Courageous Filmmakers Beyond the Iron Curtain

In conjunction with its current exhibition, “Abstract Expressionism Behind the Iron Curtain,” the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs will present “Cinema Behind the Iron Curtain,” a series of four film programs organized by Marion Wolberg Weiss, a film historian and professor.

The series will kick off tomorrow at 7 p.m. with a program of short films made by Roman Polanski while he was a student at the Film School in Lodz. These early works are marked by a surreal/absurdist style that appears throughout the noted director’s body of work.

When Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania were under Communist rule, cinema was among the most important avenues for social criticism and debate. On successive Fridays at 7, the series will include Andrzej Wajda’s “Kanal,” a 1957 film about resistance fighters in Warsaw during World War II; Milos Forman’s “The Fireman’s Ball,” a 1967 satire that was banned for several years and that forced Mr. Forman to leave Czechoslovakia, and Cristian Mungiu’s “4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days,” a 2007 Romanian film that speaks out against Communist-era policies.