Roman Polanski: Shorts

Roman Polanski: Shorts with Live Music by Sza/Za is presented by Seattle International Film Festival and the Polish Cultural Institute in New York, in association with Unsound Festival and the Seattle Polish Film Festival.


Between 1958 and 1962, the acclaimed director and Academy Award® winner, Roman Polański made a series of short films, most of which were undertaken at the renowned Polish Lodz Film School. These films include Murder and Teeth Smile (1957), Break Up the Dance (1957), Mammals (1962), and his award winning graduation film Two Men and the Wardrobe (San Francisco International Film Festival, Brussels EXPO 1958).

The musical group Sza/Za is composed of Pawel Szamburski and Patryk Zakrocki. This duo has been improvising and promoting Polish culture in the Warsaw music and independent art scene since 1999. Their music is a unique mix of noise and silence, pop and contemporary chamber music, beauty and ugliness, sophisticated wisdom and pure, naïve thoughtlessness. Using clarinets, violins, analog loop stations and subtle effects, the musicians seek to celebrate acoustic oppositions in an attempt to free both the stage and the audience from the fetters of cultural norms and expectations. Szamburski and Zakrocki are members of the Warsaw-based independent music label Lado ABC and the Lado Cultural Association, whose activity over the last ten years has contributed a great deal to the dynamic development of new music in Poland.

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