FILMCLUB will be screening Paweł Pawlikowski’s powerful film, Ida, at the Tatham Art Gallery in Chief Albert Luthuli Street, Pietermaritzburg, at 7 pm on Tuesday, February 9.

The film centres on Ida, a devout novitiate, has grown up in a remote convent in Poland where she had been abandoned as a baby in 1945. Before taking her final vows the Mother Superior insists that she should meet her one remaining relative, an aunt who is a magistrate and a communist party official.

Through the awkward relationship that forms between these two women from very different backgrounds, this beautiful and subtle film, set in Poland in 1962, explores the dark recesses of the country’s wartime past: Ida discovers the truth about her origins and travels with her aunt to find the place where her parents were buried.

Filmed in subtle shades of grey, Pawlikowski’s film is a quiet meditation on history and character, beginning with the juxtaposition of Ida’s simple Christian faith and her aunt’s
disillusioned communism, it proceeds through a deeply sympathetic examination of the characters of the two women to expose the complexities and contradictions of Poland’s catastrophic history.

The film will be shown in the Tatham Art Gallery Lecture Theatre. A season ticket cost R300 or you can pay R35 (R20 students) for a single screening. There is safe parking will in the gallery precinct. A light supper can be enjoyed from 6 pm in The Café Tatham (R40 plus drinks).