19th Annual Wisconsin Film Festival
presents two screenings of

AFTERIMAGE (POWIDOKI)
by Andrzej Wajda

From the festival notes: "The final film from Andrzej Wajda (1926-2016), the Godfather of contemporary Polish cinema, is a profoundly relevant dramatized biography of the avant garde artist and art instructor Wladyslaw Strzeminski. Wajda introduces us to Strzeminski (Boguslaw Linda) who lost an arm and a leg in WWI, as a charismatic and influential force on his students in the years following WWII. Soon, however, his revolutionary writings and ideas about art run afoul of the Soviet communist powers in Poland. Strzeminski’s work has nothing to do with Stalin’s favored social realism and superficial positivism and soon he finds himself blacklisted by galleries and as an instructor. Still idolized and supported by his long-suffering daughter and his former students, Strzeminski refuses to acquiesce to the party line, even when his health begins to seriously decline. The committed, transformative performance of Linda, star of many great Polish movies including Kieslowski’s Blind Chance, is the embodiment of non-compromise. Wajda’s Afterimage, completed when the director was 90, is a powerful, angry bookend to a major cinematic career that constantly examined the intersection of art and politics. - Jim Healy."

Tickets and festival guide

Location: UW Cinematheque, Vilas Communications Hall,
821 University Ave. Madison, WI 53706

Location of screening on April 1, 2017