Poland Culture

A soft breeze ruffled the gray hair of Janina Wojcik as she sat the other evening in her garden plot, at the corner of Smile Alley and Winnie the Pooh Way, resting on a footstool and almost hidden by the dazzle of lilies and zinnias that grew up around her. In her lap was a folded newspaper, a worn brochure advertising seeds for sale, and a letter from her daughter, now living in distant Nigeria.

The screen is so small that an announcer has to read the subtitles over a microphone. The projection booth is so bulky that it blocks the best views. And the location is so poorly marked that it is easy to miss entirely. The first drive-in movie theater in Poland is primitive--it doubles as the site of a swap meet for used cars by day--but its debut last month represents a cultural milestone in this country's phenomenal rush to the automobile.

It's easy to check into Lech Walesa Inn. No need to board a plane, pack a passport or stuff your wallet full of zlotys. You just have to drive to Yorba Linda this weekend. The Inn, where patrons are served such cafe fare as czarnina (duck's blood soup) and kiszka (pork and barley sausage), is temporarily on-site at the Pope John Paul II Polish Center. It's one of the many offerings of Dozynki '91, the center's 13th annual harvest festival.

The future of private television in the Eastern Bloc is here on the 11th floor of a student dormitory, in a windowless janitor's room where three wall calendars depict Polish women in various stages of undress. As far as hardware is concerned, there is not much else in the broadcast center of Echo TV-Channel 28 to catch the eye.

Poland's Jews were nearly wiped out in the Nazi Holocaust, then the communists who ruled the country for decades after World War II waged anti-Semitic campaigns and made Jewish history a taboo topic. But a new documentary draws on a patchwork of amateur camera footage shot mostly by American Jews visiting relatives in the 1930s in Polish towns, providing a window into what once was. It makes its debut in Canada, Germany and Ukraine in Polish this month, and an English version will be ready for the U.S. market later this year, Polish producer Miroslaw Bork said.

Nearly 6,000 people gathered Tuesday night at L.A. Live's Nokia Theatre for what can only be described as a "comedy happening. " The event — Tina Fey in conversation with Steve Martin about her new book, "Bossypants" — promised to showcase two great comedic wits sparring with each other on topics ranging from sexism in comedy and Fey's rise through the ranks of Second City, "Saturday Night Live" and her hit NBC show, "30 Rock," to cruise ship...