Promoting Polish Cinema in America: Reflections of a Film Programmer

by Dr. Tomasz Warchol

I have followed Polish cinema for almost four decades now, first in Poland and then, after 1981, mostly from here in the U.S. In the 70's I lived it, literally and figuratively. For a few days each September, I was completely immersed in it through my work as an English interpreter for The Polish Feature Film Festival. It was held in my hometown Gdansk, and I was there when it debuted in 1974 and every year afterwards until I left the country. On a typical day that ran from noon till midnight, I would watch three to four films and attend an equal number of conferences and interviews. The pay wasn’t much and the work was often stressful (half of the films had no English dialogue list and none was ever subtitled), but I was a student and then a young academic, and, frankly, I would have worked for less to be in that exciting environment of filmmakers, actors, critics, and journalists.

But Polish films, especially of the late 70's, were also the air I breathed and the light that I sought. In those years, a student in the humanities would have to design and inhabit an alternative reality not be even minimally involved in the opposition to the communist regime, and no art expressed my generation’s moral outrage, social restlessness, and political and cultural aspirations better than our cinema. The films by Wajda, Zanussi, Holland, Falk, Kijowski, Marczewski, Piwowski, Lozinski, Bajon, and Kieslowski mirrored and echoed our lives, measuring the nation's pulse, the surging strength in our solidarity. Never before did any national cinema, not even that of the Czech or French New Waves, enjoy such intimate and symbiotic relationship with its society, such a shared unity of purpose and vision. In the space of those three to four years and especially during the heady months of Solidarity, millions of Poles managed to see many of those films despite their deliberately limited distribution and official unavailability. When the martial law of December 13, 1981 abruptly and terminally cut that special lifeline between the people and their cinema, it could not stop the social radicalization and political awareness that the relationship had inspired and sustained. Sadly, the movement referred to as "cinema of moral concern" couldn't go on. But the one called Solidarity just needed patience to let the regime invalidate itself.

I recall those days here because I felt that bond with Polish cinema very deeply and very passionately. Wajda's Man of Marble and Man of Iron, Zanussi's Camouflage (Barwy ochronne), Holland's Provincial Actors (Aktorzy prowincjonalni) and A Woman Alone (Kobieta samotna), Kieslowski's Camera Buff (Amator), Feliks Falk's Top Dog (Wodzirej), Piwowski's Rejs (Riverboat Trip), Marczewski's Shivers (Dreszcze), Kijowski's Index (Indeks), Bugajski's Interrogation (Przesluchanie), and Lozinski's How to Live (Jak zyc), among a few others, helped define my core identity and shape my values. Sentimentally speaking, they made me very proud of being Polish, a gift that has kept on giving all through my twenty seven years in America. After the fall of communism, I kept up with Polish cinema by attending the festival in Gdynia or by viewing tapes of new Polish releases while visiting the family. For the last eight years, though, I have found it a lot more convenient to fly to Chicago and attend the Annual Polish Film Festival in America. It's just a three-hour flight each way, and if I don't get to see some of the better films, I get later access to them thanks to Krzysztof Kamyszew and Ewa Domeredzka, the festival's directors and wonderfully gracious hosts.

My professional circumstances as an academic teacher have helped me spread my love of cinema to students and faculty at Georgia Southern University where I have been programming a campus film series since 1984 and to the residents of Savannah where I have been directing a successful film program since 2003. Between the two programs, I try to include at least one Polish film a season remembering to maintain a high standard my patrons have come to expect of contemporary Polish films. Yes, my audiences hold Polish cinema in high regard, and I am proud to have nurtured that perception. My relationship with the Chicago festival has naturally become essential to my modest mission. Even though, for obvious reasons, it cannot compete with the native festival in Gdynia, PFFA has turned into the biggest annual showcase of Polish films in the world. No other festival provides a more comprehensive review of Polish films, a range that includes features, shorts, animation, and documentaries, made in Poland and abroad, by Poles from Poland and from elsewhere and those others simply drawn to Polish matters, a true Polonia spectacular. That this annual celebration takes place in the largest "Polish" city outside Poland only enhances its significance and impact. To me and all those professionally and culturally affiliated with the Festival and the Society for Arts that makes it happen, Chicago is the heart and hub of Polish America. I see us as its arteries and veins, its closer and farther satellites.

I am certainly one of those distant satellites, a resident of the Deep American South, commuting between its urban (where I live) and rural (where I teach) worlds, inhabiting my "blue" cosmopolitan and liberal enclave but always wary of the hardcore religious "red" around me. The audiences for my two programs are markedly different: students (mostly of conservative but pliable bent) and liberal-arts faculty for my campus series, and affluent, often retired, progressive whites for the city screenings. No matter what those demographics are, be assured they never include anyone Polish. Where I live and work, I am the walking embodiment of Poland and all things Polish, a position I hardly advertise but one I can take on when it suits me.

Let me share, therefore, on that special occasion of the 20th anniversary edition of the festival, my successes in promoting Polish cinema to Americans removed from a Polish (and often European) context in my faraway state of Georgia. What kind of Polish cinema does well in America? What films could not or never would? What are the parameters and variables that make a Polish film succeed with American (naturally discriminating) viewers that would come to see it?

Looking historically, the best time to promote Polish cinema was in that period of three to four years before, during, and right after Solidarity when developments in Poland were reported daily by international media. Too bad that most of the films that Poles talked about were simply not available outside the country, especially in the U.S. When they appeared, mostly on VHS, Poland left the western headlines to suffer alone in the chronically disabled economy and general cultural malaise. But rather than complain about the misfortunate timing, I was glad I finally had access to most of those, often remarkable, films. The ones I screened on campus (Man of Marble, Camouflage, Top Dog, Provincial Actors, Shivers, Camera Buff) easily transcended their particular socio-political contexts because their stories conveyed universal themes and raised familiar moral issues through common existential situations. None required more than a minimal exposition. But, in the 80's, there was little else besides those earlier films for showcasing Polish cinema except perhaps the previously shelved films such as Zaorski's extraordinary Mother of Kings (which I had to accompany with a one-page sketch preview of modern Polish history), Kieslowski's original Blind Chance (which needed less), and Agnieszka Holland's A Woman Alone (which just demanded a whole lot of courage). There were also Wajda's Danton and Love in Germany and Zanussi's Year of the Quiet Sun, high-profile, widely distributed international films by Poland's two most prominent directors.

Polish Film Festival in America was launched twenty years ago just months before Poland was to begin its most amazing transformation from a Soviet-bloc socialist regime to a free-market, independent democracy setting off a chain of events that changed the face and future of Europe. In a matter of months, there was no more communism, no Berlin Wall, no Soviet-bloc, no Soviet Union. And hardly any Polish cinema. Early 90's saw a rapid decline in film attendance, decreasing number of theater screens, and a 90% Hollywood takeover of those that remained. Polish film production significantly declined in both quantity and quality, but at least it was not paralyzed as in other newly freed Eastern European countries. And I could still pick a few special titles to put in my film programs. One unqualified success was Maciej Dejczer's debut 300 Miles to Heaven (300 mil do nieba) completed shortly before the economic and political makeover. Another was Dorota Kedzierzawska's gently lyrical Crows (Wrony). Johnny of the Water (Jancio Wodnik), Kolski's early and still his most defining work, captivated Americans with its unique Polish folkstyle variation on magic realism. By far, though, my film series made most money on the screening of Interrogation, Bugajski's finally officially released film legend celebrated at Cannes 1990. But most of all, there was Krzysztof Kieslowski, whose French-made Double Life of Veronique and Three Colors Trilogy (especially Blue and Red) created cinema that was at once intellectually reflective, emotionally intimate, and spiritually evocative, a feat that eluded, or perhaps not interested, his elitist predecessors such as Antonioni and Tarkovsky. The morally discursive and stylistically sparse Decalogue, now taught routinely at universities worldwide, came to the U.S. later, retroactively, following the director's untimely death. By then, Kieslowski's work was developing a huge critical and cult following as his name became synonymous with Polish cinema and continues to be so today.

The impression of the general mediocrity of Polish films began to fade by the end of 1996 when the continuing reforms of the domestic film market and industry showed cinema's improving health. I would argue that from 1997 on, about half of the films produced every year, have been "presentable" for international markets. Some were outstanding (in chronological order): Stuhr's Love Stories (Historie milosne), Kedzierzawska's Nothing (Nic) which inexplicably is still not released on DVD, Krzysztof Krauze's The Debt (Dlug), Filip Zylber's Executor (Egzekutor), Robert Glinski's Hi Tereska (Czesc, Tereska), Wojciech Wojcik's There and Back (Tam i z powrotem), Piotr Trzaskalski's Edi, Ryszard Brylski's White Soup (Zurek), Slawomir Fabicki's Retrieval (Z odzysku), the Krauzes' Savior's Square (Plac Zbawiciela), just twelve last minutes short of a masterpiece, again Kedzierzawska with her Time to Die (Pora umierac), and, most recently, Wajda's extraordinary Katyn. These are all compelling dramas, distinguished by remarkable performances, well-defined and convincing contexts and settings, superior artistic control and aesthetic value. I have shown most of these to great acclaim, and hope to bring a couple more next season.
But there is now plenty more to choose from, especially since I do not want to create the impression that Polish films are mostly weighty and heavy. I had a sold-out crowd (200 seats) for the showing of Machulski's delightful heist comedy Vinci as well as for Hoffman's When Sun Was God (Stara Basn), an impressively mounted old- fashioned fable of good and evil set in the mythic world of pagan ancestors of Poland. Konecki/Saramonowicz's Body (Cialo) and Zaorski's classic Happy New York/Szczesliwego Nowego Jorku, showed at a coffeeshop venue, got a few laughs and much appreciation. There are certainly a number of films that would have done well if I were running an actual theater. I think Marek Koterski's last two films, Day of the Wacko (Dzien Swira) and We Are All Christs (Wszyscy jestesmy Chrystusami), deserve wider international recognition. Together with Krauze, Kolski, Kedzierzawska, and, most recently, Andrzej Jakimowski (Tricks, Squint Your Eyes), he is one of Polish cinema's most original and autonomous film artists. Koterski's portrayal of the degraded and demoralized post-communist Polish "inteligent" in the former and of an alcoholic academic "interrogated" by his own son in the latter are certainly cross-national types. The director's dark humor, his penchant for the surreal and the absurd, and especially his unique episodic storytelling manner would only enhance the American's appreciation of his originality.

I can also tell you which films would not work with American audience. Film adaptations of our hermetic, impenetrable classics, simply could not work: Pan Tadeusz, Zemsta, Przedwiosnie, Wesele (Wajda's that is), Ogniem i mieczem/With Sword and Fire. This last one, Hoffman's conclusion to Sienkiewicz's Trilogy, was too muddled, shallow, and showy, to make us care about the drama or the characters. At any rate, all these were made specifcally for the Polish market anyway. Derivative Polish versions of American gangster and crime thrillers, including Pasikowski's Pigs (Psy), Slesicki's Sara, and Zamojda's Young Wolves/Mlode Wilki, would not work, no matter how popular they were in Poland. Neither would I dare to show any of the recent blockbuster Polish romantic comedies of Grochola/Lepkowska/Weresniak creation. Their stereotypes and formulaic predictability would make me positively embarrassed. I was also embarrassed by Konecki/Saramonowicz's Testesteron, a superhit in Poland, but to me, a messy, flashy, and vulgar concoction. Thank goodness, I previewed it before I would screen it, and had Krzysztof Kamyszew quickly replace it with Saniewski's gripping Immensity of Justice (Bezmiar sprawiedliwosci). I hear their follow-up Lejdis is not much better, and I will not waste my time watching it. Machulski's recent films (Superprodukcja, Money Isn't Everything/Pieniadze to nie wszystko) don't hold a candle to his perfectly paced and tightly constructed Vinci. There is a whole group of films that should have been better but came up short through dramatic and psychological flaws: Glinski's Call of the Toad (Wrozby Kumaka) that drops off a cliff thirty minutes before it ends, Zanussi's belabored Persona Non Grata, that manages to keep us entirely indifferent, Kolski's clueless and pretentious Pornografia, and Grodecki's equally misguided Insatiability (Nienasycenie), to name a few.

There are many films I didn't mention that should and may have done fine. What we need to keep in mind, though, is that the reason for our annual gathering in Chicago is not to complain but to celebrate, and it is abundantly clear to me that there are lots of good films made in Poland. We may not have our Sveraks and Hrebejks who can make the tragic and the comic mix into such a potent humanistic potion that it transcends all cultural borders. Clearly, it's not in our national character to have that Czech touch. But we do have a vibrant film industry with a lot talented filmmakers whose work we need to support and promote. Without our art we lose our culture and our identity. Will being Polish mean anything to your children? Does it? So here is a toast: to Polish cinema, to the Chicago Festival, to Society for Arts, to Krzysztof , its founder and longtime director, to Ewa, who directs it now, and to all of us who care about our Polish culture and our films.

Dr. Tomasz Warchol is an Associate Professor of English and Film Studies
at Georgia Southern University