Światowid Cinema and the Association of Studio Cinemas invite you to a unique series entitled A SHORT HISTORY OF POLISH CINEMA! The screenings combined with a video projection start on 16 February! Films will be available with English subtitles.

 

Polish cinematography is one of the most interesting among the great national cinematographies of the 2nd half of the 20th century. Despite its turbulent history, censorship, and successive economic and social breakdowns, our male and female filmmakers created outstanding works that are permanently inscribed in the world canon. Watching these films, from the key films of the Polish school of the 1950s and 1960s through the mega-productions of the 1970s to the cinema of moral unrest of the 1980s, we can get to know both the successive artistic currents and the image of the changing socio-economic and production reality of Polish cinema through their prism, and thus gain an insight into the Polish imaginary of the subsequent decades. The history of our cinematography is also the history of Polish male and female directors. In the review Short History of Polish Cinema, we focused on presenting selected titles by the greatest male and female filmmakers of the mainstream. How did the sensitivity of filmmakers change? Did they draw from European and world cinema or did they create new quality? How were they influenced by social and geopolitical changes? Finally: how did Polish cinema resonate beyond the borders of our country? The review is a unique opportunity to recall the most important digitally reconstructed works created on large cinema screens on the Vistula River and, through them, to take a look under the surface of the changes that took place during the following decades of the People's Republic of Poland.

The series of 10 films with introductions in the form of a video lecture presents the silhouette of the artist/creator, introduces the subject of the work and brings us closer to the political and social realities of its creation. Each introduction also contains a formal analysis of the work with an emphasis on the script, cinematography, acting, editing, set and costume design. It also indicates the current dimension of the work and suggests possible interpretative tropes. The prologues are realised in an accessible, more popularising than academic manner, setting the individual films in a broad cultural context.

 

Each title will be presented in a given month:

List of titles and screening dates:

16.02 at 6 p.m. Ashes and Diamonds - Andrzej Wajda 1958

23.03 at 18:00 Night Train - Jerzy Kawalerowicz 1959

20.04 at 18:00 Good Bye, Till Tomorrow - Janusz Morgenstern 1960

18.05 at 18:00 No One Cries Out... - Kazimierz Kutz 1960

22.06 at 18:00 Bad Luck - Andrzej Munk 1960

20.07 at 18:00 The Hourglass Sanatorium - Wojciech Jerzy Has 1973

17.08 at 18:00 Camouflage - Krzysztof Zanussi - 1976

28.09 at 18:00 Aria for an Athlete - Filip Bajon - 1979

26.10 at 18:00 Fever - Agnieszka Holland 1981

16.11 at 18:00 Blind Case - Krzysztof Kieślowski 1981

 

Ticket price: PLN 14/film

Review organiser: Association of Studio Cinemas

Review curator: Tomasz Kolankiewicz

Partners: WFDiF, DI Factory

Review co-financed by the Polish Film Institute