The Butler

The film tells the story of the Prussian family von Krauss living in the Puck area, as well as the love between the Kashubian boy Mateusz and the German aristocrat Marita and is set between 1900 and 1945. The script depicts the complicated fate of three nations inhabiting the former Polish-German borderland in northern Kashubia, where the line of the border in Versailles after the First World War divided not only the land but also the people of Germans, Kashubs, and Poles, causing riots and often hatred. The script goes through four decades showing the complex attitudes and choices that people have to make here. Prussian anti-Polishism fought with Kashubian patriotism, which in 1939 ended in mass murder committed in thousands of Kaszubians in forests near Piasnica.

Praising a previous incarnation of Steve Swallow's quintet, The Times described the band "as near a perfect display of small-group jazz - robust yet exquisitely poised". The description holds true for the latest edition of the bassist's quintet and its album Into the Woodwork. Swallow leads the group - including his longtime partner in music and life, Carla Bley, on organ - in multi-hued performances of a dozen original compositions from his pen. Recorded in the south of France, the album accommodates atmospheric grace and loping grooves, wry humour and understated virtuosity.