The Cinematheque

Free Virtual Program

Roly Poly
(Przekładaniec)
Poland 1968
Andrzej Wajda
35 min.

Stanisław Lem was rarely satisfied with screen adaptations of his work, but he liked this comic short, directed by Polish master Andrzej Wajda (Ashes and Diamonds, Man of Iron), and based on Lem’s short story and radio play ​“Do You Exist, Mr. Jones?” The film (scripted by Lem) tells the futuristic tale of a race-car driver (Bogumił Kobiela) who’s had so much of his body replaced by transplants that his identity is called into question. ​“Its amusing satire on the way people are constructed—and reconstructed—by technology and bureaucracy seems even more biting today” (Fred Camper, Chicago Reader).

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Return
(Powrót)
Poland/​German 2008
Anna Błaszczyk
8 min.

Polish animator Anna Błaszczyk’s humorous short—a collage of drawing, cut-out, and computer animation—was inspired by Stanisław Lem’s 1961 novel Return from the Stars, a time-paradox tale of an astronaut who returns to Earth after many years away.

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