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Kenneth Turan’s film pick of the week: Roman Polanski short films

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Before he became tabloid fodder, before he directed such remarkable features as ‘Chinatown’ and ‘Rosemary’s Baby,’ Roman Polanski made seven short films, most of them while he was a student at Poland’s Lodz Film School. One of them, 1958’s award-winning ‘Two Men and a Wardrobe,’
is well-known, but the others are rarely if ever screened.

Now the Polish Cultural Institute in New York has set these shorts on a journey around this country, with stops scheduled at New York, Washington, Chicago, Seattle and Austin, Texas, among other cities. Their Los Angeles appearance is at hand, set for the Cinefamily at 611 N. Fairfax Ave. at 8 p.m. Tuesday.

Traveling with the films is a group called Sza/Za, described as an ‘experimental electroacoustic duo from Warsaw.’ They’ve composed a new score for the screenings, which are also intended to pay tribute to Krzysztof Komeda, a key figure in Polish jazz who worked extensively with Polanski.

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-- Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic

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