From DANK Haus German American Cultural Center:

Was tun, wenn’s brennt? (What To Do In Case of Fire?) tells the humorous and touching story of six former creative anarchists who lived as house squatters in Berlin during its heyday in the ’80s when Berlin was still an island in the middle of the former eastern Germany. At the end of the ’80s they all went their separate ways until the year 2000, with Berlin as Germany’s new capital, when an event happens that forces the group to reunite and come to grips with the reason they separated 12 years ago.
In German with English subtitles. Free admission.

Friday, July 22 at 7:30pm
DANK Haus German American Cultural Center
4740 N. Western Ave

From the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture:

Children in Exile (2007), which made its local debut at the Chicago International Documentary Film Festival in 2008, tells the story of civilian deportations to the Siberian Gulag through the testimony of the survivors, including Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland’s last communist leader.

The film’s writer and director, Chris Swider, a graduate of and instructor in the film department at Chicago’s Columbia College, was himself a child of a deportee. Swider will be on hand to lead a discussion after the screening.
Film screening and discussion in English.

Friday, July 15
7:30pm
Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture
6500 S. Pulaski Rd

On July 9th and 1oth the Old Town School of Folk Music will be putting on the Chicago Folk and Roots Festival in Welles Park. Music and Dancing will last from noon until 9:30 on both days. On Sunday, July 10th, at 1:20 the Eastern European folk quartet, Megitza will be playing on the main stage.

From the Chicago Folk and Roots Festival—
“Local Eastern European folk and gypsy act The Megitza Quartet’s debut album, ‘Boleritza’ was one of the most impressive instrumental compilations to come out of Chicago. The secret weapon is Malgorzata Babiarz’s sensual voice that sounds as authentic as the Polish Highlander tradition of the village from which she originally hails. Acoustic guitar prodigy Andreas Kapsalis adds elements of flamenco, while violin virtuoso Roby Lakatos and Marke Lichota’s accordion evoke the pathos of klezmer. Wrapped around this highly sophisticated blend of genres is a devotion to passionate rhythm and heart-rendering vocals, even if you can’t understand them. One part mournful, the other joyous, yet infectious all around, this is the kind of music people can’t help but get up to dance to. Seeing them live is reminiscent of a gypsy performance – chaotic, soulful, and stirring.”

For more information on the Chicago Folk and Roots Festival click here.

On July 9th and 1oth the Old Town School of Folk Music will be putting on the Chicago Folk and Roots Festival in Welles Park. Music and Dancing will last from noon until 9:30 on both days. For those interested in East European folk dancing styles, members of the Polish folk dance ensemble Wesoly Lud will be offering a Polka lesson from 6:35-7:00 on Sunday, July 10th in the dance tent. The Lesson will be followed by a performance by the Versatones, a local polka band. Lessons in many other styles of folk dance from around the world will be offered throughout the day.

For more information about the Chicago Folk and Roots Festival click here.

Spots of Light: To be a Woman in the Holocaust, an exhibit produced by the Museums Division at Yad Vashem, will be traveling to the Illinois Holocaust Museum June 24th-September 6.

From the Illinois Holocaust Museum—

“Spots of Light: To Be a Woman in the Holocaust is the first international exhibition to focus exclusively on women and their experiences in the Holocaust. Through these women’s initiative, creativity and courage, the exhibit demonstrates that human beings are strong enough, even in the most difficult of circumstances, to maintain those values which are the foundation of humanity: motherhood, friendship, faith and love.

In this large-scale video-art installation, images move and change before the visitor’s eyes, giving historical materials a new and contemporary feel and perspective. Interwoven with these text and photographs that continuously fade in and out are segments of interviews with 10 women Holocaust survivors.”

For more information on this exhibit visit the Yad Vashem online exhibit . For more on the Illinois Holocaust Museum click here.

The museum is located at 9603 Woods Drive, Skokie, IL.

From the Gene Siskel Film Center—

Jerzy Skolimowski:

Desire and Displacement

The series ranges from his best-known film as screenwriter, Roman Polanski’s KNIFE IN THE WATER (1962), and as his earliest directorial efforts, including IDENTIFICATION MARKS: NONE (1965), WALKOVER (1965), BARRIER (1966), to the previously censored HANDS UP! (1967/1981). FOUR NIGHTS WITH ANNA (2008) represents the director’s return to filmmaking after a seventeen-year hiatus. Born in 1938 in Lódz, Poland, Jerzy Skolimowski’s early life was marked by the brutality of war (among other things, his father, a member of the Resistance, was executed by the Nazis). His wide-ranging interests encompassed filmmaking, acting, poetry, painting, and jazz, and he came of age artistically in the postwar era that also produced director Roman Polanski and jazz composer Krzysztof Komeda, and was dominated by the work of Poland’s premier postwar filmmaker Andrzej Wajda. Identified with the Polish New Wave of the 1960s, his visually inventive early work demonstrated a broad satirical streak and a tendency to the surreal, even as it epitomized the drifting lassitude of a generation facing an uncertain future.

In a loose trilogy consisting of IDENTIFICATION MARKS: NONE, WALKOVER, and HANDS UP!, Skolimowski cast himself as the anti-hero, the footloose, disaffected Andrzej Leszczyc, whose character–made up of equal parts alienation, longing, and sullen rebellion–was recognized as iconic among Poland’s youth. HANDS UP! brought the director censorship problems, and the film was suppressed until he reworked it with new footage and under changed circumstances in the 1980s.

Skolimowski subsequently opted for artistic freedom outside of Poland, establishing a career as a kind of filmmaking vagabond, producing highly acclaimed work that would include DEEP END, MOONLIGHTING, THE SHOUT, and KING, QUEEN, KNAVE in a variety of European co-production combinations. He abandoned filmmaking altogether in the 1990s, to concentrate on painting and other visual arts endeavors. Skolimowski returned to filmmaking with FOUR NIGHTS WITH ANNA, which opened the Directors Fortnight section of the Cannes International Film Festival in 2008. On that triumphant occasion, he announced, ‘To those who like me–I’m back. And to those who don’t like me–I’m back.’”

Dates and showtimes are as follows:

WALKOVER
(WALKOWER)
1965, Jerzy Skolimowski, Poland, 70 min.
With Jerzy Skolimowski, Aleksandra Zawieruszanka

Mon, Jul 4th at 3:15pm

KNIFE IN THE WATER
(NÓZ W WODZIE)
1962, Roman Polanski, Poland, 94 min.
With Leon Niemczyk, Jolanta Umecka

Mon, Jul 4th at 4:45pm
Wed, Jul 6th at 8:45pm

HANDS UP!
(RECE DO GÓRY)
1985, Jerzy Skolimowski, Poland, 76 min.
With Jerzy Skolimowski, Joanna Szczerbic

Fri, Jul 8th at 6:15pm

IDENTIFICATION MARKS: NONE
(RYSOPSIS)
1965, Jerzy Skolimowski, Poland, 73 min.
With Jerzy Skolimowski, Elzbieta Czyzewska

Fri, Jul 15th at 6:15pm

BARRIER
(BARIERA)
1966, Jerzy Skolimowski, Poland, 77 min.
With Jan Nowicki, Joanna Szczerbic

Fri, Jul 22nd at 6:15pm

FOUR NIGHTS WITH ANNA
(CZTERY NOCE Z ANNA)
2008, Jerzy Skolimowski, Poland/France, 87 min.
With Artur Steranko, Kinga Preis

Fri, Jul 29th at 6:00pm

For Descriptions of individual movies and information on getting tickets visit http://www.siskelfilmcenter.org/skolimowski