‘Short Films’ Archives
Warsaw ‘56
Warszawa 1956 Poland, 1956, black and white, 10 minsEssentially a cross between Edgar Anstey and Arthur Elton's classic British documentary Housing Problems (1935) and a particularly sadistic child-in-peril suspense thriller, Warsaw '56 is the most sheerly terrifying film in the 'black series' of documentaries that shook up Polish cinema in the [...]
Little Town
Miasteczko Poland, 1956, black and white, 10 minsThe gauntlet is thrown down from the opening title, a quotation from the then recently deceased poet Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński (1905-53) that says "How to speak the truth about Poland..." ("Jak tu prawdę o Polsce powiedzieć...") - the largely correct implication being that Polish [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]