The Pol-ish film indus-try has pro-duced a few inter-na-tion-al-ly-known auteurs, includ-ing Andrzej Waj-da, Krzysztof Kie?lows-ki, and Roman Polan-s-ki, but a hand-ful of crit-i-cal-ly-laud-ed direc-tors can-not rep-re-sent the scope of any nation-al cin-e-ma. With-out a wider appre-ci-a-tion of Poland’s film his-to-ry, we lack cru-cial con-text for under-stand-ing its most famous artists. Now, a new archive called 35mm.online gives us hun-dreds of films and ani-ma-tions by Pol-ish film-mak-ers, a unique oppor-tu-ni-ty to immerse one-self in the coun-try’s cin-e-mat-ic art like nev-er before.
Pol-ish film his-to-ry can broad-ly be divid-ed into films made before WWII and those made after, when the coun-try came under strict Com-mu-nist con-trol. The first peri-od includes a silent film indus-try that began with the ori-gins of cin-e-ma itself and made a star of actress Pola Negri, whose films were screened in Berlin with Ger-man-lan-guage title cards. Many movies made in the sound era took direc-tion, no pun intend-ed, from film-mak-er Alek-sander Ford, a cham-pi-on of Com-mu-nist aes-thet-ic the-o-ry. “Cin-e-ma can-not be a cabaret,” he once told the Sovi-et Kino mag-a-zine, “it must be a school.” Ford made real-ist films about social issues and pro-pa-gan-da films dur-ing the war.
In 1945, Ford took con-trol of the Pol-ish film indus-try as direc-tor of the nation-al-ized state pro-duc-tion com-pa-ny, Film Pol-s-ki. The com-pa-ny had a monop-oly on pro-duc-tion, dis-tri-b-u-tion, and exhi-bi-tion, and in Poland, as in most East-ern Bloc nations in the Cold War, the chal-lenge of evad-ing cen-sors put far more pres-sure on film-mak-ers than mar-ket demands. “Under the Com-mu-nist regime,” Dark Kuz-ma writes at Movie Mak-er, “Pol-ish author-i-ties waged war on moviemak-ers.… Any cri-tique of the Sovi-et Union or the Pol-ish Peo-ple’s Repub-lic was silenced,” begin-ning with a 1945 film titled 2x2=4, by Antoni Bohdziewicz.
Ford did-n’t last long as an admin-is-tra-tor, though he returned in the 50s to help advise and over-see pro-duc-tions. Film Pol-s-ki became the Cen-tral Office of Cin-e-matog-ra-phy in 1951, and enforced even stricter con-trols on Pol-ish film-mak-ers. But as con-trol of the film indus-try cen-tral-ized, aca-d-e-m-ic bureau-crats took over for savvy film-mak-ers like Ford. “Pol-ish cen-sors,” Kuz-ma notes, “were high-ly lit-er-ary, capa-ble of deci-pher-ing even the most sophis-ti-cat-ed ‘sub-ver-sions’ in books, news-pa-pers and oth-er writ-ten forms — but they were quite impo-tent when it came to eval-u-at-ing images.”
Pol-ish film-mak-ers could not make any overt nar-ra-tive cri-tiques and “were forced to learn how to say some-thing with-out say-ing it direct-ly, how to depict a real-i-ty that did not offi-cial-ly exist,” says Oscar-nom-i-nat-ed Pol-ish cin-e-matog-ra-ph-er Ryszard Lenczews-ki. Neces-si-ty led to a cre-ative sym-bol-ic lan-guage view-ers had to decode:
This was a respon-si-bil-i-ty we all felt: to cre-ate lay-ered images, images with dou-ble mean-ings that dared view-ers to inter-pret them dif-fer-ent-ly. It was all in the details — like using wider lens-es to show things you would not be able to show any oth-er way. Some-thing may be occur-ring in the back-ground, slight-ly blurred. Some-times all the film needs was to not include some-thing or some-one in the frame.
The need for clan-des-tine cin-e-mat-ic meth-ods became ful-ly appar-ent in 1982, when a com-mis-sion met and deter-mined even stricter rules for Pol-ish film, par-tial-ly in reac-tion to the film-mak-er Ryszard Buga-jski’s Inter-ro-ga-tion, an unspar-ing depic-tion of “Stal-in-era polit-i-cal life.” (See an excerpt-ed scene at the top). A tran-script of the pro-ceed-ings, which includ-ed Buga-js-ki, made their way out of the coun-try in secret and was report-ed on in The New York Times. Buga-js-ki feared his film would not see release, and he was right, though Inter-ro-ga-tion cir-cu-lat-ed in samiz-dat VHS form for years, attain-ing cult sta-tus. It was even-tu-al-ly released years lat-er and would become one of the most pop-u-lar films of the time.
After Inter-ro-ga-tion, Pol-ish film-mak-ers began to employ even more dis-tinc-tive sym-bol-ic vocab-u-lar-ies, from sci-fi satire in 1984’s huge-ly pop-u-lar Sexmis-sion (trail-er above), to the use of heav-i-ly sat-u-rat-ed col-ors, a fea-ture so many Pol-ish films of the 1980s and 90s share and which char-ac-ter-izes the work of Kie?lows-ki, one of the most revered of Pol-ish direc-tors among Pol-ish and non-Pol-ish cinephiles alike. Best known for his ear-ly 90s tril-o-gy Three Col-ors: Blue, Red and White, the direc-tor began using spe-cif-ic col-ors to con-vey mean-ing ear-li-er in his career.
Cam-era oper-a-tor S?a-womir Idzi-ak, who worked on Kie?lowski’s 1988 A Short Film About Killing (see trail-er above), remem-bers, “I shot the film in this hideous yel-low-green-ish col-or to sub-tly hint at the direc-tor’s idea that the coun-try could be a killer, just like the main char-ac-ter. I remem-ber one review-er in Cannes writ-ing that because the screen assumes the col-or of urine, it encap-su-lates the real-i-ty of Com-mu-nist Poland. That was beau-ti-ful.”
Film-mak-er Bar-bara Sass went on to make sev-er-al films in which spe-cif-ic col-or plays sig-nif-i-cant roles, start-ing with her 1980, fes-ti-val-win-ning debut, With-out Love. She sur-rounds her yel-low-haired main char-ac-ter, played by Doro-ta Stal-ińs-ka, with a sick-ly hos-pi-tal yel-low, then immers-es her in the dim red light of a pho-to-graph-ic dark-room. Her many lat-er films employed bold uses of col-or to sim-i-lar effect. These films rep-re-sent only a tiny sam-pling of the near-ly 4,000 Pol-ish films host-ed on 35mm.online, a joint project of the Pol-ish Film Insti-tute and “one of Poland’s old-est film stu-dios, Wytw?rnia Film?w Doku-men-tal-nych i Fab-u-larnych (WFDiF), (Doc-u-men-tary and Fea-ture Film Stu-dios),” notes The first News.
The col-lec-tion includes 160 fea-tures, 71 doc-u-men-taries 474 ani-mat-ed short films, and 10 ani-mat-ed fea-tures. We’ve bare-ly scratched the sur-face of Pol-ish cin-e-ma his-to-ry and there are hun-dreds of ani-ma-tions yet to watch (read some of their grim descrip-tions at MetaFil-ter). So get to watch-ing at 35mm.online.
Note: To enable Eng-lish sub-ti-tles, click the “Enable Sub-ti-tles” but-ton beneath each film. (The first but-ton.) Then go to the “Sett-tings” but-ton and choose Eng-lish sub-tiles.
via MetaFil-ter
Relat-ed Con-tent:
50 Film Posters From Poland: From The Empire Strikes Back to Raiders of the Lost Ark
An Intro-duc-tion to Stanis-law Lem, the Great Pol-ish Sci-Fi Writer, by Jonathan Lethem
Free Online: Watch Stalk-er, Mir-ror, and Oth-er Mas-ter-works by Sovi-et Auteur Andrei Tarkovsky
Josh Jones is a writer and musi-cian based in Durham, NC. Fol-low him at @jdmagness.
