A survey of Central and Eastern European cinema
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Posts Tagged ‘Natalia Brzozowska’

The Polish Documentary Movement 1947-60

(This is the text of a presentation I gave at the BFI this afternoon, on the early history of the Polish documentary movement 1947-60 - I've deleted some scene-setting preamble that was only relevant to that particular audience, but otherwise this is pretty much verbatim.)One thing that becomes very clear very quickly when one starts to delve into [...]

The Coal Mine

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 [...]