of Films & Show Times

SOLIDARITY, SOLIDARITY (Solidarność, Solidarność)
Directed by 13 outstanding Polish directors, 2005
November 10, 3:30 & 7:20pm

This feature, the brainchild of Andrzej Wajda, is a joint venture of 13 great Polish directors to memorialize the events of August 1980, when Polish workers went on strike across the country and began a hard-fought campaign for workers’ rights. Each of directors shot a 10-minute-long film. The plots and their genre were up to the filmmakers. The resulting 2-hour-long film feature a wide variety of forms: from a video-clip through comedy and documentary to a rarefied interview with Lech Wałęsa that echoes the famous films by Andrzej Wajda: Man of Marble and Man of Iron. The result is truly fascinating, irrespective of what you know, or can remember, about Solidarity.

JASMINUM
Dir. Jan Jakub Kolski, 2006
November 11, 3:30 & 7:20pm

Kolski is at his best with this heartwarming, beautifully told bitter-sweet comedy.

A young woman, with a small daughter, arrives at a convent where she is restoring paintings. She works during the day but at night she experiments with alchemy and creates fragrances inspired by the mysterious monks who live at the convent and smell of the most incredible scents… . The inquiring mind of her charming five-year-old daughter wreaks havoc in the ordered life of the monastery, where people, buildings, and smells have their own secrets.

FORECAST FOR TOMORROW (Pogoda na jutro)
Dir. Jerzy Stuhr, 2003
November 12, 7:20pm

Poland’s most beloved actor, Jerzy Stuhr, directs and stars in this serious-minded comedy satire about a member of Solidarity who disappears to live as a monk in order to hide from repressions by the communist authorities.

Seventeen years later, accidentally found by his family and thrown out of the monastery, he does not like the new world he has to live in. During his long absence, his wife has settled down with a businessman, his son is developing a political career, his older daughter strips at a TV reality show, and his youngest daughter’s attention is focused exclusively on the internet.

Nevertheless, he tries very hard to adjust to the rapidly changing reality and to put his relations with his family on healthier basis.

COLONEL KWIATKOWSKI (Pułkownik Kwiatkowski)
Dir. Kazimierz Kutz, 1995
November 13, 7:20pm

This hilarious comedy depicts Poland during the Stalinist era and tells the adventuresome story of the title character, who travels around the country masquerading as an officer of the Polish Secret Police.

Kutz produced wonderful human portraits, including grotesque portrayals of Communist Party apparatchiks and functionaries of the State Security Bureau. The main character’s satiric use of the Communist Party lingo, as he turns its intended meanings inside out to manipulate the unwitting Party faithful, is another highlight of this film.

I AM LOOKING AT YOU, MARY (Patrzę na ciebie, Marysiu)
Dir. Łukasz Barczyk, 1999
November 14, 7:20pm

This film draws attention to important factors shaping the lives of young people after the collapse of communism in Poland: their dependence on parents and fear of the future.

Marysia is a Geology student; her boyfriend Michał works as a junior psychiatrist in a hospital. They are living together in rented accommodations and are supported by their parents. This dependency affects Michał’s self-confidence and perception of the future. He avoids making commitments, especially in terms of a family. He becomes unhappy when he learns that Marysia is pregnant. He tries to convince her to arrange an abortion, but she refuses. This is followed by Michał’s increased difficulties at work. During a speedily arranged wedding he has a mental breakdown and decides to quit his job as a psychiatrist.

All films were provided by Telewizja Polska SA

Ticket Information:

Tickets for the Little Theatre screenings can be purchased at the Little Theatre box office before each show (Little Theatre, 240 East Avenue, Rochester, NY, Telephone 585-258-0444.)

The ticket price is $8.00 for the evening shows and $6.00 for the matinée, students and seniors pay $5.00. Little Theatre Film Society members receive their membership discount.

For more information, please call the Skalny Center at 585-275-9898.

Poland - Polish - Polonia, ,

14th Ann Arbor Polish Film Festival

14th Ann Arbor Polish Film Festival, 2007 at the Michigan Theater, 603 Liberty Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

  • 4:00 p.m. Grand Opening
  • 4:15 p.m. The Lilpop Sisters and Their Passions (Siostry Lilpop i ich miłości) directed by Bożena Garus-Hockuba, 2005 (87 min., documentary): The story of the four Lilpop sisters from a well-known family in pre-war Warsaw. It is the portrayal of their more or less happy relationships. The movie, in focusing around a series of private histories, also reveals significant aspects of Polish history from pre-war times to the realities of the post-war immigrant community.
  • 6:00 p.m. Saviour Square (Plac Zbawiciela) directed by Joanna Kos and Krzysztof Krauze, 2006 (105 min., drama): [12] A true story showing the crisis of the contemporary family life. The loss of a chance for a new flat, the lack of understanding between husband and wife, and the enormous efforts made to fulfill their desires lead to the breakdown of the family. The film tells about the necessity of empathy, the need for discerning and respecting the needs of other people as well as love, which is capable of overcoming even the most difficult, seemingly hopeless situations.
  • Intermission
  • 8:15 p.m. Breaking the Wall (Głową mur przebijesz) directed by Grażyna Ogrodowska and Leszek Furman , 2006 (45 min., documentary): A film about the Fighting Solidarity Organization: “It wasn’t a political party or any sort of secret resistance, we were just banging our heads against the wall of ideology, of Communism, of lies, and we managed to smash it”.
  • 9:15 p.m. Testosterone (Testosteron) directed by Tomasz Konecki and Andrzej Saramonowicz, 2007 (125 min., comedy): A quiet town prepares to welcome a famous wedding into its suburbs, only to discover that not everything is going to go as planned …

Sunday, November 11, 2007

  • 2:00 p.m. The 52 Percent (52 procent) directed by Rafał Skalski, 2007 (19 min., documentary): 52% is the perfect leg length to height ratio. This is one of the most important criteria for admitting children to the Russian Ballet Academy in Saint Petersburg. Ałła has two months to amend her proportions.
  • 2:30 p.m. What the Sun Has Seen (Co słonko widziało) directed by Micha ³ Rosa, 2006 (107 min., drama): The lives of three people in Polish Silesia, each of whom needs a large sum of money, become intertwined. They all want the same things: to change their lives, stand up for themselves and live their dreams.
  • Intermission
  • 5:00 p.m. Immensity of Justice (Bezmiar sprawiedliwości) directed by Wiesław Saniewski, 2006 (128 min., drama): Based on a crime committed in the 1990s: a television director was convicted to 25 years in prison despite the lack of evidence against him. This film attempts to describe the human nature: the of state of mind of people who, judging others, often determine their fate.
  • Discussion with Wiesław Saniewski, film director.

Biography of Wiesław Saniewski

Wiesław Saniewski, born 1948 in Wrocław, Poland, Saniewski graduated in mathematics at the Wroclaw University and went on to study screenwriting at the Lodz Film School, where he wrote several screenplays. He worked as an assistant to Andrzej Wajda. In 1971, he graduated with the short film `Big World’ (Wielki Świat) based on Alberto Moravia’s “Smells and a Bone”. His first feature film was completed in 1981,’ Free Lancer’ (Wolny Strzelec). It was his next film `Custody’ (Nadzór), made in 1983, that brought him international renown. The film received several awards at numerous film festivals: FIPRESCI Prize at the Mannheim Festival and a Gdansk Lion for the best debut, the best actress and the best cinematography. Saniewski’s films brought him into conflict with the authorities, and his films were banned until the fall of the socialist regime.

Tickets sold for blocks of films and events: $10 for adults, $6 for students and senior citizens.

All films with English subtitles.

Program subject to changes without prior notice.

Everything Else, ,

Zaborowski exhibition – Washington D.C.

New paintings by award winning Polish artist Michal Zaborowski will be featured in a solo exhibition at the Nevin Kelly Gallery, 1517 U Street, NW, in Washington, DC. The exhibition, titled “H20” will depict ordinary people in everyday activities associated with water.

The Nevin Kelly Gallery (Gallery blog) presents Michal Zaborowski’s paintings in Washington from October 11, 2007 through November 4, 2007.

Gallery owner Nevin J. Kelly describes Zaborowski as “a romantic impressionist with a contemporary voice; Zaborowski is one of the most talented painters working in Poland today.” The artist’s paintings depict what Kelly calls the “nobility of the mundane.” He paints ordinary people in ordinary activities, but he gives them such heroic import that one is compelled to look at them. He finds such beauty in these ordinary events—”-a man and a dog in a boat, or a woman with a toy balloon–that we wish we could trade places with them. The artist’s palette is subdued. There is a mixture of beauty and a gnawing sense of melancholy in his paintings, a combination so common in our everyday lives that we almost fail to notice it. Zaborowski reminds us that, even in moments of personal darkness, a moment of sublime beauty is just around the corner.

The artist began his career as a painter of church interiors, working in fresco. In 1986, he was awarded a scholarship of the General of the Palatine Order, which permitted him to work and study in Rome and at the Vatican. He has exhibited in Poland, Germany, Austria, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Monaco and the U.S (including New York; Palm Beach; Santa Fe; Washington, D.C.; Aspen and Vail). Zaborowski lives and works in Warsaw, Poland.

For additional information contact:

Nevin Kelly Gallery
1517 U Street, NW
Washington, DC 20009
Tel: 202-232-3464

Select images of Zaborowski’s paintings are also available on the gallery’s website.

Christian Witness,

Bridges between the earthly and the divine

From the Buffalo News: A stunning makeover at St. Stephen Serbian Orthodox Church

Lackawanna church getting a lush coat of imagery

After more than 50 years, the spartan whiteness inside St. Stephen Serbian Orthodox Church is steadily disappearing beneath a lush coat of luminous Christian imagery.

A huge portrait of Jesus Christ haloed in gold leaf now peers from overhead. Dramatic scenes out of the Bible, such as the healing of the paralyzed man and the raising of Lazarus, are depicted on other sections of the curved ceiling.

The Rev. Theodore Jurewicz, a master iconographer from Erie, Pa., is about a quarter of the way through a stunning makeover of the Lackawanna church. When completed, the ceiling and walls will be covered with 22 scenes of biblical feasts and miracles, as well as paintings of numerous Christian saints and martyrs.

For Orthodox Christians, the colorful icons are not mere paintings: They are considered essential elements of the worship experience and bridges between the earthly and the divine.

—We call icons windows into heaven,— said the Rev. Rastko Trbuhovich , pastor of St. Stephen.

Icons have graced the iconostasis —” a screen that separates the nave from the sanctuary —” since the 90- year-old parish opened a new church at Abbott and Weber roads in the 1950s.

Those icons were —written— by the late Rev. Kiprian Pishew, a legendary iconographer who trained students in the Russian-Serbian style at Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville in Central New York.

Jurewicz, 57, was one of those apprentices and is now himself highly regarded in the world of iconography. The parishioners of St. Stephen waited at least a decade for him to become available for their project, figuring that he would be the best iconographer to integrate new frescoes with the old…

An interesting bit of history. Right next door to St. Stephen Serbian Orthodox Church is Our Lady of Bistrica Roman Catholic Church (Croatian). Interesting neighbors during the Balkan wars – they actually got along amicably and with Christian charity.

All Right Reserved © 2005 - 2023