Cinema of Poland

Cinema of Poland
Film festival Off Plus Camera in Kraków, 2012
Number of screens	1,122 (2011)
• Per capita	3.2 per 100,000 (2011)
Main distributors	United International Pictures 26.8% Forum Film 12.8% Imperial Cinepix 11.9%
Produced feature films (2011)
Fictional	32 (62.7%)
Animated	1 (2.0%)
Documentary	18 (35.3%)
Number of admissions (2011)
Total	39,663,222
• Per capita	1 (2012)
National films	11,624,566 (29.3%)
Gross box office (2010)
Total	PLN 703 million
National films	PLN 43.5 million (6.2%)

The history of cinema in Poland is almost as long as history of cinematography, and it has universal achievements, even though Polish movies tend to be less commercially available than movies from several other European nations.

After World War II, despite censorship, filmmakers like Roman Polanski, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Agnieszka Holland, Andrzej Wajda, Andrzej Żuławski impacted the development of the cinematography. In more recent years, while no longer struggling with censorship, and with a large number of independent filmmakers of all genres, Polish productions tend to be more inspired by American film.

History

Early history

The first cinema in Poland (then occupied by the Russian Empire) was founded in Łódź in 1899, several years after the invention of the Cinematograph. Initially dubbed Living Pictures Theatre, it gained much popularity and by the end of the next decade there were cinemas in almost every major town of Poland. Arguably the first Polish filmmaker was Kazimierz Prószyński, who filmed various short documentaries in Warsaw. His pleograph film camera has been patented already before the Lumière brothers' invention and he is credited as the author of the earliest surviving Polish documentary titled Ślizgawka w Łazienkach (Skating-rink in the Royal Baths), as well as the first short narrative films Powrót birbanta (Rake's return home) and Przygoda dorożkarza (Cabman's Adventure), both created in 1902. Another pioneer of cinema was Bolesław Matuszewski, who became one of the first filmmakers working for the Lumière company - and the official "cinematographer" of the Russian tsars in 1897.

Museum of cinematography in Łódź

Pola Negri, Polish femme fatale of silent cinema

The earliest surviving feature film, the Antoś pierwszy raz w Warszawie (Antoś for the First Time in Warsaw) was made in 1908 by Antoni Fertner. The date of its première, October 22, 1908, is considered the founding date of Polish film industry. Soon Polish artists started experimenting with other genres of cinema: in 1910 Władysław Starewicz made one of the first animated cartoons in the world - and the first to use the stop motion technique, the Piękna Lukanida (Beautiful Lukanida). By the start of World War I the cinema in Poland was already in full swing, with numerous adaptations of major works of Polish literature screened (notably the Dzieje grzechu, Meir Ezofowicz and Nad Niemnem.

During the WWI the Polish cinema crossed borders. Films made in Warsaw or Vilna were often rebranded with German language intertitles and shown in Berlin. That was how a young actress Pola Negri (born Barbara Apolonia Chałupiec) gained fame in Germany and eventually became one of the European super-stars of silent film.

After WWII

In November 1945 the communist government founded the film production and distribution organization Film Polski, and put the well-known Polish People's Army filmmaker Aleksander Ford in charge. The FP output was limited; only thirteen features were released between 1947 and its dissolution in 1952, concentrating on Polish suffering at the hands of the Nazis. In 1947 Ford moved to help establish the new National Film School in Łódź, where he taught for 20 years.

The first film produced in Poland following the WW2 was Zakazane piosenki (1946), directed by Leonard Buczkowski, which was seen by 10.8 million people (out of 23,8 total population) in its initial theatrical run. Buczkowski continued to make films regularly until his death in 1967. Other important films of early post-WW2 period were The Last Stage (1948), directed by Wanda Jakubowska, who continued to make films until the transition from communism to capitalism in 1989, and Border Street (1949), directed by Aleksander Ford.

By the mid 1950s, following the end of Stalinism in Poland, the change in political climate gave rise to the Polish Film School movement, a training ground for some of the icons of the world cinematography, e.g., Roman Polanski (Knife in the Water, Rosemary's Baby, Frantic, The Pianist) and Krzysztof Zanussi (a leading director of the so-called cinema of moral anxiety of the 1970s). Andrzej Wajda's films offer insightful analyses of the universal element of the Polish experience - the struggle to maintain dignity under the most trying circumstances. His films defined several Polish generations. In 2000, Wajda was awarded an honorary Oscar for his overall contribution to cinema. Four of his films were nominated for Best Foreign Language Film award at Academy Awards with five other Polish directors receiving one nomination each: Roman Polański, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Jerzy Hoffman, Jerzy Antczak and Agnieszka Holland.

It is also important to note that during the 80's, the People's Republic of Poland instituted the martial law to vanquish and censor all forms of opposition against the communist rule of the nation, including outlets such as cinema and radio. A notable film to have emerged during this period was Ryszard Bugajski's 1982 film Interrogation (Przesluchanie), which depicts the story of an unfortunate woman (played by Krystyna Janda) who is arrested and tortured by the secret police into confessing a crime she knows nothing about. The anti-communist nature of the film brought about the film's over seven-year ban. In 1989, the ban was repealed after the overthrow of the Communist government in Poland, and the film was shown in theaters for the first time later that year. The film is still lauded today for its audacity in depicting the cruelty of the Stalinist regime, as many artists feared persecution during that time.

In the 1990s, Krzysztof Kieślowski won a universal acclaim with productions such as The Decalogue (made for television), The Double Life of Véronique and the Three Colors trilogy. Another of the most famous movies in Poland is Krzysztof Krauze’s The Debt (1999), which became a blockbuster. A considerable number of Polish film directors (e.g., Agnieszka Holland and Janusz Kamiński) have worked in American studios. Polish animated films - like those by Jan Lenica and Zbigniew Rybczyński (Oscar, 1983) - drew on a long tradition and continued to derive their inspiration from Poland's graphic arts.

Notable films

Main article: List of Polish films

See also

• Cinema of the world
• History of cinema
• List of famous Poles
• List of film festivals
• List of film formats
• List of film techniques
• List of motion picture-related topics (Extensive alphabetical listing and glossary).
• List of video-related topics
• National Film School in Łódź
• New York Polish Film Festival
• Outline of film
• Piotr Zawojski
• Polish film school
• Seattle Polish Film Festival
• World cinema

References

Media related to at Wikimedia Commons

• This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in the Polish Wikipedia.