‘Poland’ Archives
Another Wajda update
I've just heard, courtesy of John Riley's new (and excellent) COUNTERpoint blog, that although Andrzej Wajda is too ill to attend the Censorship as a Creative Force panel discussion at London's Barbican Arts Centre on Friday next week, he'll be recording a ten-minute video address for it.His physical place will be taken by Agnieszka Holland, whose [...]
Rocky Soil
Skalna ziemia Poland, 1956, black and white, 16 minsMany of the films in the 'black series' of Polish documentaries from 1955-58 sought to expose the reality behind the official rhetoric, and Rocky Soil offers a particularly good example. Set in and around the rural hamlet of Gorce, the film's unnamed protagonist (and first-person narrator, [...]
Where the Devil Says Goodnight
Gdzie diabeł mówi dobranoc Poland, 1956, black and white, 11 minsThe first professional film by then recent film-school graduates Kazimierz Karabasz and Władysław Ślesicki, Where the Devil Says Goodnight is considered one of the key films of the 'black series' of documentaries that opened a debate about Poland's social problems in the [...]
A Generation
PokoleniePoland, 1955, black and white, 83 minsIt's easy to overrate A Generation. Always one of the most straightforward of Andrzej Wajda's films to get hold of, thanks largely to its regular bundling with the far more accomplished Kanal (Kanał, 1957) and Ashes and Diamonds (Popiól i diament, 1958) as an artificial "war trilogy" (which could [...]
The Children Accuse
Dzieci oskarżają Poland, 1956, black and white, 10 minsThe second 'black series' ('czarna seria') film by Jerzy Hoffman and Edward Skórzewski seems to start in a more sedate fashion compared with the throat-grabbing immediacy of Look Out, Hooligans! (Uwaga chuligani!, 1955), in that it begins with a mother and daughter doing (Christmas?) [...]
Look Out, Hooligans!
Uwaga chuligani! Poland, 1955, black and white, 12 minsAlthough signs of a thaw could be discerned the previous year (Jerzy Hoffman and Edward Skórzewski's sternly moralistic lecture Are You Among Them?/Czy jesteś wśród nich? did at least acknowledge the existence of petty crime and other forms of antisocial behaviour), their second film Look [...]
Return to the Old Town
Powrót na Stare Miasto Poland, 1954, black and white/colour, 20 minsIn essence a documentary about the recreation of Warsaw's Old Town, all but destroyed during World War II, Jerzy Bossak's film has enough genuinely powerful images of the large-scale restoration and reconstruction process to compensate for the commentary's attempts at rewriting [...]
Brzozowa Street
Ulica Brzozowa Poland, 1947, black and white, 9 minsOne of the key documentaries of Poland's post-World War II pre-Stalinism era, Brzozowa Street takes its name and setting from one of the front lines of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 - just three years before the film was made. Although Warsaw itself (at least according to Jerzy Piórkowski's [...]
The Coal Mine
Kopalnia Poland, 1947, black and white, 10 minsMade the same year as Jerzy Bossak and Wacław Kaźmierczak's The Flood (Powódź), The Coal Mine is a similarly wordless study, this time of miners in action. Using high-contrast lighting, boldly-defined compositions and intensely, almost aggressively rhythmic editing, writer-director Natalia [...]
The Flood
Powódź Poland, 1947, black and white, 13 minsAlthough barely known outside Poland, Jerzy Bossak (1910-89) was one of the key figures in the development of Polish cinema, especially in the immediate postwar period when the industry was getting back on its feet after a near-total shutdown during World War II. In the 1930s, he had been a member [...]