SALTO  1965   (Jump) Directed by Tadeusz Konwicki 104 minutes In Polish with English subtitles

This surreal Polish flick opens with our main protagonist jumping off a moving train as it is pulling into a small town. The fact that he is jumping off the train is crucial for two reasons. The first is because of the title of the film... Salto is the Italian word for 'jump'. The second is that the star of this movie, who was the most charismatic actor of Poland in the 60s, would die a few years later when he jumped onto a moving train and missed the step. His name is still legendary in that part of the world - Zbigniew Cybulski.
 
What he finds on his arrival is a Kafkaesque town, full of cryptic and uneasy encounters. The townspeople seem to have amnesia, and they all tell him contradictory stories. 'Salto' also has another meaning in Polish, which is to 'somersault' and indeed our main character Kowalski becomes disorientated in the maze-like limbo-world he has entered. But our stranger also seems to have a special gift - he can see into the hidden lives of people. The entire film climaxes in a weird dance party in the town, where people dance in a bizarre trance-like way. In between dance numbers, people have loose discussions about their innermost dreams.

This is a mesmerizing, trippy flick with a Nouvelle Vague edge and a Mingus-tinged jazz score by Wojciech Kilar. This movie is on the one hand dreamy and otherworldly, but at the same time sociological, mapping the secret desires of Poland.

This will be a high-definition screening.