The Matter of Film. From the Reel | Series Dedicated to Analog Media | Iluzjon Cinema

Film reels hold not only images and sounds but also the history of cinema and its technological changes — join us in exploring it together!

We invite you to the series “The Matter of Film. From the Reel” dedicated to exceptional analog film prints, their history and specifics. The curated program presents selected titles in their traditional, material form, allowing viewers not only to watch the film but also to experience its physical medium.

The film reel — the material foundation of cinema — has accompanied the art of film since its birth. It has been a medium subject to constant changes, improvements and experiments. Successive decades brought new technological solutions: from the development of special effects created without computers, through the spread of color, to different widths and formats of film stock, which affected both the image’s aesthetics and the way it was received. Each innovation responded to the needs of cinema — an art seeking ever more precise and bold forms of expression.

The series “The Matter of Film. From the Reel” is a journey through film understood as a synergy of art and technology. It is also an opportunity to look at film as an object — sensitive, changeable and full of traces of time that shaped it.

PROGRAM

📅 February 25 | 18:00
"The Minister’s Wife Dances", dir. Juliusz Gardan, 1937, 86 min.
Lecture: Grzegorz Rogowski

The first Polish musical combining dialogue with very successful sung numbers. This film is an excellent example of the so-called modern comedy, extremely fashionable in the late 1930s, whose novelty manifested mainly in the visual layer. Futuristic sets, bold scenographic solutions and extravagant costumes — far from everyday street fashion — built an unreal, elegant world.

The film’s action takes place in a fictional country where young minister Zuzanna fights for public morality while hiding feelings for a civil servant. The situation becomes complicated when her twin arrives — a cabaret actress performing in an illegal venue.

Today "The Minister’s Wife Dances" is one of the most interesting examples of analog film reconstruction. The version known to contemporary audiences was created by combining two incomplete prints that complemented each other, allowing the film to be saved and returned to cultural circulation as a fully valuable work of prewar Polish cinema.

🎟️ Tickets available at the box office and online on the Iluzjon Cinema website.

Next screenings:

• 📅 March 18 — "Contempt", dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1963, 102 min. Lecture: Paulina Kwiatkowska
• 📅 April 29 — "Adventure in Mariensztat", dir. Leonard Buczkowski, 1953, 93 min. The film is on the Polish Film Heritage List. Lecture: Katarzyna Wajda
• 📅 May 20 — "To Be or Not to Be", dir. Ernst Lubitsch, 1942, 102 min. Lecture: Katarzyna Wajda
• 📅 June 24 — "Gone with the Wind", dir. Victor Fleming, 1939, 224 min. Lecture: Grzegorz Rogowski

Welcome!