Tango: The First Polish Short Film to Win an Oscar, 1980
by Maria PopovaEverything that could happen in a room, happening.
You might recall Blok, a wonderful 1982 experimental Polish animated film, using a single continuous shot to take a voyeuristic tour of the different apartments in a building. From the same era comes Tango — a clever and spectacularly executed 1980 film by director Zbigniew Rybczynski from Polish short-film studio Se-ma-for. The cinematography, capturing multiple events taking place simultaneously in a closed space, was so complicated and required such precision that Rybczynski worked on the film for nearly a year, eating and sleeping on the set.
In 1983, Tango became the first Polish film to win an Oscar.
Tango appears on the altogether excellent two-disc DVD Anthology of Polish Animated Film.
Thanks, Mark
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