‘Short Films’ Archives
The Eye and the Ear
UK, 1945, black and white, 11 mins. Of Franciszka and Stefan Themerson's three surviving films, The Eye and the Ear is much the most successful, and one can only regret that their extensive interests in other fields precluded them making any more in a similar vein. As the title implies, and the explanatory intertitles explain in [...]
Calling Mr Smith
UK, 1944, black and white, 8 minsThe first of two films made by the husband-and-wife team of Franciszka and Stefan Themerson in Britain towards the end of World War II, Calling Mr Smith is a visually virtuosic, despairingly bleak piece of anti-Nazi propaganda that tries to open British audiences' eyes not merely to the physical destruction of [...]
The Adventure of a Good Citizen
Przygoda człowieka poczciwego Poland, 1937, black and white, 10 minsThe last of five films made by the husband-and-wife team of Franciszka and Stefan Themerson in their native Poland, The Adventure of a Good Citizen is the only one to have survived World War II - indeed, it's one of the few remaining examples of what by all accounts was a [...]
Sopot 1957
Poland, 1957, black and white, 16 minsBetween 1954 and 1956, Jerzy Hoffman and Edward Skórzewski issued a series of hard-hitting cinematic challenges to a Polish documentary movement that was only just beginning to emerge from the crushing impact of World War II and the more consciously stifling period of Stalinism that followed. Films like Are [...]
From Powiśle…
Z Powiśla... Poland, 1958, black and white, 10 minsAfter making short films at the Łódź Film School (among them Day In Day Out/Jak co dzień..., 1955) and collaborating with Władysław Ślesicki on Where the Devil Says Goodnight (Gdzie diabeł mówi dobranoc, 1956) and People from an Empty Zone (Ludzie z pustego obszaru, 1957), Kazimierz [...]
Place of Residence
Miejsce zamieszkania Poland, 1957, black and white, 16 mins Of all the "black series" documentaries presented on PWA's collection, Place of Residence is most explicitly indebted to the Socialist Realist tradition that dominated Polish cinema from the late 1940s to the mid 1950s. Taking its cue from wide-eyed celebrations such as Andrzej Munk's [...]
City on Islands
Miasto na wyspach Poland, 1958, black and white, 9 minsThe rebuilding of the Polish capital is one of the most frequent themes encountered in Polish documentaries of the late 1940s and 1950s, as demonstrated by such films as Brzozowa Street/Ulica Brzozowa (1947), Return to the Old Town/Powrót na Stare Miasto (1954), Warsaw '56/Warszawa 1956 [...]
Article Zero
Paragraf zero Poland, 1957, black and white, 16 minsIt says something for the social stigma associated with prostitution that this is apparently the only documentary of the 'black series' to tackle it. Very different in tone from Włodzimierz Borowik's rural Rocky Soil (Skalna ziemia, 1956), this is set in a far more enclosed series of urban [...]
People from an Empty Zone
Ludzie z pustego obszaru Poland, 1957, black and white, 15 minsOne of the most immediately striking aspects of Kazimierz Karabasz and Władysław Ślesicki's second collaboration is that they've clearly devoted a lot of thought to the nature and purpose of what they were attempting. Whereas many of the films made in the first year of the 'black [...]
Lublin Old Town
Lubelska starówka Poland, 1956, black and white, 5 minsOne characteristic of the 'black series' that became increasingly apparent in 1956 was the use of sarcasm, though it was rarely deployed quite as overtly as this. In many ways a sequel to-cum-parody of the likes of Return to the Old Town (Powrót na Stare Miasto, 1954), the film begins with [...]