The individual hero was involved in contemporary social problems; his socio-political position and his relationships with other people were the focus of Polish film authors’ attention



It is impossible to summarize the importance and value of the program of Polish films playing in the Tuškanac theatre. Each film underscores idiosyncrasies of the genre, reach and position of its author’s generation, opus and poetics, as well as its place in the history of Polish and international film.

Andrzej Wajda, a director who has insisted upon viewers’ intellectual participation with his films throughout his career, differs a great deal from the director of popular comedies Tadeusz Chmielewski. Jerzy Kawalerowicz, (who, incidentally, assisted Ford in making his debut Five Boys from Barska Street in 1953), and Wajda belong to different generations than Aleksander Ford (1908 - 1980) and Andrzej Munk (1921-1961). Wajda, Chmielewski and Munk were graduates of the famous Polish film school in Lodz, an institution that considerably influenced the development of Polish film after WW II. Ford was a self-taught filmmaker, while Kawalerowicz took film courses at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow.

Mother Joan of the Angels is one of Kawalerowicz’s most phenomenal works, in addition to being one of the best pieces of international film in general, while his other film The Game is somewhat less important. A similar correlation could be made between Wajda’s Canal and Ashes and Diamonds or Hunting Flies.

Finally, Five Boys from Barska Street was made in 1953, when Stalin’s death made Poland the “happiest shack in a Socialist camp”. (One unintentional by-product of Stalin’s death, among others, was the production of some of Poland’s best films). Wajda’s Hunting Flies was made in 1969, a time which was, metaphorically speaking, hundreds of thousands of party reports away from the Socialist era.

Nevertheless, all these works have something in common: a uniquely Polish model of working with seven production groups, as well as the relationship of Polish filmmakers of the 1950s and 1960s to their specific place in the national history.

Jerzy Kawalerowicz said in a recent interview, “We wanted to create characters that were idiosyncratically Polish, who would show the complications of our history and the complexity of our situation. The individual hero was involved in contemporary social problems; his socio-political position, and his relationships with other people were the focus of Polish film authors’ attention”.

Such points of focus certainly differed greatly from the “formal” socially committed art of the time. The great Polish painter and theatre man Tadeusz Kantor believed that no one that enters the theatrical life goes unpunished. Polish filmmakers, with their broad perspective on life, believed that one must not give in to the cruel determinism of historical events; to speak out against the established dogma is every individual’s duty.

That is how the films in this program - most of which are to be shown for the first time in decades (some for the first time ever) - successfully kept their freshness and realism through times that differ greatly from the era they were forged in. (Mladen Martić)